[sirius radio-full court press] Kenny Smith says "TMAC not a great player"

says Tmac is not a 'great' player because in Orlando, he didnt elevate everyone's game

well you cant polish a turd. those magic teams were pretty bad and management didnt help by getting rid of miller and gooden either

 

I concur. Barkley's being a Rockets hater is somewhat understandable because the poor guy did not get a ring after he begged his way into Rox. However, Kenny's being a Rox hater is just beyond the wildest imagination of a normal human being. He got two rings with his r****d for god's sake, but still talks **** on Rox every time he opens his sh!ty mouth !!!

 

I like this description.

 

Of course these great players make large differences. That is why they are great players. But your logic is flawed as you do not fully take into other considerations which determined these results. Comparisons are only valid in so far as they are ceteris paribus .

What people often miss in quantifying individual greatness in terms of wins is that marginal win improvement are not very good indicative statistic for inferring the actual marginal improvement in production they bring. NBA is a tough competitive place (Yes even Bobcats dont get blown away every night), and even the shoddy franchises get to compete on a regular basis. In another words, there isn't much difference between a win and a loss. So if you could bring in an player who can bring in an marginal improvement in score-sheet over certain levels on a consistent basis, what you expect is that there will be a big discontinuity in terms of how wins and losses pan out. And this is precisely the thing happening with the Rockets right now. Big players are valuable not because they literally "will" their team to victory, a figurative term which many analyst such as Stein likes to use, but rather their production has "marginal" significance in relation to win and loss situations. But to use such win and loss inference to strictly determine players real "worth" or "greatness" is simply based on faulty logic.

As an illustration, those Phoenix teams already have young maturing Stoudmire and ever-constant Marion on their books. This is different from saying playing alongside Howard, or T. Lue. Timmy had Admiral as his side-stick. Heat signed up Lamar Odom in Wade's rookie year. Those wins are products of combination of efforts not individual "will".

Is Tracy better than Kobe or Timmy? Unlikely. Was he better than Nash throughout his career span? Likely. Is he Jordan. Nope. But to suggest T-Mac isnt great because he hasnt lived up to Jordan index is just absurd because nobody did and nobody will ever likely to do so again. Sports writers often likes to point out intangibles, and how a particular individual performed at a big stage. Those are important element in judging the essence of sportsman, but they arent the whole story. I think in a modern day some "analysts" take these concepts too far and try to "out smart" general public by insisting on "intangibles" as our dear friend Kenny has done here. Well, all I can say is it is hard to earn a bread for their sake.

 

I think that greatness, as it pertains to basketball, is judged by how many wins a particular player accumulates over his career. For instance, Shaq is a great player because he took 3 different teams to the NBA finals. Players that, as rookies, increase their teams winning percentage significantly, and keep that percentage high throughout their careers are great. Obviously, you disagree with how I judge greatness. Please tell me what you use to judge greatness, and how it pertains to TMac.

 

Sometimes people say stupid things.

**** happens.

 

Wow, Kenny Smith is much closer to cream-puff looking than convict imo...If he's a convict then Maxwell and Elie were terrorists

 

If Tmac was 100% and I mean 100% like he played in Orlando, and Yao is playing like he is now, who do you guys think would be the better player in this team?

 

That's a tough question. But one thing is for sure. We will be ChampionS

 

It is sports, only winner will be remembered for a long time. What he said makes some senses, not 100%, but how many times you can make a 100% sense comment?

What's a great player? A great player will make his enemy have to praise him. Kenny isn't an enemy of Rox, so T-Mac may be somewhat great, but not great enough.

Those guys who is trying to use Kenny's past performance on the court to dwarf his comments, this absolutely makes no sense.

 

Your name sounds like 'semen'. There, that made 100% sense.

 

It's all perception and opinion. There's no written guidelines for greatness.

Number of rings, winning percentage, individual stats, etc. all play into it and it's all what you think.

If you think 'greatness' is based on the number of rings you have then in the past decade Robert Horry would be one of the greatest to play the game. If you think 'greatness' is about sucking then so be it.

His credentials:

-Back to back scoring champion
-Youngest player to ever lead the league in scoring
-Most Improved Player Award

His shortcomings:

-Never getting out of the first round, never leading a team past the first round.

His credentials don't merit him greatness IMO and his shortcoming is a big reason why.

I think the word 'great' around McGrady should be used right before the word 'talent'. He's a great talent, he's not a winner, yet, but I do certainly think he's a great player if you take it individually.

He's not quite used his great talent to make him into a winner yet. He was supposed to with Yao Ming but his back is really looking like it's going to cut the chance short.

If he didn't have this back problem, he'd still be a relatively young GREAT talent with a much improved team to lead to greatness therefore becoming a winner.

He was GREAT in his prime. He was great his first season in Houston because he was winning and still playing well individually. In fact that was probably the best season of his career because he still had all his athleticism from Orlando AND a good team to lead. We all saw how good he could be and how good this team could be. He and the team got snipped of the first round again that season but nonetheless it seemed like he and the team would come back strong. They won the first game of the next season before T-Mac went down in practice. We now know that season went down with him and maybe his entire career.

If only T-Mac didn't have a bad back.

 

Jeryl Sasser was the 6th man in Orlando. Do you see the name; JERYL F'IN SASSER!!!!!!

The are only 5 other players in NBA history that could have taken that team to the playoffs at that current time; Shaq, Duncan, Dream, Wilt, and Jordan. Not Lebron, not Kobe, not KG, and for damn well sure not D-Wade. Magic won't have anyone to pass the ball too. Larry Bird won't have anyone to get rough with him. Kareem won't have a cast of legends to run with.

T-Mac was quintuple teamed every night and still dropped MVP caliber numbers. Yes I am classing him with those 5 players because he took an NBDL team to the playoffs. That team couldn't win 10 games in the CBA. When Jacque Vaughn is your STARTING PG, and Steven Hunter your STARTING C, with JERYL F'IN SASSER(the worst player in all of basketball history) you got yourself one sorry ass team.

I was an optimistic Magic fan then, but now I look at that team and I begin to think that they had no business winning 20 games, at it finally caught up to them in 03/04. And who was their coach at the time, certainly not Red Auerbach or Phil Jackson.

 

If a player is good, all the teams want him. Does any team want TMac? Event I want to trade him away from Rockets. To this logic, he is not a good player (even though he was good before).