DD, you just put your foot in it, up to your ankle. Dennis Johnson was a 5 time All Star, and an All Star with the Celtics in 1984-85 season, the season before the epic playoff run for the Rockets, ended in the Finals with huge help from, you guessed it, DJ. In his 7 seasons with the Celtics, Johnson averaged over 6 assists per game and was repeatedly voted to at least second team on the All-Defensive list. The guy was an All Star and played like it.
But Cabbage said an all star ball handler, DJ was harldy that...and neither wasa Ainge. They played TEAM ball, and won...without a guy who broke the defense down on the perimeter. Thus the analogy....DJ was a great player, I knew the man....but when he won the championships with the Celtics he was no longer an all star. DD
He was an All Star point in 1984-85, when the Celtics had a 63-19 record. DJ averaged 6.8 assists, 4 boards, 1.2 steals, and 15.7 points. That's for the EC champions, a team with 63 wins, who lost in 6 games to the Lakers, the team we eliminated the next year. How you can say he was "long past his All Star days" is a complete mystery to me.
Fair enough, long past was a bit of an exageration......I think he got all star that year because of his team's record those are hardly all star numbers are they? DD
In terms of the argument at hand though the first option on those Celtics teams was clearly Larry Bird, followed by the twin Frankensteins of Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish.
DD, he was an All Star for the totality of his play. Not only his ball handling and playmaking (and he was a playmaker, despite Bird being All World at that and pretty much everything else), but his defense. DJ made everyone better. Isn't that what a good point does? The league didn't make DJ an All Star because he was Mister Popular, like we see so often today. He got it because he earned it.
This is very poor understanding of basic logic on your part, and once again you prove my point for me. I'm not arguing causation, I'm arguing correlation. if i was arguing causation, i would be asserting that "teams win titles because they have elite perimeter players." my argument is that teams have to have an elite perimeter player to win the title. causation would be saying that it's sufficient to win the title if you have an elite guard. my argument is that it's necessary. the whole point here is that there's a correlation between this factor and outcome, and you've just conceded to that. as far as your second statement, it's just logically unsound to attribute this to "odds" when EVERY modern NBA champion fits the argument. if an occurrence becomes that consistent, i would think there's a little bit more than just sheer probability at play. even if we accept your revisionist account of the sacramento kings, the only reason i even brought up the example is because it was rick's team. they didn't even win a title and got beat by a team with a great guard, so it doesn't weaken my argument. you will likely claim that that lakers team was an anomaly because bryant wasn't just any great guard but was the 2nd greatest shooting guard of all-time, but i would counter that he wasn't at that level just yet. he wasn't used any more than any other elite wing, and the basic point of the argument is the use of the elite wing in crunch time.
Uhh, not sure if you watched the game, but there was no crunch time tonite. It was a blowout. This isn't a very difficult concept to grasp. In case you're unfamiliar with the terms a "blowout" is a win or loss by a large margin ie: NOT a close game, and NOT inclusive of a "crunch time" period. the aforementioned "crunch time" is the closing minutes of a close game. ie NOT tonight. not too difficult. this is hilarious. you're arguments keep getting weaker and weaker. you asked me why other teams don't front yao. one of my reasons is that it expends too much energy for the opposing player. how is the fact that yao expends an equal amount of energy a counter to this?! you were asking from the other team's perspective. (ie: "i don't think lamarcus has the energy to front yao for 48 minutes.") i'm completely perplexed at how this concept of fronting yao has gone completely over your head. did you just start watching the rockets this year? anyone who has been following this team knows that it takes him completely out of the game. we're not talking about coaching staffs. i specifically mentioned earlier in the thread, i was attributing arrogance to o'neal, duncan, and dwight howard. once again, you misconstrue my statements to support your faltering claims. as far as star players possibly being too arrogant to concede to a fronting defense on someone, not sure how that is so far fetched... ...unless you operate in an idealistic utopia where players don't have egos, and where teams playing exclusively 5-man motion ball win NBA titles. lol.
It's not "every" modern NBA champion. You yourself conceded that the 1994 Rockets lacked an elite wing. Once again you're confusing causation/correlation. To be scientifically provable you need some hypothesis about why an elite wing is "necessary" for a championship team and an experiment to prove it. All that you've got are a bunch of series where you claim that teams had an elite wing so you've got observations but no hypothesis/experiment. What's more by your won admission it's not absolutely necessary since there have been teams that have won it all without elite wings--the 94 Rockets that you offered up as an example. I would also say that DD's example of the Celts with Dennis Johnson qualifies. And to get back to my argument championship teams tend to be made up of multiple elite players. Given that you're talking about at least two guys who are at elite status and that there's only five starters there's just a very good chance that one of those elite players is a guard. How is my argument revisionist? I was a big Kings fan back in the day and I don't remember any nonsense about Bibby being the team's savior in crunch time. Yes, he was huge, but so was Bobby Jackson for that matter and he wasn't even a starter. As for why the Kings lost that infamous series to the Lakers I think that mostly has to do something with Bibby fouling Kobe's elbow with his face. The officiating in that series was so awful that Ralph Nader complained to the NBA.
Way to miss the obvious. If the guy who's fronting Yao is some scrub, who cares if he's exhausting himself? The other team is using their scrub to neutralize the Rockets' elite center. How is that not a net gain for the other team? If you don't have an elite center yourself why not front Yao 100% of the time? So does sending two or three guys at Yao before he has the ball. It should be pretty obvious why other teams don't do that to Yao consistently, just as it should be pretty obvious why other teams don't front Yao consistently if you stopped to think about it. You obviously haven't because your answers verge on the fantastical, especially the gem you offer up below. I honestly don't know what to say. Do you seriously believe that if the coach says "Front Yao" that a player is going to flat out refuse?
Need any more evidence after tonight's game? Once again, after 3 and 1/2 quarters of great offense, the Rockets completely crumble down the stretch and get shut out in crunch time. You have to have a perimeter player that can break down the defense to win big. Circumstances change at the end of close games, but sure keep telling yourself they don't.
i logged on just to bump this thread. tonight was just another example of how pathetic our offense is when yao is fronted aggressively. bad, bad loss. worst of the season.
It is too easy to take Yao out of a game...or at least a stretch of a game....It was pointless having him out there the last 6mins...he did absolutely nothing for us except totally stall our offense b/c we spent too much time trying to get yao the damn ball.
well our wing player tmac decided to scuttle any trade talks for him and decided on season ending surgery instead of playing through pain... todays game we fell in ove with the long jumpers... we got to play smarter and go to the hoop... fronting Yao or not thats the best play
Not true...we didn't even try screens to give him the ball. But if you blow a 17 point lead in the fourth and you think it's because of Yao being taken out of the game, then you'll an idiot.
0/3 in games since Tracy is gone where the Rockets offense crumbled in the 4th when the score was close due to an inability to get Yao the ball. The coaches supposedly devoted a practice to dealing with the fronting defense, but evidently this group still doesn't get it.
