Heck, I suffered through the days of Ryan Bowen. Of course I'll watch. If he plays against the Bulls, I predict we'll struggle and have a good chance of losing.
not if yao plays like he did tonight, unlike what he did v. philly when he was a non-factor for 3.5 quarters. you do know yao's a big part of the team too right?
with Yao double teamed most of the time, we need good shooters to punish the double team. the only other option is to move him to the 1 but he will dribble the heck out of the clock in those cases.
Yup, Yao was terrible against Philly; I agree. Of course of Yao completely dominates, we won't struggle ... but I wouldn't count on that.
man i completely agree with your 4th point. how often have we sensed we would hit a WALL offensively during a stretch in the 4th quarter? far too many. something about the combination of brooks, wafer, landry and scola makes me feel comfortable in ANY game. take tonight, we had a 10 point lead sometime in the 3rd and i was fully confident we weren't going to collapse. i dont know if these guys are too young to feel the jitters but brooks, wafer, and landry know no fear.
the op stroke his post very well. a well-thought and articulate post, whether you agree or not. that said, i think realistically we most likely will enter the postseason (if we make it) with #1 in the starting lineup. yes, it will be nice if we're still able to spend 20+ mils somewhere else to add a couple of nice players to this team and replace mcgrady. but i just don't see it happening this season. the best scenario for us will be a highly motivated and healthy, in-shape mcgrady. the worst is a mcgrady in the toronto game. in reality, i think most likely we will get a in-between version. is that enough for us to pass the 1st round, or go even further? we will have to wait and see. but i am not awfully optimistic at this moment.
I completely agree. No lead is safe with TSlack in the game. His "heat check" 3s early in the shot clock and his low percentage fade away jumpers often lead to transition buckets on the other end. BTW, those are cause when you have slackers like TSlack who DON'T play defense and don't hustle back.
we won some 12 games in a row without Yao last season in the 22 .. that means u don't need Yao in the playoffs? The toronto version of T-Mac is a cancer.. but the philly version playing within the team offense is the one we need.. and no sane coach would bench that version.. and the fact is.. as ibm said. . #1 is gonna be in the lineup no matter what...
You could create a whole team of superstars with TMacs salary alone if you went by that logic. Francis, Starbary, ect ... There is no doubt TMac is talented. The doubt is if he can ever grow up and be a man.
You are correct that point #1 indicts Yao as well. But this thread is about the claim that others have made to the necessity of McGrady to our playoff success. Past performance is an indicator (not a determiner) of future performance. There are always those guys who have the "failure" label who go on to shake it off and succeed. Ideally speaking, this season will be it for both Mac and Yao. How nice that would be. But it sure has been a rocky road so far (somewhat successful nonetheless). A single argument doesn't stand well by itself but that's why I made four points .
The value of the national media is that you get to see an outside perspective, from people who aren't emotionally invested into the team. The drawback of the national media is that they don't pay close enough attention to make good analysis every time. All in all, I like hearing what they see, but sometimes we know they are way behind the times, or off base. Morey on the other hand, I've been on his bandwagon since he got to town. So, if he has something to say about McGrady being integral then I am listening. Same with the coach, if they think he needs to be here, then I respect that greatly. Of course, as a GM, you use GM-speak to keep the value of your players high. Who wouldn't want the chance to pick up a key player that could put you over the top ... but I'm not positive that I've actually seen Morey do this kind of thing before (GM-speak for bolstering a player's value, that is ...) so he could be speaking frankly.
Sorry to waste your time, there. Since you can't be bothered to regurgitate info, how about links then, to some previous posts and arguments, as good food for thought?
If TMac spends the regular season going thru the motions, as he's doing now, and then suddenly tries to turn it on in the playoffs when all the other players have already become accustomed to their roles, he's going to hurt the chemistry.
look at his playoff numbers and get back to me on that we dont need tmac. Tmac has that extra gear that all superstars has in the playoff, something Yao doesn't have! That is why we need Tmac!
look at the post from CHI, he has a deeper understanding than you obviously. and what playoff numbers? something like 27/7/7 (i haven't looked it up) but with zero team success? if you have an extra gear, you'd better bring it all the time (ok, maybe most of the time to be real) and not just in a "win or go home" situation. if you think one can turn a power switch off and on and still be successful, you are wrong. just look at the main players on championship teams. very few or almost none of them are like that.
This round needs Tmac at 100% to be a legitimate contender. Sure they might be able to the 2nd round with Yao + Artest, but thats about it.
Good post, I am still waiting for TMac's fans give us the reasons WHY we need TMac in the playoff. However, it all depends how the team play when tmac's back. TMac's stats are actually irrelevant. For example, even if tmac has 40/10/10 with 60% shooting percentage, but the team keeps on losing the games they shouldn't (like phily and indy games), you can blame yao, artest, alston, battier, brooks, ... all you want, but the team have shown they could win games with that group CONSISTENTLY without tmac, IN REGULAR SEASON if it makes you feel better.
