Piece may have had a crappy game 3 but so did everyone on the Celtics team except Ray Allen. Michael Wilbon said that Pierce has been the best individual player in the entire playoffs, not just this series with LA. If the Celtics take the series my money's on Pierce for Finals MVP. The guy plays with a huge amount of heart. T-Mac's good, but if you wouldn't trade him in a heartbeat for Pierce you're wearing homer goggles.
Pierce can afford to not play well and the team is still in the game. Kobe can go to the bench and the team stills plays ok. Tracy sits down and no one can get a shot, the team to's the ball and it gets out of hand. Pierce isn't better than tracy . I guess the clarity of that 3rd guy is a huge issue in these finals. The winning team has 2 of 3 rolling.
Bartender! I believe I'll have what Mr. Dakota is drinking... I have to admit that you had me ROTFLMAO with that one DD! You are comparing a team that hasn't gotten out of the first playoff round in years - a team that hasn't won its division in this century with two teams fighting for the NBA title and you think that they (Rockets) are close? What did they do, get tickets for floors seats for the Finals?
What I learn is that if you want to win, you don't give up on your good players just because they supposedly have some serious flaws with regard to their game or character-- you hold down to your good players and opportunistically try to add more unless you want to get stuck in lottery year after year. Think about where Kobe, Odom, Gasol, Garnett, Allen and Pierce were last season and all the b****ing about each of them being selfish, soft, one dimensional, etc. Look where they are now.
Pierce is being overrated because he has been guarded by RADMANOVIC this entire series. How easy is it for him to keep blowing by him?
I agree with him. Health is the biggest issue for us. Look how far we went with T-Mac minus Yao this season. We're contenders with Yao and Rocket dans weren't the only ones to think that. We would have beat the Jazz with Yao and I wouldn't be surprised if we took out the Lakers. We won 22 Straight games with our big center missing half of those and our star guard wasn't 100% and didn't exactly score or shoot that great. But we still won those games. T-Mac and Yao fully healthy spells barney ruble trouble for the NBA. Like he said, the defense is already there and our chemistry is pretty good. Not to mention that we have a year of Rick the Rulers offense under their belts. What have the Finals told me about the Rockets? That even if T-Mac is not shooting well or scoring big, we can still win games. He still finds a way to impact the game and help us win. If Kobe or Pierce doesn't shoot well, neither team has a chance of winning the game.
Man, I was watching one of the championship games between Boston and LA a few weeks back. Not only did the Lakers have Magic, Kareem, and Worthy, they also had Byran Scott, Michael Cooper, Kurt Rambis, Mychal Thomas, and Green (can't remember first name). The Celtics had Bird, Dennis Johnson, Mchale, The Chief, Bill Walton, Ainge, Siesting (sic), Kite. It is sick how deep teams used to be.
That's pretty good about the flawed players. People want to get rid of tracy because they say he doesn't go reckless to the hole enough. All I know is there is only 1 or 2 players that can do what he do.
Kobe has usually guarded him in the clutch-time and Pierce has overplayed him many times in the both ends.
It's amazing what a player can do with talent around them!! I've been saying the same thing about KB24 for years.
pierce is the supposed star. you don't have a chance to put up 6 freakin' pts in the finals game dude. no excuses. and pierce SUCKED in the playoffs for the most part until game 7 v. the cavs and then he got his rhythm (though still kind of inconsistent offensively) throughout after that. it's b/t pierce and ray allen for the MVP. and trust me, morey is not gonna trade tmac for pierce. he's a stats guy and pierce's stats this playoffs easily are not even close to tmac, even if he was the main guy.
tmac is flawed, everybody knows that. but outside of kobe or lebron, morey knows nobody else can do what he does. tmac did go to the ft line 9 times in the playoffs. he'll go when it counts. it's like tracy actually stopped all of the myths about him in this past yr (no heart, doesn't drive to the hole, can't play with injuries, fake injuries...) and yet they still bring those qualities up b/c as reasons to trade the dude.
Ummmm No! Battier is and never will be called a part of a "Big Three"!!! He is not the missing piece to this puzzle. He is expendable!
You do know that Yao was out this year in the playoffs, right? The team won 55 games this year, they are getting closer every year, if they are healthy they are not far away right now from competing for a championship. You add a better wing player - scorer like Magette to replace Luther Head and we are not contenders anymore but favorites. Since that scenario is unlikely you need to tweak and add to the current cast of players to get the most out of them you possibly can........ I think they are good enough defensively....but need a small upgrade on offense. DD
that's a big if. but i do agree with you, had our team stayed relatively healthy when we played utah, no doubt we would have advanced. and seeing how the lakers struggled with great defense (our D is just as good as boston's), we would have beaten the lakers.
but we've been saying that for the past 2 years at least. the first year, yao wasn't a true dominant center so it was tough. but the last 2 years, our 2 stars have been injured too much. we can all expect tmac to miss 10-15 games during the reg. season (but as long as he can play in the playoffs, that's all you can ask for). and yao's injuries have been massive b/c he misses actually most of the season and last yr he missed to end the reg. season. what's not to say it won't happen again next yr? we all know if the team stays healthy, they could be the best b/c they won 22 games in a row. only great teams do that. but again, staying healthy is proving to be tougher than getting fans to sit in the lower seats BEFORE the game starts.
