Kevin Love Or Kevin Willis Or Kevin Hart I believe Kevin Willis in his prime would really dominate these other 2 players. Google up Kevin Willis "Arms" if you don't believe me. TGIF
I named myself after Kevin McAllister after moving to the States when I was a kid and legally changed my name to Kevin when I became a citizen. True story.
This is where you should have posted. I think Kevin McHale would dominate all of them [insert picture here] Fuqqqqq
Uhhh is it okay to just call people fobs? I mean I guess everything worked out in the end but I'm not sure that's exactly pc...
Kevin Willis was a hoss. Hawks were one of my favorite teams to play with on NBA Jam TE, with Nique, Stacey Augmon, Mookie, and Willis. I just looked up some of Willis's numbers, dude averaged 15.5 rebounds and 18.3 ppg on 15 attempts and 80% from the line in '91-'92. Plus he played 37 mpg and only missed one game that season. Pretty impressive. I wasn't old enough to really know what was going on back in what I guess was Willis's prime, and I doubt there were many Hawks games on the airwaves in Houston back then anyway, so I'm in no position to choose. But here's a good article on the Hawks from Willis's third season in the league. Spoiler PRO BASKETBALL; HAWKS FULFILING TALL ORDER By IRA BERKOW Published: April 19, 1987 WHEN Mike Fratello - who says he is 5 feet 7 inches (though in a pinch could probably pass for 5-6), and is short enough to have once been turned down for a National Basketball Association head coach's job because of his height - when Mike Fratello, now the coach of the Atlanta Hawks, stands next to Tree Rollins or Kevin Willis, both of whom are 7 feet tall, and gives them instructions, it looks as if he's calling up to the second floor. In a playoff game last year against Detroit, Willis was angry and frustrated after having been taken out. He blew a play, knew it, and Fratello yanked him. Willis stormed back to the sidelines and slammed his foot right through a chair. Fratello fined him $250 for possession of a heavy foot. The Hawks lost that game and were up, two games to one, in the three-of-five-game series. The next game was in Detroit. ''We were all kind of down,'' said Doc Rivers, the point guard. And Willis, a young, muscular power forward on a young, swift team, seemed about to enter into a funk. The team needed that not at all, since Willis, when going well, was putting up, as one player described it, Kevin McHale numbers. The following day at the team workout, the players commenced with their customary stretching exercises. Willis was on his back and twisting a leg at the free-throw line when Fratello, at midcourt, suddenly broke into a mad dash - right for Willis. The other players watched with amazement. Little Fratello leaped into the air and landed smack on the startled Willis. ''One - two - three! I win!'' shouted Fratello, and rose triumphantly from the pinning. Willis blinked, then broke out in laughter. After a tense and uncertain moment, so did the rest of the team. The Hawks, relaxed and lifted, won the next playoff game, and the series, but lost the next series, four games to one, to the formidable and experienced Boston Celtics, who went on to beat Houston for the league championship. This afternoon, the Hawks, a team that Fratello has molded - and, to an extent, wrestled - into one of the best and most exciting in the National Basketball Association, will play its final game of the regular season, against the Celtics in Boston. The Hawks are the hottest team in basketball, having won 9 straight games, and 24 out of their last 27. The game today is significant because the winner will get the top seeding in the Eastern Conference for the playoffs, and thus the home advantage in all conference playoff games. If Atlanta wins, it will have 58 victories, the same as Boston, but they will have beaten the Celtics four out of six games this season. ''We're looking forward to Boston,'' said Dominique Wilkins, the springing forward. ''They're still plenty tough, of course, but we're learning what it takes to win.'' The Hawks' 57 victories so far this season prove that. It is a team record, and it was established Thursday night in a way that is becoming, if not commonplace for the Hawks, then at least not unexpected. They were down by 14 points in the fourth quarter to the Chicago Bulls, the group led by Michael Jordan - who would score 61 points for the night. ''It was borderline,'' Fratello recalled. ''I knew we could either fall behind by 22 points, or come back to win. I knew they were thinking, 'Can we really do it?' I just had to get them feeling that they could come back.'' ''They're letting us in the game still,'' he told the team in his raspy voice, above the din of the crowd during a timeout. ''We can get it done. This is what we work for. These moments. But we can't go off into individual parts. O.K.? We're a team, remember, team.'' They followed the advice of their frizzy-haired, baggy-eyed and effervescent 40-year-old coach. They effectively swarmed and double-teamed Jordan, and managed to work for the best possible shots, and won, 117-114. Setting the record in Chicago may have had special meaning to Fratello. For it was in Chicago four years ago that, as an assistant coach with the Knicks, Fratello was interviewed for the Bulls' vacant head coaching position. The team's general manager asked him, referring to his height, how he could demand repect from his players. ''You don't demand respect,'' said Fratello, ''you earn it.'' It was a good answer. A succinct answer. The kind of answer that could get you into ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations,'' or at least a commercial for a brokerage. It could do many things, but getting him a job with the Bulls was not one of them. Paul Westhead got the job instead, and was dismissed after a year. Fratello had been an assistant coach under Hubie Brown for four years in Atlanta (as well as the one year under Brown with the Knicks). The Hawks liked his work, liked him, and, said Stan Kasten, now the president of the team, ''We never thought about his height at all. What does that have to do with knowing basketball and knowing how to handle people?'' The Hawks interviewed no one else for the position. Fratello's team won 40 and lost 42 in his first season. After the season, he went to the team owner, Ted Turner. ''Ted,'' he said, ''if we're to have a good team, we've basically got to start all over. We have to bring in young kids who want to play hard. We've got to bring back enthusiasm.'' Soon, a number of Hawks had vanished, and in their place would be Fratello's fraternity: people like Willis, who some had tried to discourage Fratello from drafting because he was such an untapped talent, and Spud Webb, who had been dropped in the preseason by the Pistons, and a long-range shooter, Mike McGee, obtained in a trade with the Lakers, and Cliff Levingston and Antoine Carr, forwards who came from Detroit in a trade for Dan Roundfield. Rivers and Randy Wittman, the starting guards, arrived in Fratello's first year. These two, and Rollins and Wilkins, are the only players left from Fratello's first year in Atlanta. The depth - which also includes Jon Koncak, a second-year center, and John Battle, a second-year guard - enables the Hawks to play 10 or 11 men consistently. Rivers is one of the leading assists men in the league, and Wittman has an uncanny jump shot that is often released after he slips in and around a forest of picks and screens. ''Wittman,'' said the Hawk assistant coach, Willis Reed, ''reminds me of Bill Bradley,'' Rivers also made one of the most notable achievements in recent hoop history. When he was married last summer in Milwaukee, he wore with his tuxedo a pair of pink Converse high-top sneakers, to match his wife's pink gown, naturally. And the bridegroom's party wore black high-top sneakers. ''It was something I had dreamed of since I was a kid,'' said Rivers. ''I had told my mother, 'One day I'd like to be married in gym shoes and in a playground,' '' he recalled. ''My wife, Kris, said, 'Gym shoes, O.K., but no playground.' We got married in a church. I had tried to keep the gym shoes a surprise, but I guess word leaked out because at the ceremony, most of the male guests showed up in suits and ties and high-top gym shoes.'' The looseness, the delightedly unconventional spirit and the tenacity that marked the Rivers's wedding is reflected in the Hawks' basketball team. It begins with the coach, who is considered one of the best prepared in the game, and whose force of personality and genuine concern for the players is respected and reaps results. At the end of the first year, Fratello sat down with Wilkins, then a great talent but unrefined. ''In fact,'' said Fratello, '' 'Nique was perceived as being out of control as a player, and self-centered. I said to him, 'What do you want out of the N.B.A., what are you yearning for?' '' ''He said, 'I want to play for a winning team - a team with a chance to go all the way. I want to make the all-star team, and I want to make all-N.B.A.' I said to him, 'O.K., let me tell you what you have to do to improve on, and in turn to help this team: You have to work on your perimeter game; you've got to handle the ball better, especially when you put it on the floor; you've got to improve your defense, and you have to understand when to pass and when to shoot -see the court.' '' Two years later, Wilkins is with a winning team, and last year made the all-star team for the first time, the all-N.B.A. first team, and was the league's highest scorer. ''After last season, I went to 'Nique, and said, 'We know you can score,' '' said Fratello, ''and we won 50 games. But obviously it's not enough. The over all game still has to be improved.'' And Wilkins has responded. His scoring has dropped only a little - he's second in the league with a 29-point average (it was 30 last season). But the team has more victories. Although Webb has been injured for much of this season - he appears healthy now - he is still one of the treats of the league. He is listed at 5 feet 7, though may be only 5-6 -he's about a millimeter taller than his coach. ''The good thing about having Spud on the team,'' said Fratello, ''is that we can exchange clothes on road trips.'' Although Webb has been injured for much of the season - he had surgery for torn knee cartilege in December - he has come back well and remains a marvel. The slam-dunk champ of the N.B.A. last season - remember his finale, a 360-degree one-hander off a bounce? - he has a 42-inch vertical leap. ''When Spud comes into the game,'' said Reed, ''he revs us up a notch or two.'' At the other extreme from the ceiling, and the man whom Reed calls the ''catalyst'' of the team, is Tree Rollins (born Wayne Monte Rollins, but never, ever called that anymore). Rollins is 7-1, and primarily a defensive and shot-blocking ace. He has helped lead the Hawks to the best defensive record in the N.B.A. with an average of 103 points allowed per game. Rollins broke a big toe in January, was out for a few weeks, but is back. All his toes hurt, but he is undaunted. Growing up in Cordele, Ga., he was the fourth youngest boy, and so wore the family hand-me-downs. But he grew so fast that he couldn't get his feet properly into the shoes. In the summer before his sophomore year in high school, he grew from 6-1 to 6-5, his shoe size went from 9 to 12. ''And the biggest shoes my brothers had was 10,'' Rollins said. The result is that he suffers from ''hammer toes.'' He now wears size 17 shoes, but next year expects to wear size 18. ''I'll get my toes operated on after the season,'' he said. ''And that should lengthen my feet.'' Now, though, Rollins hopes to lengthen only the season, as does the short coach, and the rest of the Hawks, the tall, the small, those of assorted sizes and those who fancy pink gym shoes at their wedding. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Spoiler
