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The playoff results of the 90's Jazz vs 90's Spurs seems to contradict this statement. I don't know where I'd rank Malone compared to Robinson/Olajuwon either, but the Stockton/Malone Jazz reached the WCF 5 times in 7 years and twice made the Finals, whereas the Spurs with Robinson as their #1 only made one WCF and never reached the Finals. Plus the Jazz beat them all 3 times they met in the playoffs (94, 96, 98), twice without HC. So I'd say the 90's Jazz WERE consistently better than the 90's Spurs, despite similar regular season records (and if regular season records are all that should be considered, you'd also have to conclude that LeBron's teammates his last two seasons in Cleveland were better than Wade and Bosh, or that the 2000's Mavs were on par with the Lakers and Spurs). If you'd said that without Stockton than Malone's Jazz wouldn't have been any better, then yeah, I'd agree with that. But with him I think they pretty clearly were.
90's Jazz vs 90's Rockets is a little tougher, since they split 4 playoff series against each other. And Hakeem had Drexler for 3 of those series and Barkley for 2, so it's not entirely fair to say that he was doing it all by himself whereas Malone had Stock.
The 1989 Spurs added Terry Cummings, Sean Elliot, and a full season of point guard play split between Maurice Cheeks and Rod Strickland. Those guys helped the Spurs improve as well.
(semi-related, but from someone who doesn't follow football much, aren't a disproportionate amount of the best players/MVP's quarterbacks? Maybe I'm wrong)
Houston, San Antonio, and the Jazz were all basically equal. The Spurs were on the short end of the stick in the playoffs a lot of that time, but I would generally argue that the regular season is a much better barometer of team talent than the playoffs. I think a lot more of the playoffs is randomness that is after-the-fact turned into narrative. I'm not saying the playoffs don't matter - but I think if Robinson had Stockton and Malone had Avery Johnson, whatever minimal gap that now exists would have been much wider.
Harvey, for sure. I think of LeBron how I think my parent's generation things about Magic Johnson. LeBron can do everything. I think that if you asked him to play SG, SF, or PF he'd be the best player at the position in the NBA. At PG, the only person in the discussion would be Chris Paul. At center, I think he'd be the best with Howard hurt. He's the most versatile player I've ever seen.
I agree to a point, but when one team consistently goes deeper in the playoffs than the other AND beats that team in head to head matchups, I don't think it can always just be a coincidence either. The Robinson with Stockton vs Malone with Avery Johnson point is probably true, but that's not what I was disputing; I was disagreeing with the assertion that even WITH Stockton Malone's Jazz weren't any better. I think that they were.
As far as regular season goes, the "If Robinson was already winning 55-60 games by himself, think of how many he'd have won WITH Stockton!" mindset makes sense on paper, but that's the same thought process that caused a lot of casual fans to predict the 2011 Heat and 2013 Lakers would win 70 games. But the truth is, it's REALLY hard to win more than 55-60 games consistently no matter who's on your team. The Duncan/Robinson Spurs didn't really win many more games than the Robinson only Spurs, but they had much better playoff success. LeBron+Wade+Bosh didn't win more regular season games than LeBron+crap did in Cleveland, but they had much better playoff success. Adding another star to a team that's already near the top of the standings seems to improve playoff performance without adding many more regular season wins. That's why I don't think regular season success is necessarily the most accurate thing to consider in these types of rankings.
I think if I were playing the game that rr proposed, of which 20-year old you'd want to built a team around, knowing their career arc, I think Shaq takes a serious hit because he'll get fat and bored. I'd put below the other 4 listed, and maybe even a bit lower, despite his clear physical/skill superiority.
Edit: and I'd still probably take LeBron over all of them. Has anyone checked out his month of February?
While granting that the after the fact narrative stuff does happen, I still totally disagree. Unlike baseball, the better team wins the overwhelming majority of playoff series and the best team wins the title most years (the best counters to that are the Mavs and most recent Pistons, but we've gone over both of those and there are legit arguments both were the best teams those seasons). Unless you're telling me the Bulls were better than the Heat the last 2 seasons...
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I think if I were playing the game that rr proposed, of which 20-year old you'd want to built a team around, knowing their career arc, I think Shaq takes a serious hit because he'll get fat and bored. I'd put below the other 4 listed, and maybe even a bit lower, despite his clear physical/skill superiority.
I still take Shaq over KG, knowing all of that. But I guess I take Duncan, so I guess that means I'll take Duncan over KG.
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DK and anyone else who'd put Dirk ahead of Kobe, what's the thought process there?
I grew up on Magic and Bird and Jordan, Shaq and Duncan and Hakeem, and I gotta think that right now Lebron James is playing the best basketball that's ever been played in the history of the NBA.
I've thought for some time now he could be GOAT, and this is still something I never thought I'd see.
Since even a great defensive guard or small forward can't anchor an entire teams defense like a center can
I'd say both Pippen and LeBron did just that from the SF spot (though LBJ does get plenty of minutes of PF these days).
I'll say it again: Right now Lebron James is playing the best basketball that's ever been played in the history of the NBA.
Well last year doesn't count because Rose got hurt in the playoffs. And that's the main reason the 2 teams didn't play an epic ECF. But, I do generally think that the Bulls and Miami are basically at a similar level when Rose is 100% healthy. LeBron is much better than 100% Rose, but I think Deng/Noah is similar to Wade/Bosh (a little worse) and then I'll take the rest of the Bulls every day by a big margin. 2 years ago, Miami won in 5 games but it was a very hard fought series.
The Mavs that won the title were actually one of the weaker Mavs models IMO, they just happened to make 50% of their 3's in the playoffs. Good for Nowitzki that he got his ring though.
I don't know I'd say the best team wins the title most years. However, what the NBA does have is one of the best 2 or 3 teams wins the title almost every year. I think people just say after the fact, oh, Miami was the best team last year. But really, people were saying 3 weeks before they won it all in this thread that they weren't balanced enough to beat the Pacers. It took LeBron playing at a level that was unsustainable, even for him, for them to win it all. And it's not like there weren't close series along the way.
Then again, I look at Boston as a better example of "playoffs randomness" than "regular season doesn't show the best teams", though in their unique case there's some of both.
Agree with this.
The way LeBron is getting to the rim right now is absolutely amazing. There were three or four times today when I thought there was no way he's getting there and then suddenly he's dunking or shooting a 2-foot layup. He's been a little sloppy in some of his entry passes lately but I agree this is the best basketball we've ever seen.
His career post Miami-'05 has left a bad taste in everyone's mouths, but from 1992 to 2003, Shaq was unquestionably the most valuable player in basketball above Hakeem, Robinson, KG, Kobe, or whomever, and his value is limited only by his inability to keep his fat arse healthy and on the floor. I take him for his peak, because his 10-year peak is monstrous.
I'll take prime Shaq over Robinson or Hakeem as well, simply because he was completely impossible to defend other than to Hack A Shaq him (which wasn't that effective anyway), which you couldn't do with a Hakeem or Robinson on the floor. He used to destroy other good centers because they couldn't just rack up fouls on him and put him on the line. He used to dunk all over Robinson in particular. He was probably the worst basketball player of the three in a fundamentals sense in that he depended on his physical gifts (tremendous size and insane quickness for that size) more than they did to be effective, but nonetheless he did have that size and quickness.
Even the famous brute-strength dunk over Mutombo in the Finals comes from a terrific drop step.
RE Nuggets at Boston: How can a bunch of guys stare at the monitor at an obvious out-of-bounds call and still make the wrong call? Even the Boston announcers were calling it against their own team. I'm just saying.
I don't know that they're underrated. At least not on this thread. But I'm not going to just hand wave away all the crap he got away with because he happened to also have good footwork.
edit
i have my wording messed up in that the quote came after he left milwaukee and he was interviewed about defending shaq by the journal-sentinel. sorry about that. i remember him saying that but got the timeline confused.
Sure. The reason why I hated him was how well a team was going to do in the playoffs against the Lakers mattered more on how refs were going to call the Shaq postups than on anything about how well people were playing.
Shaq's -skills- were underrated most, if not all, of his career.
And yes, I have never seen anybody, even Jordan, play quite like James is playing right now, although Jordan's best seasons stack up very well with James' best. People will be arguing about it 20 years from now.
This guy is perhaps the next big thing:
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-basketball/news/20130207/andrew-wiggins/#ixzz2KYW2ctt5
Andrew Wiggins
He was extremely well-coordinated, which combined with his size and unusual body shape, made him, like James, a physical anomaly even by NBA standards, and more or less unguardable at his peak.
On footwork, watching Shaq take his man to the middle, then snake his trailing foot around the defender's back foot, then suddenly spin to put the man on his ass, that's a move coaches have been teaching big men since the 1920s, and there aren't 15 people who could do it well in the NBA in the years I've been watching.
Shaq also became a much better passer over time.
I would totally pick Duncan over Shaq as a virtual GM for all the reasons people say--defense, maturity, team play, conditioning. But if you had a 7-game series to win starting next week? I would take Shaq.
Edited to add--obviously I don't literally mean next week, as Shaq's fat ass would get schooled Feb 17.
I think your analogy basically answers your question. I doubt anyone in history has ever made a football all-time greats list that had as many offensive linemen and kickers as quarterbacks and running backs. So...
Another intangible that could help explain why Olajuwon is generally viewed as being better than Robinson is personality. Olajuwon was viewed as regal and poised, a silent killer; Robinson was viewed as polite to a fault, dorky, and honestly a big pu$$y. Of course, it's very possible that if Robinson had won a ring without Duncan, his super-niceness would be celebrated (Stan Musial?), and if Olajuwon had never gotten a ring, people would find a personality flaw in him to explain why that happened. Not sure how to separate chicken and egg there.
As for LeBron, let's just say that he's in his 10th year and we still can't rule out the possibility that he'll be the best ever, and leave it at that.
Related, LeBron's FT rate this year is surprisingly/suspiciously low for someone who lives in the paint as much as he does.
Chris Mullin, 1996-97, 55.3% / 41.1% (202 3PA)
Detlef Schrempf, 1994-95, 52.3% / 51.4 (181 3PA)
Steve Nash, 2005-06, 51.2% / 43.9% (342 3PA)
Steve Nash, 2006-07, 53.2% / 45.5% (343 3PA)
John Stockton, 1994-95, 54.2% / 44.9% (227 3PA)
John Stockton, 1995-96, 53.8% / 42.2% (225 3PA)
John Stockton, 1996-97, 54.8% / 42.2% (180 3PA)
Larry Bird, 1984-85, 52.2% / 42.7% (131 3PA)
I also see that apparently both Gerald Henderson and Gerald Henderson Jr. are really named "Jerome". Who ends up with "Gerald" as a nickname?
Close, but I don't think it's quite the same. A great defensive wing can shut down his man, but he can't shut down a teams entire inside game the way a center can. The Defensive Player of the Year award is given to a center almost every year.
Uh, the early part of that timeframe does overlap with someone quite notable you're overlooking... (but I get what you're saying)
I don't know I'd say the best team wins the title most years. However, what the NBA does have is one of the best 2 or 3 teams wins the title almost every year. I think people just say after the fact, oh, Miami was the best team last year. But really, people were saying 3 weeks before they won it all in this thread that they weren't balanced enough to beat the Pacers. It took LeBron playing at a level that was unsustainable, even for him, for them to win it all. And it's not like there weren't close series along the way.
I think people thought they were vulnerable to Indy once Bosh went down, and I don't remember anyone saying that the Pacers were going to beat them (and definitely not going into the series). But go back through the thread before the season, and see most people thought Miami was the best team before the season and go to the start of the playoffs, and it's the same thing. But I think that's distracting from the main point. If you have 2 teams that are pretty close, and one beats the other in the playoffs, I have no qualm saying the winning team was the better team.
Did I put dirk over Kobe? I put Duncan and kg over him but - without checking the #s - I'd probably pick kobe over nowitski
Fair enough. Someone else did, and I thought you agreed with them.
Related, LeBron's FT rate this year is surprisingly/suspiciously low for someone who lives in the paint as much as he does.
Since he's not getting called for any fouls, it just evens out, right? It was amusing to see him in "foul trouble" yesterday.
Close, but I don't think it's quite the same. A great defensive wing can shut down his man, but he can't shut down a teams entire inside game the way a center can. The Defensive Player of the Year award is given to a center almost every year.
I just meant that they were the defensive anchors of great defensive teams that won titles.
I think you gave the best explanation to the earlier question about the predominance of Centers on lists of all-time greats. It's not that the Centers have more natural basketball skill, it's just that the geometry of the court dictates that the team who owns the area around the rim will have a tremendous advantage. Centers are permanently the highest leverage players and basketball strategy has been built outward from that assumption. Jordan and Lebron are two unique guys who have forced their coaches and opposing teams to reevaluate that principle while they are on the court, but I don't think the presumption will ever shift altogether.
This is a good point. I want to knock Shaq, but he's like Robinson, LeBron, and others who can carry you well into the playoffs mostly by himself. You'll just have a shorter window to do it in.
I'm not going to argue this point, but I feel like there's a lot of value in a guy like Pippen or LeBron who can be a shutdown defender at any of 4 positions. That gives you a lot of match up flexibility. IIRC, both Pippen and LeBron are pretty fearsome help-side defenders too.
Best of the '90s
The Decade's Best ('00s)
Center of Discussion
I really need to get playoff numbers for these years. I'm still not sure exactly how I would incorporate them.
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Women's basketball and fundamentals:
This is a tricky conversation because, as has been noted, what do people mean by fundamentals? Obviously also ties into NCAA/NBA comparisons. Besides dunks, another factor that correlates well with "fundamentals" tends to be assist rate and how much shots are set up by the offense rather than individual talent. Women's basketball was probably at least a decade behind the men's game in terms of letting point guards score in addition to distribute. I wrote about this in the WNBA in 2004.
In 2006, the WNBA cut the shot clock from 30 to 24, just as better athletes with the ability to create one-on-one (Diana Taurasi, Cappie Pondexter, etc.) were coming into the league. Nowadays the offenses in the WNBA have a lot more in common with the NBA than the college game -- although, oddly, I've heard few people decry the lack of fundamentals.
Besides the fact that the talent pool drops off a lot more quickly in the college game, I don't entirely have an explanation for why women tend to turn the ball over more frequently. One theory is that more girls learn the game at camps as opposed to on the playground, so they tend not to react as well to situations that aren't patterned and deal poorly with pressure. It's a case where unstructured experience, so often decried in the development of male players, may actually be a positive.
One random contradictory note: When Paul Westhead coached the Phoenix Mercury to a championship, his offense looked pretty much exactly like what you remember from Loyola Marymount/the Nuggets. But he had to throw out his pressure defense pretty much entirely. They ended up mostly playing a "rover" zone defense that was basically a box with the extra player (Taurasi) freelancing all over the court Kobe-style.
This is an interesting observation. Is there something about the nature of their play that lead to this gap? Did Robinson suffer from foul trouble, stamina, or horrific misuse? I'm amazed at a guy playing only 34mpg in the plaoyffs.
Because...? My first reaction is "Lack of athleticism to cover the ground needed to make it successful", but I'd love to hear more.
Westhead press: The offenses were too good for it. They were giving up like 112 points per 100 possessions in a league where the average was below 100. Phoenix's defense under Westhead and his successor, former LMU point guard Corey Gaines, has been uniformly bad, but not quite that awful thereafter.
He never averaged as few as 34 minutes per game until he was 35, but roughly 1/3 of his playoff games came at age 35 or older. It's the result of having far and away his best set of teammates at the end of his career. Robinson averaged 38.5 minutes per playoff game through age 34.
Oh absolutely. But if you had to pick just one, would you rather have a Pippen/LeBron type defender creating havoc at the top of the key, or a Robinson/Mutumbo type center clogging the lane? I think I'd pick the latter.
Huh, I wouldn't have come up with that. Wouldn't camps spend lots of time on responding to defensive pressure?
Oh - and as little as I know about WcBB, I know even less about the WNBA ... though I did try to assess the draft chances for a college senior once upon a time (despite my protests that I was thoroughly unqualified to do so). I (correctly) ascertained that she was unlikely to be selected and had to figure out how to tell her tactfully; I wasn't wholly successful.
I also rank the centers Robinson/O'Neal/Olajuwon ... but am okay with any ordering of the three.
Smaller hands? I know the ball is smaller too, but I'd guess the difference in hand size exceed that of the balls. I've watched hardly any women's hoops, but it seems like not that many can palm the ball.
More than any of the motivational stuff, I am left wondering whether he can shoot. There have been plenty of great athletes who dominated at that level and never made pro defenders respect their shots enough to get space to create anywhere but the fast break. The article compares him to Tracy McGrady, but I think the skills it describes him as having are more like a poor man's Luol Deng or maybe Corey Brewer.
It is always hard to disentangle what else we know about a player and isolate just the skill we're comparing. I think you're right that an All-Defense C does more for team defense than an All-Defense SG or SF. Mutombo or Camby certainly seemed to have a bigger effect on team defense than Iguodala or Bruce Bowen, though the latter guys did have an effect at disrupting opponents' offenses beyond just shutting down one guy. I suppose it would be easy enough to compare the effect of having an All-Def wing on team Def Eff to the effect of having an All-Def C. That's exactly the type of project I would do right now if I didn't have a job.
Player B: 18.4 PTS, 7.3 AST, 2.8 REB, .528 TS, .470 eFG, 36.1 AST%, 14.2 TOV%, 18.7 PER, .117 WS/48, 846 GP
These are career numbers. The PTS, REB and AST are per 36. Both players played the same position, one of them is a legend and one is a cautionary tale.
Edit: But Player B probably is Stephon Marbury. Well, I'd say one of the two wasn't a whiny *($#%, but...
One has some legendary playoff performances?
17.9 PTS, 2.8 AST, 10.1 REB, .526 TS, .462 eFG, 13.0 AST%, 14.3 TOV%, 18.0 PER, .119 WS/48, 781 GP
He seems to be the first name that always pops in my head with that phrase. The guy you're talking about is 2nd or third, I think. As for your comparison, defense and attitude count for something. Also, team results - one is a Finals MVP and the other played in 18 total playoff games (not counting last season scrub time).
EDIT: took me a while to write this post, and I didn't seen 361-364 before I hit post. I swear.
Also surprised at how young Isiah called it quits.
Isiah won in college and won in the pros (beating the C's surely helped the rep). So his numbers get a mental bump, while Starbury's get a mental decrease (or he's seen as a guy who just put up numbers on bad teams and never really threatened winning).
I don't think it would be crazy to think that Isiah saw a lot of himself in Marbury and that's why he wanted him in NY. He probably said as much, but NJ would know better.
Mind. Blown.
He probably said as much, but NJ would know better.
I have no idea if he said this at the time (I was, thankfully, distracted with the joys of college right at the time the Knicks were at their Isiahest) but obviously I never thought of it and now think it's such an interesting angle.
One thing I will never forget about Marbury- late in his rookie year when he was starting to gel with KG, there was some kind of poll. I think it was a poll of GMs asking which team would win the Western Conference in 5 years, and the Wolves received the most votes. That obviously never worked out, Marbury left town for Terrell Brandon (who was solid, but not nearly the right fit next to floor spacing, under-aggressive KG on offense), and it set back the team's developmental clock by a half decade (not that McHale helped himself much). When a team stinks and drafts a superstar player, it usually gets 1 or MAYBE 2 more high picks before that star matures to the point that the team doesn't get high picks. Marbury was that guy for the KG Wolves and he bailed just in time for them to never develop.
Re: 369/370 I don't think it's a coincidence Isiah's first pick in Toronto was an undersized/score-first PG (Damon Stoudamire).
Geez. Noah says he's playing, but he might as well sit this one out. I think Deng should sit too, just for fun.
http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8937440/kobe-bryant-chides-twitter-follower-using-anti-gay-insult
I sometimes thought it must have just been the bitter Stockton fan in me (since Isiah was always ranked higher than Stock on greatest player lists and cuz so many people thought he should've been picked for the Dream Team instead), but Thomas has always struck me as one of the most overrated players of all time. I didn't see him play much and I missed his peak almost entirely, but the numbers just don't come close to the reputation. Not only does Stock crush him by a country mile, but Nash, Kidd, and Payton look like they should be ahead as well. So what gives? Was it a Jack Morris "throw out the numbers, you just had to see him" thing? Is it "count the ringzz!!" at it's finest? Or am I just missing something else entirely?
Edit: Yes, Thomas won back to back rings as the floor leader and best player of a deep Pistons team, but Chauncey Billups barely missed doing the exact same thing and no one is talking about him as an all time great. Underrated, sure. Possible lower level Hall of Famer? Sure, why not. But top 3 or 4 PG and top 30 overall player? Not a chance.
Thomas won a Final Four with Bobby Knight at Indiana, beating a Dean Smith team that had Jordan on it for the title. He scored about 40 points on a bad leg in Game 6 of the 1988 Finals in LA, and then won a back-to-back with the Pistons, ending the BOS/LA/PHI stranglehold on the NBA. He was also a photogenic, charismatic guy who was buddies with Magic Johnson and kissed Mag on national TV.
Simmons made him a key figure in BTOB, introducing "The Secret" through Isiah Thomas. Guys 25-35, like most guys in this thread probably are, know Thomas more for the no-handshake sweep by the Bulls, and his bizarre and disastrous/borderline criminal exec career.
As to how good he actually was historically....I have never really thought about it. The keys to those Pistons teams were the facts that they had nine guys who were good-to-very good-to very very good, with all skills covered, they played great D, they were brilliantly coached by Chuck Daly, and they were as mean as a burlap sack full of hungry pit vipers. Thomas was a big part of that.
that is a pretty succinct microcosm of the inconsistency of this team this season.
Didn't free darko have a bit denigrating marbury in their 2nd book
I positionally adjust w all time rankings (take that revolution!) but not hold all positions equal. For example, the PER of an avg wing (and therefore opposing wings) is less than for power forwards. (Plus different replacement levels by position, centers have more impact defensively than pgs, and so on.)
Good on you, Kobe.
Also apparently, he was quite good.
Good on ya, Kobe.
Jordan wasn't there yet, but Worthy, Sam Perkins and future UNC coach Matt Doherty were on that team.
I admit I have semi-bailed on the wolves this year. Other things going on in life* and it has been so darn depressing. It is nice to get updates so thank you. I will jump back on the bandwagon next year (OK I plan to go to a game in the next few weeks, but you know what I mean).
* Refinancing house, cleaning and remodeling house, some non-work projects, semi-sort-of-trying to date again (Being single in one's 40s kind of sucks, oh well), and so on.
His regular season numbers are very good, in fact HOF quality. Definitely behind Stockton, even if Stockton hadn't played an extra 10 seasons. Guys like Payton, Kidd, and Nash are better, and Billups is at least as good.
The thing about the NBA though, is that the regular season is so meaningless. The sole purpose of the regular season is to determine which ~.500 teams have the chance to get bounced in the first round by the true title contenders of the league. More than half of the league still gets into the playoffs, but when Isiah started it was even worse, 16 of 23 teams got in. Thomas had some big early statistical years, setting the assists record while scoring over 20 PPG.
Most observers believe that as the team got better, and Thomas's stats dropped, he wasn't actually a worse ballplayer. He was just stepping back a bit, letting other players get involved. I think many players who take lessor roles in the offense will gain some from tradeoffs, while usage falls, efficiency improves, and the value stats like win shares shouldn't change much. For whatever reason, that did not happen for Thomas, he still turned the ball over a lot and his shooting percentages dropped. Maybe he's just the type who needs repetition to play his best. But it's hard to fault him for the back-off approach when the results at the team level were so good. If it works, why fix it?
Anyway, when the playoffs came around Isiah took control again, and dominated. Most people will see their stats drop in the playoffs, since you are facing better opponents and tougher defensive effort. Not Thomas, his WS/48 jumped from .109 to .143.
Those are the bbref win share numbers. I use a different formula, and used that to create a list of the players who raised their games the most in the playoffs. Thomas was #2 on the list:
http://basketballwins.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html
I saw bits and pieces. He looked good. Noah is just not healthy right now, and the Bulls defense has really struggled since he's been hurt. The team also looks like it's going through the motions, just biding their time until Rose gets back*. So while that's not to take anything away from Leonard, it makes it hard to really focus on the game for me. He took it right to Deng and Gibson** and beat them and the Bulls help didn't recover.
*We haven't gotten any new updates since he started practicing and traveling, so I would still expect him sometime next week. But that's just an educated guess.
**Not surprisingly, he's dropped off a bit. Teams have figured how to guard him (let him shoot) and he hasn't adjusted yet. Defense, for the most part, is still usually strong.
Greatest WS/48, for playoffs, amond guards with at least 3000 career minutes and 5 assist/game (to get a list of PGs, though Jordan qualifies as well).
1. Jordan
2. Magic
3. West
4. Frazier
5. Billups
6. Wade
7. Oscar
8. Stockton
9. Isiah
10. Porter
11. Nash
12. Drexler
13. Rondo
14. Cheeks
15. Kidd
Billups is a surprise. As mentioned, he was the leader of a well balanced Piston championship team who played his best in the playoffs. If he's ranking above Thomas, that is not a knock on Isiah, but an indication of just how underrated Billups has been.
Can't blame you for that. It has been another soul-sucking year if you get really emotionally invested in the team. The fact that they have been competitive without Love and AK over the last week shows that they aren't the same hopeless bunch they were the last few years, but that is not much consolation.
Good luck with all of that other stuff. Sounds stressful but potentially rewarding.
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