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If Robinson had Stockton and Malone had Avery Johnson, you wouldn't have thought that.
Oh I don't dispute that. But Olajuwon didn't have Stockton either and I still hated having to play the Rockets.
Stockton/Malone actually beat the Dream 3 of the 5 times they met in the playoffs, but for some reason the 2 times they didn't stick in my mind...
One of those was Matt Maloney's fault. Deprived us of Jordan/Pippen/Rodman/Hakeem/Barkley/Drexler in the Finals. Nothing personal, Booey.
I don't think it would be a very persuasive argument though. WS48 shows Robinson as more efficient in the regular season, .261 to .213, but Duncan played 39 minutes while the old man needed more rest (32 minutes).
In the playoffs efficiency was even (.243) but Duncan played a lot more (43 minutes to 35). By the time they got to the finals Duncan was the clear alpha, he was better in 4 out of the 5 games - all of the ones the Spurs won.
I don't think that's really arguable, is it? Anyone who's not at work willing to post the numbers of 1999 Duncan vs Robinson? Unless my memory is off, I thought Timmy was pretty clearly ahead by that time.
Bill Simmons likes to point that out too, but I don't see it. Why would people think the 1997 Rockets should have beaten the Jazz? The Rockets were what, like 6 or 7 games behind them in the standings? I think any measurement of team rankings would show the Jazz to be clearly superior. That season they had two 15 game winning streaks, the best post all star record in NBA history (going off memory, but I think they were something like 36-5 in the second half of the season), and they were on a 26-2 run when they met the Rockets in the WCF (15 game winning streak, lost to the Lakers by 2 in LA at the buzzer, won last 4 regular season games and the first 5 of the playoffs for another 9 game streak, lost game 3 of the second round to the Lakers, won the next 2 to close out that series).
How was seeing Jordan/Pippen/Rodman vs Malone/Stockton any less awesome than past their prime Olajuwon/Barkley/Drexler? If memory serves, the Jazz/Bulls Finals were some of the highest rated of all time. And for the Jordan/Bulls fans, having the Jazz make the Finals instead of the Rockets even gave MJ a chance to show Malone who REALLY deserved the MVP (if you buy into that - I don't).
So yeah, I think the two clearly best teams in 1997 DID meet in the Finals.
End rant.
Olajuwon and Robinson were the only contemporary stars that Jordan DIDN'T mow down during his stretch in the 90s. He beat Miller and Ewing within the conference, and Magic, Drexler, Barkley, Payton/Kemp, Malone/Stockton in the Finals. It would have removed the redundancy if he got his showdown with the Dream, PLUS it would have given us the matchup we "missed" during MJ's sabbatical.
Meh. I don't really see that as being any better a narrative than the battling Malone for the "true" MVP angle I heard a lot of people use. The redundancy thing is also relying entirely on hindsight, since Jordan had never mowed down Stockton/Malone before 1997 either.
The 1997 Rockets were an inferior team to the Jazz and in all likelihood wouldn't have put up as good a fight. The Bulls 4 point win in game 6 was their margin of victory for the ENTIRE series -scoring was exactly even through the first 5 games.
People weren't robbed of anything; they got an awesome series between the two best teams.
Spoken like someone who appreciates the Finals performance of the '09 and '10 Cavs.
Robinson was a significantly better player than Duncan but as Arom mentioned played a lot less minutes. I think it's about a wash but I do think it's arguable.
FWIW bbref total win shares gives Duncan a .3 lead 8.4 to 8.7 (going by memory). I think the bench bigs were worth at least that in 7 mins per game.
I don't think that's really arguable, is it? Anyone who's not at work willing to post the numbers of 1999 Duncan vs Robinson? Unless my memory is off, I thought Timmy was pretty clearly ahead by that time.
Duncan averaged 21.7/11.4/2.4 with 0.9 steals and 2.5 blocks per game. He also had 8.7 Win Shares (50 game season) and a .213 WS/48.
Robinson averaged 15.8/10.0/2.1 with 1.4 steals and 2.4 blocks per game. He had 8.4 Win Shares and .261 WS/48 (best in the league). The difference in points/rebounds is entirely in minutes played, Duncan played a lot more minutes. They were pretty close to equal, and Robinson was IMO still better per 36 minutes.
Duncan scored 23.2 against Robinson's 15.6 in the playoffs, and had 3.7 WS to Robinson's 3.0 WS.
They were "Duncan's team" at this point, but Robinson was still a hell of a player.
Their skills are too redundant. They'll never win anything.
Sean Elliott?
The 95-96 Spurs team certainly had a lot of leadership.
Doc Rivers, future NBA head coach
Avery Johnson, future NBA head coach
Vinny Del Negro, future NBA head coach
Monty Williams, future NBA head coach
Dell Demps, future NBA GM
Chuck Person, future respected assistant coach
Carl Herrera, future Venezuelan league head coach
Charles Smith, future Executive Director of the National Basketball Retired Players Association
David Robinson, The Admiral
Brad Lohaus, future commercial airplane parts broker, apparently
Greg "Cadillac" Anderson, future cocaine dealer
One thing at a time:
Ratings - much of that was Michael Jordan, IMO. I could be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure a Rockets/Bulls Final in 1997 would have gottens similar, if not even better ratings. The all-time high in 1998 was surely due to it being likely Michael's final games.
Were the Jazz better? Sure they were - I didn't say they weren't. However, a HUGE reason why they were was that John Stockton was WAAAAAY better than Matt Maloney. Saying it's Matt Maloney's fault is merely a way of pointing out the chasm between the two teams' point guards, and that it was basically the difference between the two teams. To put it another way - the Jazz won seven more games than the Jazz that year - and Stockton had eight more win shares than Maloney.
The redundancy thing is also relying entirely on hindsight, since Jordan had never mowed down Stockton/Malone before 1997 either.
Fair enough, but it's 2012, and we do know what happened, so I'm going to use that. :-) We got Malone/Stockton in 1998 anyway, so IN RETROSPECT, I wish we'd also gotten to see Hakeem vs. Jordan. I don't blame you for defending your Jazz teams - heck, in 1997, I was rooting for the Jazz, for the very reason that Malone and Stockton hadn't yet made the Finals.
How was seeing Jordan/Pippen/Rodman vs Malone/Stockton any less awesome than past their prime Olajuwon/Barkley/Drexler?
Two reasons - one, as pointed out, we got to see Malone/Stockton anyway, and it would have been fun to see Jordan's Bulls have to face a team with a transcendant C in the Finals, even if on the downslope. Two, because Barkley is my favorite all-time non-Celtic, and six top 50 all-time guys is better than five.
People weren't robbed of anything
Jazz fans certainly weren't! ;-)
I don't think that's really arguable, is it? Anyone who's not at work willing to post the numbers of 1999 Duncan vs Robinson? Unless my memory is off, I thought Timmy was pretty clearly ahead by that time.
By standard stats, Duncan was mostly better - 21.7 to 15.8 ppg, 11.4 to 10.0 rpg, both had about 2.5 blocks and similar shooting percentages - .509 for Robinson, .495 for Duncan. A closer look though, Robinson accrued his stats in 20% fewer minutes per game - so in advanced rate stats, he comes out ahead (.261 to .213 WS/48, 24.9 to 23.5 PER). Duncan has a slight edge in WS, 8.7 to 8.4, which is another way of saying "tied". In the playoffs, similar story, though more tilted toward Duncan. My memory says Duncan was the guy too, and I'd still say Duncan after looking at the stats, but I think there's some argument for Robinson, at least. It's closer than I remembered.
This is kind of what I mean - the 2009-2010 Cavs were the best team on paper, so when they lost to the Magic and Celtics it did sorta feel like an upset. But the 1997 Rockets WEREN'T the best team in the west, on paper or anywhere else. Why did it surprise anyone that a 57 win team (or whatever their actual total was that season) lost to a 64 win team? It wasn't an upset at all. Things happened exactly the way that team records and stats suggested they should.
Unless I'm missing a joke or something, I never said anyone did. I said the Jazz put up a really good fight and a worse team like the Rockets may not have been able to even do that. I'm saying the 1997 Jazz were better than the Rockets, not that they should have been better than the Bulls.
Not as good as Michael Jordan's second best team != terrible.
I would have preferred the Bulls played that Rockets team, I would have enjoyed watching that series more, and I would have been more nervous about the outcome just because of Hakeem. Then again, I never enjoyed watching the Sloan Jazz (even during the Deron tenure) or either of Malone and Stockton. So my bias is obviously showing.
Sure, but wasn't some of that balanced out by the almost equally lopsided center comparison? Olajuwon vs Ostertag wasn't exactly a fair fight either...
Obviously it's the Jazz fan in me talking, but personally I think Rockets/Bulls would have been almost as redundant, since Jordan had already beaten Drexler and Barkley in the Finals.
Jazz fans complain a lot about 1998, but I actually haven't really heard much about 1997. I know I haven't personally made any complaints about that series (well, other than that the Jordan-sick narrative from game 5 has been overblown). Basically, while the Jazz came close enough that losing still really hurt, I don't think anyone ever actually expected them to win the series, so how close they did come felt more like a pleasant surprise rather than a nut-kicking disappointment like the following season.
I assumed you were talking about in the Finals, not overall. Malone did have a poor (for him) series, but going off memory I thought Stockton had done very well. It reversed the following season, where Malone put in an underrated effort (his game 5 in Chicago is one of the best Finals performances of all time, BTW), but everyone else seemed to disappear.
If you believe Simmons, the reason the Bulls and Jazz (and any other late 90's contender) won so many games was because the league was watered down, and thus the late 90's versions of these teams weren't really better than their early 90's editions.
I don't buy it, personally.
Westbrook off to a really nice start.
Level of play is so high in this series.
Time to swtich LeBron on to him. Wade can't keep up.
Larry Bird would like you to know he had 632/252/136 and 622/231/165 in the two years he played as many playoff games as Lebron has this year.
I don't know, Derek Fisher getting soundly rejected is pretty close.
Edit: Apparently not.
That series was very hard fought, but closer to a rock fight. It was aesthetically ugly. Belongs in the "that went 7, so I guess it must have been a good series, right?" category with 1994. Note that the only people who have called that a great series on this thread are Laker fans. Yeah, I thought 2008 was great too - doesn't make it so.
So why not start that gamble earlier, so you can get more cracks at it?
Yes. Wow.
Yeah. Van Gundy put it on Westbrook, which is certainly fair, but isn't that on Brooks to cover as well? How do you not emphasize what your end of game strategy is there? I mean, maybe Brooks said it and Westbrook missed it.
No need to apologize, this is already my personal favorite Finals of all time.
He's named after his father, also named Dwyane. So, blame his grandparents. Maybe they liked the rarity of spelling it that way. I have a friend named Omero who was named that instead of Homero because the nurse filling out the birth certificate didn't hear the "H" in his parents' pronunciation of his name. When his parents saw how the nurse wrote it, they thought it was cool and left it that way.
When was that ever implied/stated?
"James would have to hobble off again in the game's tense final minute, but he left with a near triple-double: 26 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds. With Dwyane Wade and Mario Chalmers each scoring 25, it was enough for the Heat to overcome an epic performance by Russell Westbrook, whose 43 points came on the 24-year anniversary Isiah Thomas scored 43 in the Detroit Pistons' Game 6 Finals loss to the Los Angeles Lakers."
Westbrook does remind me of a larger Isiah Thomas*. But the big deal about Isiah 24 years ago was not how many points he scored in a valiant, but losing effort. It was "how does this guy keep scoring when he can't even walk?". And that award goes to Lebron James last night.
Just an incredible game, incredible effort. Ever since Michael Jordan set foot in the NBA there has always been talk of the "next Jordan". An incomplete list includes contemporaries who had similar, but lessor games (Drexler, Ron Harper). There were guys who had the dunks but no game (Harold Minor). There was Vince Carter, with the dunks, a lot of game, and even Jordan's old school. But he fell well short. Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant came the closest, but even they did not live up to the greatness of Jordan. Lebron James is finally putting an end to the talk of "next Jordan" not by becoming that himself, but by becoming the new standard. He is the first, and only Lebron James. I'm not saying he's a better player than Jordan, though he might be. It doesn't matter. His greatness is unique.
He should borrow a quote from Jaime Lannister. "There are no men like me. There's only me."
*Westbrook dunks over big men all the time. One of my favorite clips from years past is 6'1 Thomas dunking over McHale AND Parish.
It comes down to what he wants to do with his career. Be the great 6th man or 2nd/3rd option on a championship contender, or be a guy who scores 27 points on .425 shooting for a mediocre team.
LeBron has had some epic, all-time great games in the playoffs this year (Game 4 vs. Indiana, Game 6 vs. Boston). Last night's 26 points were the fewest he scored since Game 3 against Indiana. He's only scored less than 20 once, when he scored 19 in a pretty easy victory in Game 2 against the Knicks. Since Game 3 of Indiana, when the Heat were down 2-1, he's averaged 32.1/10.8/5.4 on 51.7% FG shooting.
Edit: For Harden, he's still what he is. I think he creates his own shot well enough he could have a Ginobili esque career path, and I think Ginobili's prime was worth a max contract. We need to be careful about not judging a player too harshly when they're not playing well.
With the huge caveat that you can pile up a lot more playoff win shares when it takes 16 to win a title than when it took 8 or 12.
It seems that most people participating in this thread can come up with three ways to win a championship:
1) Two (or more) superstar players (2009-2010 Lakers, 2008 Celtics, etc.)
2) One superstar with at least two borderline stars supporting him (2011 Mavericks, 2003 Spurs, maybe some other Spurs teams)
3) A solid lineup of borderline stars and all stars, getting lucky for a year or two (2004 Pistons)
Harden's not a superstar; as you say, he's a great sixth man or supporting player on a contender. Signing him to a max deal means option #1 is off the table, as you won't be able to afford two other max deals. Option #3 is also off the table; you won't have enough resources to bring in enough borderline stars to push you over the top.
Option #2 is still on the table, but becomes much more difficult. You still need your superstar player, who will be a max guy as well. Two max contracts is essentially using option #1, but Harden's not good enough to be your second superstar. And you likely won't have enough money to bring in enough borderline stars, aside from Harden, to support Superstar X.
Agreed. Even though every individual game has been awesome, this series will fall short of my expectations if it ends next game (and not only because from my POV the wrong team is winning). I don't think any series that ends in 4 or 5 can be considered a truly epic one, no matter how exciting those 4 or 5 games are.
I always just assumed it was a typo or something on his birth certificate. I read somewhere that that's what happened with Antawn Jamison (was supposed to be Antwan). Not sure if it's true or not.
Yes, you were drunk. Unfortunately, injury concerns do make him the safest bet - Westbrook has never missed a game in his NBA career. FWIW, Rose was better than Westbrook in virtually every advanced stat (PER, Simple rating, WS/48, ORtg and DRtg) this year, even as he was almost never 100%.
It was "how does this guy keep scoring when he can't even walk?". And that award goes to Lebron James last night.
He scored two baskets when hurt and pretty much didn't play again. I'm not going to criticize him for not being able to play, but I'm not awarding him anything either.
Option #2 is still on the table, but becomes much more difficult. You still need your superstar player, who will be a max guy as well. Two max contracts is essentially using option #1, but Harden's not good enough to be your second superstar. And you likely won't have enough money to bring in enough borderline stars, aside from Harden, to support Superstar X.
Well, considering the Thunder can match/pay the most and already have 2 max players, I think this analysis completely ignores them. And I don't think Harden has really cost himself any money this year. There's such a scarcity at the 2 right now (although he also plays the 3 in the small ball lineups and can handle the ball), he's getting a max deal.
If Brooks brought it up, it's clearly on Westbrook. Even if Westbrook heard it, he still could have made a mistake. Even if Brooks didn't bring it up - and usually it's some assistants job to let everyone know the foul situations - Westbrook should have some awareness of the situation. I feel like blaming it on Brooks, even a little, is completely misguided.
Of course, it's not why OKC lost, so scapegoating Westbrook is also misguided.
Ultimately, it's Brooks' job to prepare his team.
This sequence is classic.
re: Harden costing himself money:
Almost certainly not. I do think that any team that gives him a max is going to overpay, but there's scarcity as well as the max deal's function as a target that he almost certainly will get paid.
If you're New Jersey and you just had Deron leave town, you have to sign SOMEONE to come in on a max deal.
I don't think Harden could be that guy - that's not in him. He's long been criticized for his passivity on offense - he's not really a guy who's comfortable being the alpha dog.
Love Harden, but I don't think he's a max guy - not enough usage / defense.
I don't think it's terribly out of line. His coaching has been questioned for a few years, and he's done nothing this series to change that.
Very good points. My analysis does ignore what the Thunder can reasonably offer him.
I'm not entirely convinced they should give Harden a max deal, but I also don't think it's a bad move to do so. If that makes sense.
EDIT: That is, if the Thunder let Harden leave to a team that offers the max, who's a better option to replace him? He complements Durant and Westbrook well offensively, but maybe they could use a better two-way player? A bigger wing?
That reminds me of the quotation- I believe from Maradona himself- in which he said that Argentina will drive itself crazy trying to find the next Maradona, but will reject everyone until someone comes along who is so unique that he can only be called the first ____ and not the "next" anyone. Lionel Messi hasn't won a world cup or anything, but that is pretty much the status he holds now.
Obviously they *want* to get it over sooner, but I think that the most likely outcome of 2 games in OKC is a split, followed by an OKC sweep, followed by a MIA sweep significantly behind. Even if you flip the first two, it is not terribly unlikely for Miami to win one of two in OKC. They already did it once.
He will get paid a lot. Almost certainly 8 figures, if not a true max. I think a lot of the responses are missing his contract situation- the Thunder can offer him an extension this summer but he does not become any sort of FA until after next year. Even then, he is only a RFA if they extend the ~ $7m QO (no brainer). The contract has been such a hot topic because Durant and Westbrook are signed at the max and Ibaka/Harden are both eligible for extensions the same year the punitive tax kicks in. I suspect that they will find a way to keep both of them, but will probably have to shed some of their other non-minimum guys (possibly Collison or Perkins).
----
That game last night had me on the edge of my seat. I am a cynic, so I continue to expect the team I want to win to lose. It just works out that way more often than not. When Wade made that three to go up by 7 with about 4 minutes left, I started thinking that there was actually a chance that the Heat might actually win the title. Of course, OKC stormed back and made it a tight game down the stretch, but that was an unexpectedly glimmer of optimism.
It was funny that with about 6 minutes to go, I found myself thinking that depending on how the game turned out, it would either be the Chalmers game or the Westbrook game in my memory. Both certainly had standout performances, but it might go down as the Westbrook fouls Chalmers game. Even if OKC was not in a great spot when he made that foul (still needed a stop, a very late 3 against a prepared defense, then an OT win), it stood out as a very obvious mistake. On the other hand, as memorable as Chalmers' gutty performance was, it will probably be remembered for Lebron's cramps more than anything. Maybe the most meaningful thing about the game is that there were three distinctly memorable storylines carrying through one highly competitive, old school back-and-forth game.
Good point. Just because he plays like a vet doesn't mean he is one.
I agree. But somebody will probably step up and be that fool. Harden would be the best player on at least half the teams in the league. Maybe closer to 20 teams.
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