NBA (whenever)...

[Federberg]

here's an interesting thought.. I've heard some pundits in recent years talk about Jokic eventually securing a higher all time ranking than the likes of Steph and Hakeem. This series against the Wolves is pretty much making it clear that the Nuggets window might already be closed... and this is coming from someone who before the playoffs started actually thought (assuming AG, and Watson would be fit) that the Nuggets might be the sneaky winners of it all this year.

To me, the discussion about where Jokic lands all time highlights the difference between better and greater. I don't think he's greater than either Steph or Hakeem, but it's possible he's better than Steph, or at least on par. I don't think he touches Hakeem though.. possibly the best defender of all time (Wemby will of course usurp him), an all time leader, and decent offensive player too. A player so good that no one has ever made an issue of the fact he was the no 1 pick in MJ's draft. I would be fascinated to see someone make that distinction, better vs greater, with all time ranks. That would be a fun discussion

 

[DarthFed]

of all the narratives about the Warriors the one that truly pisses me off is the.. Dubs had to call KD... no! They called KD because he was the best option that was about to be a free agent. But what they needed was someone better than Harrison Barnes. That's it. A not fully fit Steph, Bogut and Iguodala injuries and a Draymond Green suspension and the Cavs needed a wonder shot from Kyrie to win in 7. Where do people get off claiming Golden State couldn't have beaten the Cavs again. The absolute DELUSION!!

When Harrison Barnes was your 5th or even 6th best player I don’t think they “needed” an upgrade. The same Warriors team struggled to beat the Cavs the year before with Dellavedova or Tristin Kardashian as their 2nd best player. And then the 73 win team didn’t beat the Cavs from 3-1 up the following year. They assured themselves of possibly the easiest titles the league has ever seen by getting KD. I don’t fault them for it but let’s call it how it is.

 

[PhiEaglesfan712]

I almost forgot about Dellavedova and Tristan Thompson. They might even be worse than Luke Kennard and Marcus Smart. None of these players would ever start on those 2015-19 Warriors teams.

 

[Federberg]

When Harrison Barnes was your 5th or even 6th best player I don’t think they “needed” an upgrade. The same Warriors team struggled to beat the Cavs the year before with Dellavedova or Tristin Kardashian as their 2nd best player. And then the 73 win team didn’t beat the Cavs from 3-1 up the following year. They assured themselves of possibly the easiest titles the league has ever seen by getting KD. I don’t fault them for it but let’s call it how it is.

2015 was their first title mate. It's not a surprise they struggled. It takes time to learn to win. Just like OKC had struggles against the Pacers, and frankly they could easily have lost if Halliburton hadn't gotten injured.

I would say Bogut and Iggy getting injured was a huge deal in 2016. And just as important Steph was clearly compromised. He's never said that by the way, which is a credit to him, but the fact that he's admitted he wasn't fit enough to participate at the Olympics tells the story. It blows my mind that folks completely ignore that and go with the narrative that somehow they wouldn't have been able to compete without KD in 2017. It simply makes zero sense to me. Notice I haven't bothered to mention the Draymond suspension. I think there were a number of wings who could have replaced Harrison Barnes and made the Warriors good enough to beat the Cavs. Have people forgotten how many shots Barnes missed. FG% 35%; 3P% 31%; FT% 60% vs 47%; 38%;76% in the regular season?

I honestly think that over time the constant narrative from the media bamboozles people into believing a thing, whether it's true or not. It's insidious!

Despite all of that it took an incredible effort from the Cavs and Kyrie's dagger shot to beat the Warriors. But somehow we're supposed to believe that was it, they were done? Have we learned nothing about the championship DNA of that team after all this time?

 

[Federberg]

Interesting

 

[DarthFed]

Interesting

I would move Kobe and Curry to 9 and 10 and move Duncan up higher. But overall it’s not a bad list aside from it must have been done by Allen Iverson’s mom. That guy is definitely nowhere near top 20 and possibly not top 40. These lists sometimes just go on influence.

 

[DarthFed]

And looking at that list again, there is no Hakeem? That’s madness as it’d be hard to put him lower than 11-12 all time

 

[Murat B.]

I have no problem with Flagg getting the ROTY but if it was Knueppel, I would not have minded either. The guy helped his team more than Flagg helped his. Congrats to both. VJ got almost all the third place votes, which is also fair and well deserved. The guy plays like a veteran.

 

[DarthFed]

I have no problem with Flagg getting the ROTY but if it was Knueppel, I would not have minded either. The guy helped his team more than Flagg helped his. Congrats to both. VJ got almost all the third place votes, which is also fair and well deserved. The guy plays like a veteran.

I figured it’d be close to 50-50 on that one. Would have been a good year for co-ROTY maybe.

 

[brokenshoelace]

no mate.. YOU are arrogant. Nothing wrong with it. I can be too. But for you it's part of your whole self righteous schtick. Anyone claiming they could outplay SGA in a school playground is obviously delusional so I'm not sure why you're even wasting your time with that. I actually agree with a lot of the basketball stuff you just mentioned. I'll even say this about Draymond, in a way he does what the whole OKC team does. He dials it up to 15 so that he creates a standard that forces the refs to give him a unique whistle. Frankly it's stressed me out for years. He drives me nuts. I'm not going to say that because Draymond gets away with it, it's ok. It's not. But something needs to be done about what OKC are allowed to get away with because it's egregious. Frankly it blows my mind that Lu Dort hasn't been suspended for some of his antics yet. At this stage Draymond was getting punished and rightly so.

Lol! Proves what? If you form conclusions like that, then it's no surprise you spout nonsense so often I've watched Lebron stay out when the starters are being rested often. Clear and obvious stat padding. Building up his stats is at least as important to him as actually winning. I used to wonder why until I started to understand that he's not just building up numbers he's building up a defence for failure. That's ok I guess. I think he's easily a top 10 player ever, but he's far from a GOAT. Can't be a GOAT with a losing finals record. You just can't, and that's my main issue where Lebron is concerned. It would be nuts to deny his greatness otherwise. Frankly any of those guys in the top 15 - 20 spots are undeniably great.

LeBron has played 23 seasons now. That his career PPG numbers are in any way affected by stat padding over such an obscenely long sample is just extremely unlikely, verging on impossible. There is no evidence of that. How many games has he stayed in while the starters are resting, and how many points did he score for that to impact his career ppg? It would have to have happened A LOT over 23 years and that's just not realistic in any way.

LeBron might not be the GOAT, but saying he's not "a GOAT" as in, not on the shortlist of GOATs is just absurd. A losing finals record? He was supposed to beat the 2007 Spurs with a terrible Cavs team? (the kind of team Kobe was missing playoffs with in the West). The 2015 Warriors when he lost Kyrie and Kevin Love and still managed to go up 2-1? The 2017 and 2018 Warriors team that assemble the Avengers to stop him (second year of which he didn't even have Kyrie anymore?). Sure you can hold the 2011 and 2014 losses against him, although that 2014 Spurs team was ridiculously good, but are you holding it against him any more than Kobe's 2004 pitiful finals performance? The ones that were followed by missing the playoffs twice and an embarrassing loss to the Suns as well? How is losing in the finals worse than that? Every player has blemishes. You want to put Jordan and Kareem above him because their blemishes are less flagrant, sure. Magic? Ok maybe, but you're reaching. Anyone else and it's not a serious conversation any more. We can talk about Bill Russell, but I put him in the same label as Rod Laver. None of us watched him. Different era, different standards, etc...

 

[brokenshoelace]

of all the narratives about the Warriors the one that truly pisses me off is the.. Dubs had to call KD... no! They called KD because he was the best option that was about to be a free agent. But what they needed was someone better than Harrison Barnes. That's it. A not fully fit Steph, Bogut and Iguodala injuries and a Draymond Green suspension and the Cavs needed a wonder shot from Kyrie to win in 7. Where do people get off claiming Golden State couldn't have beaten the Cavs again. The absolute DELUSION!!

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10040304-draymond-green-says-warriors-needed-kevin-durant-to-beat-cavs-in-2017-2018?utm_source=chatgpt.com

"What then in turn ended up happing was, Steph still creates all the havoc he creates. Like I tweeted, Steph faced so many double teams and Kevin didn't. That's a fact. You can go look at the numbers or just watch the game. If you watch the game then you see that Steph's getting double-teamed, and then [then-Cleveland Cavaliers head coach] Ty Lue goes publicly and says 'I'm double-teaming Steph Curry every chance I get.' Kevin wasn't getting double-teamed.

"The reality is, we got to a point where we needed to be able to give someone the ball that can just go get a bucket. Kevin was already there. I don't think Steph was there yet. So, it gets us through those two years. We get those two championships. While we're doing that, Steph is continuing to work and evolve, and most importantly, becoming the strongest dude on our team. To this day he's the strongest guy on the team. That allowed him to score whenever he wanted because you can no longer bump him off his path."

Obviously, Draymond isn't saying they couldn't beat the Cavs without Durant. They almost did anyway. But reading the above it's very clear he's implying they needed Durant. "So it gets us through those two years" while highlighting Steph's "limitations" (for a lack of a better word) is a strong implication.

Draymond famously called Durant from the parking lot after the Warriors lost that 2016 finals. It wasn't just about upgrading Harrison Barnes. It was about stacking the deck so much that you minimize the chances of losing to the point of near impossibility. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not act like they weren't shaken by that 2016 loss. They needed Kevin Durant to make sure they don't let that happen again. Not necessarily because they felt they couldn't beat Lebron, but clearly because they were worried they might not.

 

[Federberg]

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10040304-draymond-green-says-warriors-needed-kevin-durant-to-beat-cavs-in-2017-2018?utm_source=chatgpt.com

"What then in turn ended up happing was, Steph still creates all the havoc he creates. Like I tweeted, Steph faced so many double teams and Kevin didn't. That's a fact. You can go look at the numbers or just watch the game. If you watch the game then you see that Steph's getting double-teamed, and then [then-Cleveland Cavaliers head coach] Ty Lue goes publicly and says 'I'm double-teaming Steph Curry every chance I get.' Kevin wasn't getting double-teamed.

"The reality is, we got to a point where we needed to be able to give someone the ball that can just go get a bucket. Kevin was already there. I don't think Steph was there yet. So, it gets us through those two years. We get those two championships. While we're doing that, Steph is continuing to work and evolve, and most importantly, becoming the strongest dude on our team. To this day he's the strongest guy on the team. That allowed him to score whenever he wanted because you can no longer bump him off his path."

Obviously, Draymond isn't saying they couldn't beat the Cavs without Durant. They almost did anyway. But reading the above it's very clear he's implying they needed Durant. "So it gets us through those two years" while highlighting Steph's "limitations" (for a lack of a better word) is a strong implication.

Draymond famously called Durant from the parking lot after the Warriors lost that 2016 finals. It wasn't just about upgrading Harrison Barnes. It was about stacking the deck so much that you minimize the chances of losing to the point of near impossibility. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not act like they weren't shaken by that 2016 loss. They needed Kevin Durant to make sure they don't let that happen again. Not necessarily because they felt they couldn't beat Lebron, but clearly because they were worried they might not.

You'll have to show me where I claimed the 2016 loss didn't have a huge impact psychologically....

Draymond has said a lot of things, and contradicted himself a lot. I'm not sure why anyone would use his public musings as definitive, but we all make our choices I guess. How individuals like Draymond felt after that finals and how they would have felt after a summer of rebuilding without bringing on KD, is something we'll never know. But what we do understand is championship mentality. If you want to debate that the same team with Harrison Barnes would have felt that they couldn't beat that Cavs team, I would be sceptical but in my view it would be proof of what they thought of Harrison Barnes. It's clear that Harrison Barnes feels that Draymond pushed for him to be sold, so maybe there's truth in that, maybe the rest of the core guys felt the same way, maybe even Steve Kerr. But what we're not going to do is claim that ONLY KD could have saved a 73 - 9 team. That's just garbage thinking. Even the quote you provided reveals something very important, Steph was getting double and triple teamed, in 2015, 16 and also in 17 & 18, with KD. What Golden State needed was a scorer, who could exploit the advantage that Steph's gravity was creating. KD was NOT the only scorer who could have done that, he was just the BEST one. There are still-shots in that 2017 final with 3 or 4 Cavs surrounding Steph, and KD in open space. You're telling me KD was the only one who could have taken advantage of that? I don't want to call you a casual but...

And by the way, it turns out that the Cavs also tried to get KD, he went to GSW which makes complete sense. Why on earth would he want to play in a LeBron James-centric offense? Look at what happened to the likes of Kevin Love and Chris Bosh

 

[Federberg]

I figured it’d be close to 50-50 on that one. Would have been a good year for co-ROTY maybe.

I think that would have been fair. Personally I think Kon should have edged it slightly. The Hornets have been trash for years, not only does he help elevate that team but in his first season he ends up with the most 3 pointers in the entire league. It makes you wonder exactly what would have been enough for him to get the win

 

[Federberg]

And looking at that list again, there is no Hakeem? That’s madness as it’d be hard to put him lower than 11-12 all time

You're right! I missed that! Utterly outrageous. For me possibly the greatest defender of all time (Wemby loading of course).

I would have Duncan higher, definitely higher than Shaq. I'm a huge Steph fan, but I can't put him above Kareem. I would still have him higher than you would I'm very comfortable with where Kobe is, personally I would have him above Lebron. He got two rings with less than LeBron, might have been 3. And you know how I feel about someone crowning themselves


USA Today’s top 25 greatest basketball players of all-time:

1) Michael Jordan
2) LeBron James
3) Kobe Bryant
4) Stephen Curry
5) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
6) Magic Johnson
7) Larry Bird
8) Bill Russell
9) Wilt Chamberlain
10) Shaquille O’Neal
11) Tim Duncan
12) Kevin Durant
13) Allen Iverson
14) Oscar Robertson
15) Elgin Baylor
16) Jerry West
17) Julius Erving
18) Moses Malone
19) Kevin Garnett
20) Charles Barkley
21) Karl Malone
22) David Robinson
23) Isiah Thomas
24) John Havlicek
25) George Mikan

 

[Federberg]

King behaviour...

 

[brokenshoelace]

You'll have to show me where I claimed the 2016 loss didn't have a huge impact psychologically....

Draymond has said a lot of things, and contradicted himself a lot. I'm not sure why anyone would use his public musings as definitive, but we all make our choices I guess. How individuals like Draymond felt after that finals and how they would have felt after a summer of rebuilding without bringing on KD, is something we'll never know. But what we do understand is championship mentality. If you want to debate that the same team with Harrison Barnes would have felt that they couldn't beat that Cavs team, I would be sceptical but in my view it would be proof of what they thought of Harrison Barnes. It's clear that Harrison Barnes feels that Draymond pushed for him to be sold, so maybe there's truth in that, maybe the rest of the core guys felt the same way, maybe even Steve Kerr. But what we're not going to do is claim that ONLY KD could have saved a 73 - 9 team. That's just garbage thinking. Even the quote you provided reveals something very important, Steph was getting double and triple teamed, in 2015, 16 and also in 17 & 18, with KD. What Golden State needed was a scorer, who could exploit the advantage that Steph's gravity was creating. KD was NOT the only scorer who could have done that, he was just the BEST one. There are still-shots in that 2017 final with 3 or 4 Cavs surrounding Steph, and KD in open space. You're telling me KD was the only one who could have taken advantage of that? I don't want to call you a casual but...

And by the way, it turns out that the Cavs also tried to get KD, he went to GSW which makes complete sense. Why on earth would he want to play in a LeBron James-centric offense? Look at what happened to the likes of Kevin Love and Chris Bosh

You're making up an argument and going on about it. Nobody ever said only Durant could have done the trick for the Warriors. In fact, people were so outraged about the move exactly because Durant on that team was too much. It can't both be "OMG they're unbeatable with Durant" but also "Oh they can only win with Durant." If they're so good that Durant makes them unbeatable, surely someone less skilled but still very good could have also been enough.

You are literally making up something I'm supposedly implying just because you can't get over a dig that wasn't even directed at you. Perhaps less juvenile emojis and getting emotional over minor disagreements and more reading comprehension is in order.

And yeah, the Cavs and every other team in the league would have loved to have prime Kevin Durant on their roster.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Re: Kobe's rings... for the first 3, he wasn't even the best player on his own team. How is the fact that he's got one more than LeBron very relevant? This is First Take territory of argumentation.

 

[Federberg]

You're making up an argument and going on about it. Nobody ever said only Durant could have done the trick for the Warriors. In fact, people were so outraged about the move exactly because Durant on that team was too much. It can't both be "OMG they're unbeatable with Durant" but also "Oh they can only win with Durant." If they're so good that Durant makes them unbeatable, surely someone less skilled but still very good could have also been enough.

You are literally making up something I'm supposedly implying just because you can't get over a dig that wasn't even directed at you. Perhaps less juvenile emojis and getting emotional over minor disagreements and more reading comprehension is in order.

And yeah, the Cavs and every other team in the league would have loved to have prime Kevin Durant on their roster.

lol! That's your response?? If you read through the thread my only issue with the narrative is people saying ONLY KD could have done it. So it sounds like you agree with me. Have the grace to just say you agree and move on.

 

[brokenshoelace]

lol! That's your response?? If you read through the thread my only issue with the narrative is people saying ONLY KD could have done it. So it sounds like you agree with me. Have the grace to just say you agree and move on.

Who are these people who said "ONLY" KD could have done it? This was absolutely never a real talking to any real degree. Again, people were outraged Durant made the Warriors unbeatable. It can't be both that he made them unbeatable and they could have ONLY won with him. It makes zero sense. Are you able to have a debate without forced "lol" and emojis and getting over your emotional self for once? I enjoy talking about basketball. Why would I "move on"? This isn't a competition. My god.

 

[Federberg]

Re: Kobe's rings... for the first 3, he wasn't even the best player on his own team. How is the fact that he's got one more than LeBron very relevant? This is First Take territory of argumentation.

sigh... my argument for why I personally put Kobe above Lebron is not about the number of rings. It's about how it was done. In my opinion the two he got without Shaq, going through a brutal West hold a lot of weight. Lebron had that Miami team and only getting 2 is frankly under achieving. Particularly when you consider the choke against the Mavericks. When you consider that one of his other rings was the bubble... well... enough said about that one. I think Kobe is under-rated by media and some fans, partly because of the allegations, and also because relative to other eras guards of that era seemed inefficient, but compare him to his peers and that adds context. Style of play of the era has a lot to do with it. And also of course being a slightly inferior version of the original doesn't help... for some. Straight up killer, and a true champion in my opinion