Markk wrote:
Magic is 5th all time assists, cut short with the HIV virus, and James is 18th and still active...both are top five ever players. They rebound and can score when the need to, they can play defense, and both can create a shot and play all 5 positions if needed. I am not sure what you are thinking. One of Lebron's biggest criticisms has been that he gives up the ball in key situations.
Assists is not a measure of lack of ball dominance. Westbrook and Harden both consistently lead the league in assists and both control the ball a ton to be able to work. They need to dribble a lot in order to break someone down. This works for them - Harden more than Westbrook - but probably not at the rate you'd need when you're dealing with a team that can also score at will. Both players have so many assists because they hold the ball so much. If someone scores after getting a pass, it's likely coming from them
because they always have the ball. If Westbrook spends 15 seconds of a possession breaking someone down, the slashes and kicks, that's potentially an assist for him. That's how he gets them. Both Magic and James have shown they can play by holding the ball a lot of the possession clock or not and their games don't depend on being ball dominant, so I'm less concerned about that. James and Magic both hold/held the ball a lot, but they both played in offensive systems that wanted them to do that.
When you have an all-time great at every position, you have to have players who mostly don't need to dominate the ball. This is because ball movement is better than dribbling when you are trying to get a guy open. There's room from drive and kicking - I'll take Michael Jordan to do that for me when I want it - but you mostly want a lot of motion and passing to get good looks for players who can score the ball. I want a clean look or an easy sky-hook
every single trip. Curry is a pussy, he was whining in the playoffs because they threw a box and one against him and shut him down. He can't play defense and is a two position player. On my team who is he going to guard?
I think you underestimate just how important Curry is to keeping defenses honest. In order to defend him on the Warriors, which does not have an all-time great player to pass to at every position, teams have to stretch their entire defense in such a way that everyone gets a lot easier looks. The reason they do this is because if they *don't* Curry is so automatic from 3 with a little space from very deep that he'll destroy them. He's altered the entire way the game is played. It's not that Curry can hit 3's. It's that Curry can hit 3's from incredibly deep with the kind of efficiency prior generations just couldn't.
I'll take his ability to do this for some worse defense. This forces opposing defenses to stretch to protect against him, thus giving hall-of-fame offensive talent easier opportunities to be open, or allows him to be very efficient from three. I'd like forcing that choice. If good-but-not great offensive players like Payton and Thomas abuse him, it's easy to sub him out. I doubt that's going to happen, though, in part because Thomas and Payton would likely have their driving game shut down because my front-court is freaking James, Garnett, and Jabbar. Those are some rangy, all-time defenders there.
Jabbar isn't remembered for his defense, but that's because his prime years came during the low-point of interest in the NBA and he is better remembered from his Laker days when he was still good, but way past his peak. Jabbar was a fluid, fast, monster defender in his prime.
Good offense beats good defense in basketball, though, and I'd rather have an offensive gauntlet on the floor. When you have players like Rodman on the floor, I'd use Curry to double someone else and just leave him open. Dennis Rodman being wide open at all times would probably still be decent in a normal NBA game, but I'm guessing that scoring 50% of the time isn't gonna cut it when playing the most efficient offensive team ever imagined.
Your team doesn't have enough 3 point shooting. 3 > 2. I'm even a little wary of my 3 point shooting maybe not being good enough from the starters, but that's why I loaded the bench up with it. I can easily sub into a package that puts the best 3 point shooters of all time at 4 of 5 positions on the court.
Ball movement -> 3 points being better than other forms of basketball is the key insight of modern basketball strategy.
Payton and Jordan had epic battles, while few can guard Jordan...Payton could, as could Miller, and Rodman.
I think you are confusing old Jordan with prime Jordan. Because old Jordan was still a phenomenal player in the mid-90's, it's easy to forget that his abilities were fading considerably at that point. I looked up their head to head's on basketball reference and Payton's numbers against him were not very good. His 1993 and before numbers make him look like he needs to be on the bench. Jordan straight killed him.
He never sat him down like a scrub.
He did so repeatedly. The stats don't lie on this one:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/pl ... i?id=9J1mGSteph and Reggie Miller both have a 47% career FG% Reggie actually shot over 50% 4 times, which Steph has never done, and the both shot around 39-40% from three point line. But Reggie played defense, and was 4" taller, and is arguably one of the toughest players pound for pound to ever play, his only negative is that his sister was better than him.
Reggie Miller played closer to the basket. Curry's super-power is that he can play like a Reggie Miller much further out. This makes it harder to run down ball movement when he passes out of tight defense that far away from the basket.