This comes from a discussion I had with my brother on the Heat. There will be a much happier post soon after this one.
If they don’t win this year, they’ll say “Well, it was their first year together, they hadn’t figured out how to play together yet.” And then they’ll say “And they have an incomplete roster, they need to fill out some more pieces.” So that says to me:
- They just want to give them an excuse, because good basketball players figure it out… how did team USA figure it out with ALL those other stars? Didn’t they know they wanted to play together because, um, they played together? How do pick-up games work? What about AAU teams? Are they just not good enough to learn how to play with each other after 100 games? Really?
- They want to make the excuse, and assume, that good players are just going to flock to Miami to win a title. Where is all that money coming from? Don’t they have 3 max contract guys, and Mike Miller, and Haslem for a good amount of money? Isn't the salary cap going to shrink? Where are these great role players coming from? Will they be illegal immigrants that they don’t have to pay? Can they restructure their contracts so they can get better players? What “great” free agents are there that are going to fit there?
1) false, and
B) Even the teams that had 2 great players, they also had great role players. The 2 great players on every team still had an alpha dog great, and a deferring/role playing great. When Kobe won with Shaq, it was Shaq’s team, Kobe knew his role, and they had Fisher, and Horry, and Fox, and Shaw and good role players who played defense and made shots when they needed to.
When the Bulls won, they had Jordan, the obvious alpha dog of them all, and Pippen, who was capable of scoring, but was a 1st team NBA defender and rebounded, plus Rodman, Kukoc, Kerr, Harper, a bunch of great role players.
The Spurs had 1 great in Duncan, and 2 really good players that would add up to a 2nd great with Parker and Manu, and a bunch of really good role players.
NO TEAM has ever won with 2 GREAT, TOP 5 players, a 3rd top 25 player, and then a bunch of garbage. You can’t win basketball with 3 players. You can’t. They can’t. They better not.
LeBron was SO much closer with the Cavs than he is with the Heat. He had the role players. And if he would have manned up and, um, committed to playing in Cleveland, maybe a free agent WOULD have landed here. I hate listening to people talk about how garbage the Cavs roster was- they weren’t, and LeBron had a hand in picking them all. We couldn’t attract free agents because LeBron wouldn’t tell them he’d be there, bottom line, end of story. We get Amare- it’s a dynasty. We get Bosh- dynasty. We get Ray Allen- we win at least 1. The Cavs were built completely around LeBron, and were 1 key player away from being complete, and unfortunately, LeBron swallowed that key, because he had already made up his mind long before June 2010.
Modern day, yes, no one has won with 2 stars... go back to the Celtics (they had an all star lineup) and Laker days (Jabbar and Magic, but they played off one another not got in each others way). Not comparable though since Wilt Chamberlain also scored 100 points... and lost.
ReplyDelete~W
That's not what I was saying- those teams all had 2 stars... but not 2 top 5 players. Even with Magic and Kareem- 1st championship Magic was a rookie- it was Kareem's team. After that, Magic was the alpha dog and Kareem was on the decline.. Bird had a bunch of good players, but not anyone that was on his level. Wilt won the game he had 100, but didn't win a bunch of ships because Russell's C's were just a better team, and Wilt was selfish (hence, 100 points).
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's the point. You can't have a championship team when you have an argument for either player who is more important/elite on the team. LeBron is obviously (I think) the better player, but people will say Wade is, and he's their "closer" (a BS title). You've got to be able to say, that's "Blank's" team.