MJ Wilt Kareem Shaq Magic Oscar Bird These aren't colluders. For all his talents Wilt was pretty lazy, but he still won 2 championships the right way without much help. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth when the best player and the second best player in the league plan how they'll team up with one of the best power forwards (at the time) to form a super team. The persona just isn't there... no one with half a brain wants to be like LeBron. Maybe have his body, but not be like him. He needs 3 more titles under these colluded circumstances to be in the top 5 discussion. Kobe is not an HGH guy. Don't be silly.
Lebron is the first player since Hakeem to get to the Finals with the second leading scorer to average 14ish ppg. He did it in 2007 also. Big 3 was more like the humougous one. If you're going to accuse Lebron, you also gota accuse Kobe. It's likely that they both have dabbled in some PED's. Lebron's girl doe. Cmon, sonn. What is he thinking..
Heck, how did they get Sampson? It was much easier (easier being a relative term, of course) to get to the top pick, or the top couple of picks before the lottery. Today, you can't know just where you'll end up at the top few picks in the lottery, so tanking requires more luck than a coin flip, and a deep draft at the top to get the superstars of the future by going that route, and/or a GM like Morey, with an owner who has deep pockets that are open for business. It was a great series, one of the best in years. As everyone else is wondering, where does San Antonio go from here? Miami has a clear path going forward for 3-5 years, assuming James stays (and why wouldn't he?) and Wade can hold his legs together. San Antonio? How will they replace Duncan when he retires? It'll be within a season or two, IMO. Manu has lost a step and can't play the heavy minutes needed in the playoffs, excepting a throwback game here and there. It wouldn't surprise me at all if both are gone after a season or two. We'll see. Parker really needs a very good backup. Losing Hill left a big hole at the 1 behind Parker, and it showed. Splitter appears to be a mid-level talent, and can't sniff Duncan's jock, even at Duncan's current age, at either the 4 or the 5. All they have is Leonard as a future All Star talent, unless I'm forgetting someone. The future looks grim for SA. They're only hope, in my opinion, are their terrific front office, and a great coach, but that hope is slim. If we get that other superstar level player to play with Harden and keep Parsons, while hoping one or more of our young talent develop into something special (like Parsons is busy doing), manage to hang onto Asik, possibly Lin, or use them to acquire what we need (depending on what happens this summer, and next summer), we are going to rise to the cream of our division, with SA and Dallas scrambling to catch up to our level. The Rockets appear, IMO, to be well on their way to being the contending team coming out of the Southwest Division. That appears clear, at least to me. Congratulations to the Heat, who clearly earned their hard fought title. SA gave them one hell of a time, and a shot here, a defensive play there, and hanging on to the ball a time ot two more, and they would be celebrating their last title for a long while, one well deserved. And Miami damn well knows it. In a couple of seasons, we'll be breathing down their necks. In my humble opinion. We just need that other top tier star, continued development of who we keep that we already have, and what every franchise has to have, one hell of a lot of luck. So a toast to the Heat and their trophy, and a toast to the future of the Rockets. It looks very bright indeed.
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/6/21/4450996/lebron-james-heat-spurs-nba-finals-2013 "We needed it," Wade said. "We needed every inch of what everybody had." Make of that what you will....
Wade takes HGH, not LeBron. I know the human body and have info related to laboratories. It's not solely because his jaw expanded and he wanted to rush back from injury. The entire dynamic of the league has changed. Going back as soon as the pre-zone 90s and the players you had then, its' different. Stats and accolades change with each circumstance - you have to factor in raw ability and psychology. There's a reason every game 6 winner goes onto win game 7 - psychology plays a huge factor at the highest level when talent gaps are washed out. Oscar and Magic are no slouches. They could play the LeBron role and do much more, but because of LeBron's exposure, build and running away to Miami, people give him the nod. Anyways, miss the Kobe days.
Charles Barkley: <iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Crhv9XrBgc4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 1 title to 2. Does that elevate him into a different category as far as greats of the game? He's already in the top ten. He can't get any higher in my opinion. My top five is never going to change. No matter what LeBron does, he'll never get into your top five? No. Give me your top five. Michael, Oscar Robertson, Wilt, Kareem and the great Bill Russell. LeBron & Kobe, Magic, Larry and Jerry West. Nobody can get into my top five to be honest with you. He'll never be Michael Jordan. Oscar Robertson, when you average a triple-double, that's on a whole 'nother level. Wilt, Kareem and Bill Russell, he can't get in there. He's right there, with him and Kobe. They're debatable depending on how many more championships LeBron wins and Magic & Larry. I put Jerry West in there also. ... Is LeBron a more complete player than Jordan? To Michael Jordan? No. No way. What does he do better than Michael, other than rebound? He's a better passer. He's probably a better passer. Not a better scorer, not a better shooter and no one's a better defender than Michael. Mike can guard ones and twos and maybe threes. LeBron can guard anyone on the floor. I don't know if he can guard fours and fives. He made Roy Hibbert look like Wilt Chamberlain. Tim Duncan was killing them and he's 77 years old. LeBron wasn't guarding Hibbert. Could LeBron have guarded you? No. No little guy can guard me. He's not little. It doesn't matter. He's little to me. A guy 6'7-6'8 is little to me. You think me and Karl Malone would have been licking our chops to play against these little Miami Heat? Then you have to guard him too. How would you have guarded LeBron? I would have basically did what the Spurs did - make him shoot jumpers. He'll be an inconsistent jump shooter. I thought the Spurs had a great game plan. If they made one more free throw here or there, they would have won the series. I didn't think they could win last night at all. Game seven won't haunt the Spurs. Game six will haunt the Spurs forever. ... (About Rivers giving the Clippers instant credibility) It has nothing to do with credibility. The Miami Heat don't have credibility. They have LeBron James. The got LeBron James. It's about players. ... Is Blake Griffin a great player? Not even close. He makes great commercials. He should quit making commercials and start working on his damn game a little bit. Chris Bosh didn't score last night. How does that happen? Because the Miami Heat have LeBron James. That's why they got they second trophy. The Miami Heat won because they have LeBron James. It ain't brain surgery. That's why you have all these idiots out there talking about analytics and crap like that. In Philadelphia, this guy, they want to do analytics. They better get some good players. Analytics always helps when you have good players. Would you have Chris Bosh back? They have to break that team up. They're too little. They're too little. They're gonna shorten LeBron's career. They need help at the point. He can't guard the point guard every single year because it's gonna shorten hiscareer. I don't think we've ever asked a great player to do as much as we ask LeBron James. As great as Michael Jordan was, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson - we never asked them to be the best defender, get every rebound, get every big assist. It's amazing to me how great LeBron is to be honest with you. Michael Jordan is the greatest ever but we never asked him to guard a point guard for a seven game series, the best point guard too. We never asked him to lead us in rebounding and you have to lead us in assists. That's why LeBron is a better all-around player than Jordan. Michael has different mentality. That's why him and Kobe, they have a different mentality. LeBron is a better all-around player but they have something that he don't have. They didn't play against great teams to win the championship. They're not playing against great teams today. They just have him. A friend of mine thinks he knows basketball, I told him you got to beat that guy four times. I picked Indiana to beat him and they should have and I picked the Spurs to beat them. I said the problem is, you have to beat that guy four times. That team is very flawed. They're old and slow. Is Bosh on the team next year? I don't think so. They're getting older. They're not going to get any bigger. Unless they do something, LeBron isn't going to stay there because he is smart enough to know that if he has to play the way he has to now, it's going to shorten his career.
Not the point I was making at all. The Rockets don't get touted as the innocent organization, the Spurs do.
Come on, no team is innocent. They are all trying to win however they can (within the rules). I have no particular problem with the Spurs sitting Robinson our for that season, since it was a lost season anyway. What is the point of trying to win a few more games? The Spurs got lucky that year, they weren't the worst team. No different than the Rockets got lucky with Yao and the Bulls got lucky with Derrick Rose.
I get no credit for this because I didn't put it in a post, but I thought going in that San Antonio would win in 6 or lose in 7 because I thought they were both the better team and lacking in "clutchness." For all their wins and championships, they only really won one Game 7, in the Finals against Detroit where they had home court advantage. Duncan had bricked too many free throws in previous finals for my taste and there was no Horry on this team. For all of Pops coaching experiences, I thought he was a little too prickly for an intense Game 7 and after the Game 6 issues, it was as close to a certainty as any insight that comes to a particular fan of the game.
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Congratulations to Kwame and the 41 other individuals that correctly picked Miami to win the NBA championship in 7 games. We are the 12.65%.
I hope you're doing well Outlier. I can't help being right most of the time. Anybody can make a prediction, but it's a person's track record in terms of providing quality analysis and being correct a majority of the time that enhances one's reputation for making accurate predictions. For example, if you had followed me in the NBA Gambling thread, you would have made a lot of money this post-season. If people don't want to give me the respect that I deserve, I'm going to take it by force. But I mainly do it to get under your skin.
Outlier, here's my prediction for the series which I posted on June 4, 2013 in this very thread: You don't get much more accurate than that, which is why I put my money where my mouth is (see the NBA Gambling thread). There are many trolls on this site, but only a relatively small number of people that provide quality analysis. Instead of hatin', you should be giving me credit for being right yet again. In the meantime, #BeWell.
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Nice, gotta love Barkley's honesty sometimes. He's right on the money with a lot about the Heat and Blake Griffin of course, but that whole top 5 or top 10 of his and Lebron not being in it is just to get people to talk about him. He even contradicts himself and admits that he thinks he's a better all-round player and can basically do it all by himself.
