I'd be very surprised if Brazil doesn't perform better than both France and Argentina

As long as Argentina has Ginobli they are a threat to beat anyone.

If everyone plays for France, they are very strong. No one in the NBA could stop parker this year, including Westbrook, and Paul.

Of course Spain is the biggest threat. It's a shame that Rubio got hurt, but they are so big and tough inside, they still have a real shot to defeat the USA.

meh according to SE consensus, the 2012 team has the 2 GOAT players ever in Paul and Lebron. Play them with Iggy (pippen clone) and Klove (best international player possible) and a defensive stud like Chandler, and how could they lose to any team ever?

Then throw in top 10 of all time player Durant and bottom 10 of all time player Kobe off the bench and it's lights out for any team ever assembled.

you guys are really comfortable reducing a decade-and-a-half career to a single moment? seriously? just stop. he was the perfect wingman for jordan, and when jordan was gone and he didn't get the call, he threw a tantrum. is it a mark against him? sure. making it his defining moment like you two clowns, however, is way off the mark. he was good enough every day in practice to keep the GOAT crushing the rest of the league for almost a decade, ffs.

also, who said magic>>>cp3? we're just letting you know that it's more like cp3>magic... especially 2012 cp3.

ITT we learn that handchecking, forearms, and preventing people from freely coming off screens giving more room to shoot has no effect on perimeter shooting, it is just as likely to find an all-star caliber NBA player as a crappy backup in the general population, and a 7+ inch height difference creates no matchup problems.

In 2003/2004, the year before the hand-checking rule was lifted, NBA teams shot 34.7% from 3 on 1224 attempts. The year after it was lifted, NBA teams shot 35.6% from 3 on 1292 attempts. Wow, what a HUGE difference. Obviously makes perfect sense that this is responsible for Jordan shooting 3.5% worse from 3 than the worst perimeter player on the 2012 team.

BTW, the other thing you said is stupid too. I'm just saying that the number of elite players goes up evenly with the population. If there are 2 players better than Magic Johnson born in a generation over a population of 200 million, there are likely to be 3 born in a generation over a population of 300 million. Obviously, you're not as likely to find a backup as an all-star since 67% of the NBA are backups and only ~6% are all-stars.

You should try actually playing basketball sometime, it's nice. If you get the chance, play against someone who hand checks on the perimeter and compare to someone who plays off of you, then get back to me.

Oh, well that's not what your (very wrong) post said at all. Here, I'll help you out:

Consider what happens when you dilute the player pool by 30.4%. If you increase the general population by 30.4% the largest increase in available NBA talent is going to be at the crappy bench warmer end. Think about what a normal distribution looks like and what part of the distribution we are selecting NBA talent from.

When increasing roster spots you are diluting the talent uniformly. When you increase population size the number of players decreases exponentially as you look for players with increasing talent.

Make sense?

Just because elite talent is distributed more rarely within a population such that there are 10 great talents for every elite talent doesn't mean the number of elite talents don't still go up proprtionally with the population. It just means that if you double the population, now there are 2 elites and 20 great talents instead of 1 and 10.

Put another way, talent isn't grouped by time. So if the population increases by 60% each generation, and there are 3 generations, 50% of the Top X talent would be from the latest generation, 31% would be from the middle generation, and 19% would be from the first generation. This holds whether you're talking about the top million players, the top 1000, or the Top 10. Thus, if on average 3 of the top 10 players of all-time were from Jordan's generation, we'd expect 5 of the top 10 players of all-time to be from this generation, based on the larger basketball population over that time period. This even works for the Top 1, as just on a blind look, we'd expect there to be a 50% chance of the GOAT being in this generation compared to only a 30% chance of the GOAT being from the previous one.

just proves why modern players are better. the competition is that much better nowadays. the margin is razor thin.

pretty good point in favor of the 2012ers.

you are really using kobe as a bastion of shot selection? i think this poast trumps anything twrecker could ever even conceive. just brilliant.

if lebron had a spent time developing a grate poast game in yrs 2-6 or watever then all the haters like u and trainwreck would be lambasting him for not developing a perimeter game. heres the thing, lebron has gotten better at nba basketball every single year in the league with the possible exception of 1. that is unprecedented. if i had to guess, it would be that his poast game develops over the next few yrs.

u cant just perfect everything all at once.

Yeah, LOL @ people going after LeBron for not developing a world-class post game until 26 when he was a PG coming into the league, and he never really had the chance to play off the ball in Cleveland. And when he did develop an awesome post game after his first year in Miami. If you're going to come after someone for something, how about the fact that Jordan never learned how to hit a 3-pointer until they shortened the line? Seems like a much more glaring omission IMO.

dont have the numbers but lebron was the best scorer from post up range last few years

Jordan averaged 30 points a game without the 3-point line. Maybe some of todays players should try that??

Yeah, and LeBron averaged 30 points a game without a post game. I'm just saying that it's stupid for people to get on him so hard for not being refined in one minor detail, when even the deified officially crowned GOAT had way bigger leaks for years and years.

lol this thread

aytumious is one of the biggest trolls in se. i'm not sure why you guys are spending so many posts arguing with him.

Would be interested to see this as there's a lot of ways you can read that information. Is it post-ups? Shots from outside 6 feet but inside 12 feet? Shots in the paint? If post-up range includes all his back-door lob dunks, fast-breaks, and iso drives it doesn't tell you much about posting up. I'd assume this has to be about distance not type of shot as it uses distance to describe itself and it makes Lebron the best for a few years.

Shot selection is over-rated in leagues with demanding shot clocks.

This is a big part of the reason many of the highly touted individual statistics don't mean near what those using them try to make them mean. They take important team statistics and generalize them across the board. Plenty of 30% shots are great team plays and plenty of 50% shots are terrible ones. A star player with a penchant for making sure to get 2-1's (which are much better deals at 30% than the alternative at 50%) vs a star with a habit of not by itself shifts many of the % arguments by more than the amounts people make large arguments over.

lebron eating brownies and listening to headphones front row womens bball game

straight pimping, no time to talk to people gotta listen to the music

That would be true if we were looking at a Lebron in Cle/Wade in Mia situation.

LAL has the best front-court in the league, much of his stuff is just unnecessary.

Of course there's value in someone who can create their own shot or is mindful of clock situations but that doesn't equal hero ball