I'm fine with whatever, I just don't want to see the rating process **** up the selections by way of angle shooting.

Yes KC's team is very good, lotta underrated players though is probably why you aren't getting that much praise. Good passers at the PG, wing, big guy slot (although Pierce and Davis not so much), and everyone shoots efficiently. Davis/Vlade are strong inside, don't know if that makes up for Cassell/Pierce sucking but at least your team will rebound well and can block shots inside and play good post D so your only major liability is teams with PG/SG who are shoot first type of guys. Having Starks helps a lot in that regard but I thought there were a couple better options there.

lolol

Folk be sleepin on my boys, yo

You say that offense is more important than defense. I gave the stats of the champs over many seasons sample size that show otherwise. I never said it was a landslide, but all it had to be was equal to prove you wrong. Not only
was it not equal, but defense was ahead.

You also ignored my point about the Spurs/Pistons being constant title contenders while the Warriors/Suns are not. YOu also ignored my point about all of the great defensive teams this year being title contenders except the Rockets who lost their best player.

This all added up imo supports the notion that defense is more important even if one of the arguments on their own isn't convincing.




I don't even understand what this means. Much like many of your statements, couldn't I just flip it around and say "a good offfense allows you to compete, but then you need a good defense to get over the hump"?


Because I've shown your proofs of how defense is more important to build a title contending team. I've shown you the past champs and I've also looked at the top offensive/defensive teams in recent years.

All you've done is say things like "a great defense could never stop a great offense" or "A good defense allows you to compete, but then you need good offense to get over the hump" or "The purpose of defense in Basketball is to make it harder to score, not to prevent others from scoring, because you cannot do it" none of which really make any point whatsoever.



And teams that have good offenses give up very little to the top offensive teams. The Celtics were only a good offense this year- 9th in points per 100 possession. Yet they were fine. Again, I provide a real example while you just speculate.



Take any lockdown defender against Kobe then. Or take Bowen against any star scorer....the point is the same.


unless the defense has players whom don't need help like Bowen or the other elite defenders.




Creating arbitrary numbers is fine. However you must remain consistent. Your logic was basically that no team in this draft could hold the top teams to 90 points and therefore they aren't as good as dominant on defense in our league as teh Spurs are in the real NBA. Thats BS though because the Spurs don't hold the top offenses to 90s points in the NBA.



I'm not saying hes great or even good, but hes better than Ben Wallace and some others that have gone before him imo. Hes also better on offense than many high draft picks are on defense, as he at least contributes something(3 point shooting) while some of these players are just nothings on D.


And if they do that then Bruce Bowen will hit those 3 pointers at a career 39.1% rate which is the equivalent of hitting 58.65% of your shots if you only took 2 pointers. In other words, its a good % and teams will be hurt by leaving him alone and letting him shoot.


You're 100% completely wrong here. You mistake the Spurs being a slow paced team and not putting up a lot of bulk points as them "having trouble scoring in the past." Since Bowen got to San Antonio they have ranked 9th, 7th, 15th, 8th, 10th, 5th, and 15th in points per 100 possession. Not great, but certainly not bad at all.

+1 here

Also, let me throw out that I really like Clark's idea of how to determine who is the best team when all is said and done.

xorb,

feel free to PM me who you'd take over Starks. I went back and forth on a lot of options there.

8th all time ORB%, 29th all time TRB%, stayed extremely healthy, 45th all time Career WSAA (even though it's a flawed stat, to never produce a losing season by this metric is very impressive), high FG% (solid TS% despite awful FT%). Basically, he's a lot like A.C. Green in that he does all the underrated things like rebounding and defense and not looking to score when you don't have to. I readily admit I took him too high, as A.C. going that much later showed, but imo AC slipped a bit farther than he should have. I thought those type of guys were going soon and I really wanted one for my team. If I'm going to reach, at least I reached for a solid guy.

A.C. is arguably better but Dale is better on the Oglass and added some much needed toughness to my front line. Basically I think Dale fit my team better and AC fit JoA's better.

pretty sick offensive squad. God I hate Laettner though, even if he turned out to be pretty good.

Regardless of how we determine "winner" I'd like to devote a thread entirely to purely hypothetical discussions of how specific teams match up against other teams. I think a lot of teams in this league are very versatile and while they may not look so hot on paper could really punish a lot of teams.

For example, a lot of owners went with big dudes who are +def but don't really have much offense besides being passed the ball next to the hoop and laying it in. Against a team like that, a team like nath's could start Dirk and Boozer and kill you with a well balanced post game and a ton of outside shooting. In order to prevent that you need a legit post scoring threat with size.

Similarly, take a team like Clark's. Defense looks real beastly obviously. But then look at a team like NPP. Well Larry Nance was tall but not very strong, you could easily get away with sticking Gerald Wallace on him. And Wallace has enough range to shoot a 3, so you force one of the great shot blockers to play away from the hoop. And by bumping G Wallace to the 4, you can actually go stretches playing Ben Gordon, Monta Ellis and Dwayne Wade at the same time (since Monta can cover Mookie, Gordon cover the smaller Houston and Wade can sorta man up on Butler. Suddenly this team is ridiculously quick and basically can't be covered.

Assani and others,

I think one factor being overlooked here is the yin and yang of defense and offense. They're not mutually exclusive things. Getting stops makes scoring easier, and making buckets makes defending easier.

Read my exchange with horizon for thoughts on defense overall.

Tons of these teams can be held below 100 points. These teams really aren't that much better(if at all) than real NBA teams.

Shaq averaged 30 per game. Thats when factoring in all of his easy matchups. How would Duncan and Dikembe not be huge favorites to hold him under his average? Makes no sense to me.

"Good offense usually beats good defense. "
Couldn't disagree more. Look at Spurs/Suns recent series. Or look at how the Warriors fare when they go up against the Spurs. Or look at the Lakers/Celtics Finals. Or I could give 100 more examples, but you get the point.


"Without even knowing what the rest of the rosters are for the teams , these have to be the best teams in order just because these players are too good.

1. Michael jordans team
2. Magic johnson
3. Larry bird.
4. hakeem
5. shaq. "


Thats just ridiculous and silly.



"I dont think there ever has been or ever will be a defense that can stop any of those players from dominating a basketball game."
Did you not watch MJ against the Pistons in the late 80s? Tough defense most definitely can take these players out of their games. YOu have to realize that for every 50 point game a 30ppg scorer has, he has to have a 10 point game to keep his average at only 30. You use selective memory though and forget about the bad games.

Hell, Kobe has had some real stinkers against some good defensive teams. Because everyone loves to critisize him, we remember his. Yet we forget MJ's, Bird's, and Magic's because everyone loves them.

You are aware that your team does not have a center, right? Unless you want to play Laettner there. Your team is basically just really soft inside, so you are going to match up very well against some teams but teams with two legit big guys are going to destroy yours.

Yeah, I'm afraid of a team that is 4 inches shorter at almost every position.

Bowen is not so horrible offensively. He knows his role and doesnt try to do anything more. He stands in his corner and shoots if he gets it. He rarely gives a head fake and tries to take it to the hole. If hes open he shoots or he just passes it. He is however bad because if hes not open he cannot do anything with the basketball so he will have to make an in efficient pass to someone else who will have to create something even if hes not a creator offensively.

The point is having bowen out there on the floor will lower other players field goal percentages slightly, but he is not horrible. I would rate players like smush parker and kwame brown as much worse than him offensively.

Names?

Few teams play zone defense. It'd be silly to try that in this league when our rosters are deep. Zone is best used when a team is not deep on offense but has one or two stars. This league is the exact opposite: Very deep, but with 40 people picking in the first round theres no MJ/Pippen type teams. Zone defense would be horrible here.

And a good offensive coach can do the same the other way. For the love of God please stop looking at things only from the defensive perspective while ignoring that it can be true for offense as well.

This only increases the gap between the bad and good defenders imo, making stud defenders more valuable.

Now that this joke has run its course, can you explain to me which pick you feel as if your were skipped on?

"Good offense usually beats good defense. "
Couldn't disagree more. Look at Spurs/Suns recent series. Or look at how the Warriors fare when they go up against the Spurs. Or look at the Lakers/Celtics Finals. Or I could give 100 more examples, but you get the point.


I meant in a one on one case. If bird olajuwon is against mutumbo, the dream will dominate him most of the game.

As team offense and defense goes your absolutely right, good team defense beats good team offense

does anyone object to this?

those players will never get drafted, and if they do. I will ban myself from this league.

This sounds good to me. Just to be clear: Only drafters do #1, #2 is open to everyone, right?

So I just need to make it into the top 16 and then my army of gimmick account will get me through. Sweet.

Height is a useless statistic on it's own, and the 4" is way off anyway. Ben Gordon is 200 lbs, Allan Houston was 200 lbs, Gordon is 3" shorter. Houston isn't a post up player anyway, so maybe Gordon is slightly less valuable for covering him than someone who has long reach and can get in his face from further, but he's obviously better than a guy like Korver who is plenty tall but can't keep up with Houston.

Caron Butler is like 5 lbs heavier than Wade, 3" taller, and Wade is really athletic and can disrupt jumpers quite fine. Butler could post him up possibly, I haven't watched enough of his game.

Then there's Gerald Wallace, who gives up 3" to Nance but weighs 15 lbs more and is an athletic freak. No way Nance has an advantage here.

Thats definitely true, although I think its more true for teams that get steals/blocks rather than just play solid D like the Spurs.

agreed. I was thinking slow place teams like the Spurs or even this year's Cs probably don't benefit from it as much (though Cs create more TOs via steals), but I think they do still. You don't need a ton of transition 3s for them to be extremely valuable.