You know, I agree fully w/ Epi. nice post

how can you agree with the Lamar point. It's so absurd. He had his best year by a pretty decent margin and fans were enthused that he could just do his thing and not worry about the pressure.

I don't recall any Lakers fans bitching about Lamar at all this season, until the Finals at least but they were butthurt about everything then. It was the previous 3 years when he was one of the most frustrating players in the league.

I am a laker fan in LA. We did not want odom traded this year at any point.

Last year was a different story, we wanted everyone, even possibly kobe traded because we needed a change.

How can anyone say the dream is not the best center in this draft. He repeatadly beat up on the other top centers, even when the other centers had great teams. He absolutley embarrassed shaq and robinson. How many of us seen the highlight with robinson getting put in the popcorn machine twice in the same move by olajuwon.


Not only that but hes got great help on this team, hes got glen rice and david west odom and strickland, with strickland being the weakest link.

Someone said he is only gonna have 1 great shooter in the game at any point in time, but thats all he needs when that shooter is glen rice. Rice doesnt need the space and time to get a shot up, all he needs is half a second of the defense being out of position and its money. Odom although is not a very good shooter is very compitent with the ball, if he catches it at the top of the key with the defense off balance you cant stop him from getting to the hole. David west knocks down 20 footers in his sleep. If shooting becomes too much of a weakness he can always bring in hodges for strickland and thats that.

Defensively his guard play is not good, but hes got olajuwon taking care of a big area, the dream is one of few centers in history along with Robinson to be able to cover big areas on the floor and not just the paint. Odom can guard 3 positions effectively and david west is solid. Hes got size and mobility.


Head to head against any other team with dominant big men big chipps wins every time. It gets complicated against teams with dominant guards. He is gonna have trouble with

The reggie miller team
The larry bird team.

.Alex. still has the best offense and one of the best teams if you ask me. my team is fun but like the real life Warriors requires a bit of a mis match to really have success.

Ok I was wrong about the Odom thing, for some reason I thought I remembered Lakers fans being upset with him/wanting him traded this year.

I def think you are way overrating Hakeem, also Shaq was in his like 2nd year I think when Hakeem dominated him which was only a 4 game sample size as well. Shaq in his Lakers prime would be a much different story.

Also I def disagree about only needing 1 great shooter, the thing is the defense isn't going to leave Glen Rice nor Hakeem, they will leave Odom/Strickland and make them beat them from outside. Since they can't, they will both be forced to drive, and although the defense might be slightly out of position, neither of those 2 are dominate enough to take over games consistantly when the defense sags off them.

And I highly doubt bigchips would win vs my team for example, Hakeem never did an amazing job vs McHale when they played and no one can stop McHale 1v1, not even Hakeem whos help defense was better than his man to man defense. There is no way his backcourt/sf's are better than mine also. Plus I can actually defend his backcourt/sf's, where as he can't defend mine. I also think there are a good 5-10 teams bigchips team would lose to besides mine as well.

His head-to-head battles with Robinson in that ONE playoff series is pretty much why I prefer Olajuwon, which is kinda silly. If you actually look at their head2head data on b-ref it's scary close. As a whole, offensive metrics favor Robinson due to his superior efficiency. Defense I think is incredibly close as well.

As for Shaq, it's hard to say. When he beat Shaq in the Finals, it was Shaq's 3rd year in the league plus the Nick Anderson melt down. Shaq put up 25/12/3 on 58% shooting in the '95 playoffs. I don't feel like computing the averages, but in all 4 finals games he was over 25 points and 10 rebounds and over 50% shooting, so Hakeem certainly didn't destroy him.

Then when Shaq reached a whole new level, Hakeem was on the decline.

Frankly I think it's arguable that Hakeem is the 3rd best center in this draft. Truth is he and D-Rob are insanely close, and peak Shaq is pretty clearly the best, even if he isn't quite as good a defender as those two.

I figured you were joking the first time. How often did they even defend each other? Wouldn't it be Hakeem/Parish? b-ref's head to head only goes back to '86 and it's just the regular season, but the #s pretty clearly favor Hakeem.

Come on now, you can't say things like this with basketball-reference around. Head to head stats, Hakeem versus Shaq and Robinson.

Hakeem: 21.9 ppg 11.2 rbg TS% 48.8%
Robinson: 19.6 ppg 11.2 rbg TS% 55.2%

Hakeem: 18.4 ppg 9.1 rpg TS% 49.5%
Shaq: 22.1 ppg 12.4 rpg TS% 54.3%

Wow, look at that domination! Oh yeah, and he had an 18-44 record versus the two of them, damn, even more domination.

I don't think Hakeem wrecks LA Shaq probally between the ages of 26-29 when he was sick dominant. He really also didn't dominate Robinson, he averaged 22/12/3/3 blocks per game vs Robinson who averaged 19.6/11.2/3//3 vs Hakeem including their declines. Robinson was also 30-12 lifetime vs Hakeem although SA was definitely a better team. I'll agree when Shaq and Hakeem went at it in the finals, Hakeem was better but he was also a lot older and it was before Shaq's peak. Ewing was also not that bad vs Hakeem throughout his career averaging 18/9/1/2 throughout his career and was 14-13 vs him.

Now I'm not very confident at all that Dwight would be able to perform well against Hakeem, but that's why I have Clifford, Iggy, Tim and Steve Smith who could all score as well as Michael Adams.

I'm pretty sure when Sampson was playing with Hakeem it was Hakeem who was playing vs McHale and I know that McHale had a good series vs the Rockets when they played.

EDIT: McHale averaged 25.8 pts on 57.3 percent shooting in the finals and Hakeem averaged 24.7 pts on 47.9 percent shooting http://www.basketball-reference.com/...86_finals.html

Ok we have to eliminate shaq from this discussion.

Shaqs laziness, and non motivation is not something that earns you the title of best big man. He hurts the team by refusing to guard the pick an roll and leaving his guard out to hang time and time again. Shaq is actually a weakness on defense. UTAH beat the lakers several times because of shaq, their strategy was clear, whoever shaq was guarding he sets the pick.

I Hakeem or Robinson were every in the offensive gameplan for the opposing team. If anything coaches were quoted for saying they would put the guy hakeem was guarding as far away on the weak side as possible.

The argument with robinson is close, but Hakeem is a step an a half better.


Look at hakeems numbers the years houston won the championships.

Look at robinsons numbers the years spurs won the championships.

Case settled.

What does this have to do with anything. Robinson was at the end of his career when they won titles. Hakeem won titles in the Jordan-less era. Yes Hakeem was definitely the reason they won but b/c he won titles when he was dominant does not necessarily make his career that much better that it's case closed. You also can't remove Shaq from this argument that easily. I'd even argue that Duncan is the best overall big man in the draft, and Hakeem is a close 3rd to me after Shaq.

You bring up that Hakeem dominated all the other great big men in this draft, it really isn't true. Yes he played well against them but he didn't dominate, nor did they dominate him.

I'm glad you posted this just because I didn't realize there was a composite Finals box score on b-ref.

Rockets Magics Finals

Shaq averaged 28/12.5/6 with 2 blocks and 59.5% shooting versus Hakeem!

Going back to the '86 Finals, that was McHale in his peak versus Hakeem as a sophomore. It was also one of the all time best teams against a team that squeaked into the Finals past a much superior Lakers team. It's actually pretty impressive the Rockets pushed it to 6. You also ignored his rather paltry 8.5 rebounds per game while playing 40mpg.

Not denying McHale's greatness, but it sounds like you're trying to suggest he's somehow superior to Olajuwon, which just ain't happenin'.

Also I thought you were too young to have even watched him, now you know who defended him between Hakeem and Sampson?

I'm not saying McHale is better than Hakeem was, just that they aren't that far apart. Yes I realize McHale isn't a great rebounder but I already said his rebound numbers got hurt cause of the great rebounders he was playing with.

And I said pretty sure, not that I was positive. I used logic in that Sampson was 7'4 and played center and Hakeem was 7'1 and played PF so I assumed that Hakeem guarded McHale

lol.

such a terrible way to argue

Someone tell me how awesome my team will be in season 3-4 or so

Seriously tho, I'd like to hear feedback from someone besides bobbo or xorbie (not that i don't you guys, but you're the only people who have actually given me feedback so far). I didn't know **** about basketball when this started, and I got handed two players and tried to build the best team I could around them. I think it's an interesting challenge / case, both in terms of how I've done so far w/r/t that, and how well this team will actually work together, and do in this league.

(I don't really want to go into my own thoughts about my team until after my last pick.)

Of course Shaq is better than Hakeem. Let's not forget that they changed the rules and brought the zone back largely because Shaq was too dominant, and that every tall-and-fat guy under the sun was getting a contract in the fruitless hope that there might be someone who could get in Shaq's way a little. That said, I love Hakeem and would have taken him 4th, after Magic and before LeBron.

All the arguments against biiiigchips' team have been unconvincing to me. First you have kidcolin simply saying that the 3rd and 4th best players are "too knuckleheady"; Then Epeen says that their offense is poor because they will *only* have two great shooters on the court at a time. This completely discredits the playmaking and passing ability of this team as well as the individual efficiency of the premier scorers. It's like he's assuming they'll just run every play through Hakeem and if you can't hit a 3 you'll be worthless on offense. Then he makes a patently false claim about Odom and of course he goes into a digression about how awesome McHale is for no reason whatsoever. Then, inexplicably, Bobbo quotes this bunch of nonsense and says "I agree with all of this." Epippen did have a good point that Chips' team lacks any great perimeter defense so maybe Bobbo stopped reading after that...

Speaking of Bobbo, I think his team is one of the more underrated ones. No matter how much you hate the Coleman pick, he still has ****ing Shaq. Ainge was a great addition to the squad, Nene was a late round steal (assuming he can keep his nuts cancer free). I like this squad a lot and may have it in my top 5 when we get around to rankings.

Top 5 centers, IMO

Offensively

Shaq>>>>>>>>>>>>Drob>Hakeem>Mourning (when healthy)>>>Mutombo (but less than some think, especially for the purpose of this draft)

Defensively

Mutombo>>Drob>Hakeem>>>Shaq (who's underrated)

Overall

Shaq>>Drob>Hakeem>>Mourning (when healthy)>>>Mutombo

Howard and Yao are too green to rate. I think Shaq is very underrated by much of this forum. Sure the dude was lazy at times, but being that much better than everyone made up for it. Hakeem, on the other hand, seems to be overrated by many.

I agree about Ainge and Nene (F60 and Clark love him!). Bobbo really only had one bad pick, which I hated, but also had several steals.

I haven't studied the teams, but I was very impressed with F60's draft, particularly in the middle/late rounds.

Nath, I think you did a good job drafting your team but you inherited such a poor infrastructure that you really had no chance at cracking the top 5. Nowitski is great and Boozer is also very good, but they play the same position and they don't make each other better or work together in any significant way like most of the top teams' 1-2 punch players do.

I really like that you took the infrastructure you got and built a team utilizing its strengths rather than trying to cover its weaknesses. When you took Calderon you basically said ""**** it, my team is going to be non-traditional and we'll need to score 140 to win" which makes your team interesting and fun to think about from a matchup perspective. I didn't like the Steve Franchise pick much, but others seem to like it so I might be wrong about that one.

I haven't started seriously ranking teams yet outside of the top few so I don't know where I'll have you placed yet, but I think you did a good job working with what you had. Your team probably could have been better if you had been able to trade Boozer for a player of equal value who compliments Dirk better, but I don't know who you would have traded with or whether you could have worked something like that out.

Seadood,are those your overall top 5 centers? Like, do you really have Mourning and Mutombo ahead of Ewing?

I said at MOST 2 great shooters (most of the time he will actually only have 1) on the court. Floor spacing is a huge part of basketball and anyone who knows anything would tell you that. Players who can hit 3's at high percentages just makes it so much harder to double off them making ur stars be able to go 1v1.

There are only a few players who are tough to double off that can't hit 3's, and they are almost all super quick guards like Wade, Ellis, and Iverson and even then it's easier to recover vs those players than to contest a wide open 3. Obv if you want to run ur offense through Odom/West/Glen Rice be my guest and i'd be glad you did since Hakeem is a much better offensive player than all of them except for Rice.

And I brought up McHale because nopairparker said "Head to head against any other team with dominant big men big chipps wins every time. It gets complicated against teams with dominant guards. He is gonna have trouble with "

McHale is a dominate bigman and he wouldn't beat my team (nor would he beat Robinson's, Shaq's, Ewing's or KG's and prob a few more i'm forgetting since this off the top of my head).

Everything I said was a good point except for the Odom part, which is why bobbo agreed with it.

Epip, I feel like you're oversimplifying team ball. You're talking like you think the best way to build a team is to give the ball to your best player and have everyone else shoot 3s. As if the ultimate goal of 5-on-5 basketball is to create the best 1v1 situation possible. This just isn't true, the playmaking ability of his 3rd and 4th best players will make the team better. It's not like the only way to avoid a double is to plant the rest of your team at the 3-point line. Double off of Lamar, for example, and he'll drive either getting a layup or forcing someone to help which may result in a cut for an easy basket from Strickland or a shot from a better 3-point shooter like Rice, or even a decent mid-range shot from West.

Uh there is a reason that the 2 best plays in the NBA are giving the ball to a big man (or guard who can post up smaller guards) in the post, and the pick and roll and having everyone else space the floor for both these plays.

Of course playmaking ability from ur 3rd and 4th guys will make ur team better, however if I had to choose id much rather have my 3rd and 4th guys be great 3pt shooters than great playmakers when you have 2 superstars on ur team who will have the ball in their hands almost always.

Of course it's wrong that the only way to avoid a double is to plant them at the 3pt line, it's just by far the most effective way. You can have 1-2 players who don't shoot 3's and still be fine but after that it usually gets either too easy to double and recover or the lane just gets super clogged.

The thing is you can double off Lamar and be able to have someone either the man who doubled or someone else double off another non 3pt shooter in time to rotate and stop Lamar. Obv you won't stop him all the time, but u will be a lot more successful than if Hakeem was passing to a great 3pt shooter instead of Lamar.

Heck you could even play a zone vs Chips team and just pack it in and make sure someone stays on Rice at all times on the perimiter.

For what it's worth, I agreed with you earlier when you made your 5 Carmellos vs 3 Carmellos, 2 Battiers point. I actually disagreed with the specific example because I think the 5 Carmello team would have too much of a rebounding advantage, but I agreed with the heart of your point, which is that an offense works better with some 3-point shooting to space the floor. However, I think that having 2 great 3-point threats is fine because at that's enough to unclog the lane.

In other words I agree that you need some floor spacing to get the most out of your best players, but I feel that teams don't need quite as much of it as you think they do, and I think you undervalue other talents in 2nd, 3rd and 4th options.