im implying that his effect on this super-league largely depends on who is going to be guarding him, and that his size advantage over opposing PGs (and ability to pass out of ensuing doubles) is what would make him better than kobe.

if he were playing off the ball, against a 2/3 he would be seeing significantly less double teams and less open driving/passing lanes in this super-league due to the significantly better perimeter defense. here, below average jumpshot would really, really hurt.

a lot of lebron's success has been predicated by the fact that he can get to the hoop almost at will and that he can't be guarded by the average NBAer.

i personally believe kobe would excel in this format because of his superior ball defense, above average jumpshot, and also the general physical nature of his game.

(this is all based on the assumption that Lebron James is at or near his peak, which i may or may not believe)

Where are all of these super defenders at the wings that would lock down LJ coming from? If you think teams are going to be able to guard him 1-1 with a 2 or a 3, well then I couldn't disagree more.

HASN'T BEEN PICKED YET WTF

haha

once LJ gets into his thang dey ain't NO stoppin' him!

Robinson goes over Hakeem, but we've had this argument before and I never convince anyone.

you mean he doesnt throw his teammates, coaching staff and management under the bus every time something goes wrong. u mean he whines and cries and threatens not to play if hes not surrounded by all stars. u mean he never takes blame for his team underperforming and always blames it on his teamates and management.

gimme a fckn break. im sick of all this kobe is great mentality bs. hes a complete prick with an immense entitlement syndrome.

nobody is going to lock down LBJ. you just wont see as much disparity as usual. if this super-league were to ever happen you probably wouldnt see much (if any) 2's guarding LBJ, strictly 3's and 4's (kobe, artest, kirilenko, kg, marion from the current era off the top of my head). bowen and other "specialists" are probably fringe players, its tough to speculate. i'd be curious to see like horace grant, ac green, pippen, hell even ben wallace match up with james and see what happened.

all speculation i guess, who knows i could be way off here

For the love of God can we stop this "he was a clutch player" , "he was tough", etc. line of thought. Dirk was better than Barkley. The stats back this up.

Duncan most definitely deserves to be this high, especially in our league where offense is plentiful and defense is much harder to come by. Duncan is the best defender of the era.

It was tough to put Magic at #7, but his defense was nothing to write home about. I could buy him being higher though.

In a way, you're right, but it is not specific to LeBron James. Every player, including Jordan will have a harder times faced with tougher defenses.(Well prime Shaq might be one exception)

i agree, but i think it's really close and don't fault anyone for going either way

my argument in a nutshell is that tougher defense leads to less penetration, and more jump shots. this is very bad for the current-age LBJ, imo

ok time to stop spamming this thread for now, ill be back later

If Jordan never retired and Hakeem never won a title, I don't think Hakeem would be widely considered better than Robinson like he is today imo.

Either that or hes trolling. I've never seen someone spit out so many sports cliches.

The advantage of Duncan is that it's really easy to build a team around him.
You will easily find good scoring guards and forwards to pair with him in the latter rounds.
I mean a guy like Tony parker will be pretty useless if you'have Jordan or James on your team.
Of course this is mostly due to the fact that it's easier to buid around big man, but Duncan is so complete that it gives you an incredibly solid base in every area.

Its very close, and I thought about it a lot before my pick. Obviously with defense we have to go upon our own eyes a lot. I don't really care to get into an argument here, as "I think Duncan looks better on D" vs "Well I think Hakeem looks better on D" is completely pointless.

So all we can really go on is awards and some of the advanced defensive stats we have.

With awards, Duncan has been All 1st Team defense in 10 out of 10 years in the league but has never taken home the DPOY award. Hakeem was all 1st Team defense 5 out of 12 years, and also has 4 2nd Team All Defense. Hakeem won DPOY twice.

With stats, defensive rating is pretty much the best metric. Duncan has the edge based upon numbers, but it was a higher scoring era during Hakeem's career(although that could be attributed to worse defenses rather than better offenses, which I happen to believe to be the case).


I think its very close. And I think its silly for you to simply state your opinion as fact without providing any reasoning. I give the slight slight edge to Duncan based upon what I've listed above.

WTF listed Kobe as #3-5 of this era yet alone of all time???


When comparing Kobe's numbers to Jordan's you have to realize that defenses were much worse during Jordan's era which can be seen by the entire league scoring at a much higher and more efficient rate back then.

This week I again raised the issue with Tex Winter, who spent years coaching each man.
“I tend to think how very much they’re alike,” he replied. “They both display tremendous reaction, quickness and jumping ability. Both have a good shooting touch. Some people say Kobe is a better shooter, but Michael really developed as a shooter as he went along. I don’t know if Kobe is a better shooter than Michael was at his best.”
Observers like to point out that Jordan played on a Chicago Bulls team with no great center, but Winter always countered that Jordan was a great post-up player and in essence was the premier post weapon of his time.
Bryant himself came into the NBA with amazingly good post skills, but there was never room for him to play in the post with Shaquille O’Neal occupying the lane during their years together with the Lakers.
In a lot of ways, Bryant is Jordan’s equal as a post player, Winter said, except for one critical element. “What’s happened to Kobe and his post play — and he is a great post player — is that he’s catching the ball just out of the lane and the defenders are forcing him out toward the wing.
“It’s hard for him to get a deep post position,” Winter explained. “Michael had a knack for holding his ground a little better than Kobe. Those strong defenders force Kobe out of there. When that happens, we need to go away from Kobe, instead of challenging the defense there. You don’t want him to start on the post and end up out on the wing.”
The situation leads some to wonder if Bryant’s difficulties in the post don’t lead him sometimes to an over-reliance on the 3-pointer.
“I like to see him take 3s when he’s got ‘em,” Winter said. “He’s an excellent 3-point shooter. I like to see him take them when the floor is spaced and the defense is not closing out fast enough. If the ball is moved quickly, then he has a chance at a good look. Plus defenders foul him on the close-out and he gets a chance at a four-point play. He would get more four-point plays if officials called it when defenders fouled him on the 3.”
Bryant also gets a lot of excellent looks when he charges up in transition and the defense is slow to react to him, Winter said. “He’ll bring the ball up. If they back up on him, he’ll move right to that 3-point line and hit it.”
Bryant has always faced questions about the quality and quantity of his shots.
“We study the tapes,” Winter said of Bryant’s recent scoring binge. “Actually, for the most part, he’s not forcing up a lot of bad shots. When he gets hot, he does take shots that would be questionable for other players. But a lot of the shots he’s taken go in.”
What constitutes a forced shot for most players is not necessarily a bad shot for Bryant, Winter explained. “He’ll take shots that not many other players are going to be able to hit, and he hits them.”
Long known as the innovator and developer of the triangle offense, Winter acknowledges that of recent Bryant has done much of his scoring while “not really running the triangle sequence options” that define the offense.
“But he is running out of the triangle format and making use of the offense’s spacing and ball movement,” Winter offered.
When the team does run the offense, Bryant finds most of his success at small forward, which allows him to work “behind the defense,” as Winter has often explained. “He gets the ball in position where he’s isolated and can attack the basket a little better. He gets more isolation that way. The triangle creates opportunity for him and he knows that.”
Even with all of Bryant’s offensive success, Winter said the team needs to keep the ball moving, that Bryant’s teammates still defer to him too much.
The main message that Winter, a Lakers consultant, would like to get across to Bryant is that the problem is not his offense.
“I’d like to see him play better defense,” Winter said, adding that he had addressed the issue recently with Bryant but didn’t come away with the idea that Bryant was intent on changing his approach.
“You know Kobe,” Winter said with a chuckle. “He has his game plan. I think he heard me. But he feels there’s a certain way he’s got to play the game. But it doesn’t involve a lot of basically sound defense.”
Because the Lakers need so much of his effort at the offensive end, Bryant has adopted a save-energy plan on the defensive end, Winter said. “He’s basically playing a lot of one-man zone. He’s doing a lot of switching, zoning up, trying to come up with the interception.
“The way Kobe plays defensively affects the team,” Winter added. “Anybody that doesn’t play consistently good defense hurts the team. That’s not only Kobe. Our other guards tend to gamble and get beat. Another problem is that the screen and roll is not played correctly.”

http://lakernoise.com/2007/03/29/tex-on-kobe-vs-mj/

And I'm not sold on the Thomas and Stockton pick.
I think the value of traditionnal point guards goes down in this format. The main concern is that it will be difficult to build a team around them, as have to quickly make up for the scoring and rebounding that you're now lacking by taking someone like Stockton as your first pick.
I like chris Paul more, because is a scoring machine, and you will need your biggest star to be able to pick points in scoring.

Seriously? You can't see why this is bad analysis? Hint: Pao and Bynum havn't played together much.

Scoring is by far going to be the easiest asset to find in this league. There will be a ton of guys who averaged 20+ ppg in their primes still available in the late rounds.

This is soooo wrong. Scoring and rebounding are two of the most abundant attributes that will be available in this draft.

How does this format devalue PG's like Stockton? How is it difficult to build a team around John Stockton? You can surround him with a huge combination of player types and he will be extremely successful.

This is mind boggling to me. Because Chris Paul can score 5 more points a game that makes him >>>>>>>>> than John Stockton? You can pick a guy in the 5th round who can score 20 points per game, you can't pick a guy who will average 14 assists, score 17 points, get 3 steals, be an amazing defender, and shoot 51 ****ing percent in any round outside of 1.

Guys who can go 20-10 are much more abundant than guys like Stockton.

Yeah but if scorers are so easy to find why would you need a guy that helps other scores as your first option?(half kidding)
Given that we are forty in this draft, teams won't be as stacked as one might think. By the third round, they won't be any all stars availble and not that many great scorers. You'll be rapidly filling the sopts with very good role players. And I don't think its wise to try to build a top team relying on guy like Jamison or J Richardson to score 20 a game.

If you're playing against very good teams, mismatches becomes much more important, and great scorers becomes much more important. Assist are harder to get than points or rebounds. Every team is going to score and miss shots, not every team is gonna pile up assists. (plus if a players rack up tons of assist it's not necessarly a sign of great efficiency, as it means he has the ball a ton in his hands).
So basically, yeah you're gonna have tons of 20 PPG games scorers. You'll have al the Ricky Davises of the World taking enough shots to get to 20 points, cause somebody got to score. It does not mean that you want him scoring, even if John Stockton is assisting him.
There is a huge diffirence beetween Michael Jordan averaging 30 and Jerry Stackhouse averaging 30

as yo noted later, the same can be said for guys who score a ton of points. the great point guards are going to distribute the ball efficiently, the great scorers will score efficiently, etc. a team that is getting a lot of assisted baskets is going to have a smoother offense, b/c otherwise you just get a lot of ball watching and iso plays.