2010 NBA offseason draft, FA, etc etc...

The ship be sinkin.
I wonder if Amare has buyers remorse this a.m.

 

Legler said on Mike and Mike earlier this morning that yesterday was a great day for the NBA.

What a dope.

 

NBA is on front page of every sports section across the country and lead story on every radio and television show . . . in mid-July.

A buzz has been created that will last all season just as the league was falling into a pretictable pattern (Lakers beat xxxxxxx for NBA title). Can't count on long-in-tooth Celtics to get back there again.

Ratings this year will go up, if for no other reason the curiosity factor.

Bad day for Cavs and Knicks. But Cavs' run had to end --- we all knew that. And the Knicks suck no more today than yesterday. So that's a push.

So the NBA is much happier today than it was a month ago. How could it not be?

 

Ok, now we're getting a bit ridiculous.

Ron Boone was not really "on" that Laker team in any meaningful sense. He briefly appeared in only 6 games the entire season and made no contribution. And, although he might've once been an ABA all star, he was just a stragglin has been desperate to latch on to the end of anyone's bench by 1980.

Similar story for Haywood. He might've been an all star in 1970, but by 1980 he was just an over the hill journeymen who'd only been getting backup minutes for years.

By that logic, Lebron played with a whole BUNCH of former all stars the last couple years (Shaquille O'Neal, Zydrunas Illguaskas, Ben Wallace, Antawn Jamison, Joe Smith, Wally Sczerbiak, etc.). Nevermind that they were washed up when he did it.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/LAL/1980.html

 

Haywood was worse than a journeyman.

He was a coke addict who came close to tearing the team apart. He was suspended for the Finals in 1980 and says he "left the Forum and drove off in my Rolls that night thinking one thought — that [coach Paul] Westhead must die." Haywood hired a Detroit mobster to kill Westhead, but later reconsidered.

Great All-Star talent that helped Magic win a title, eh?

 

I did double check the Boone thing, and I was wrong.

But to say the Wilkes, Nixon and Jabbar was just cannon fodder on the court is totally wrong. And all three of those guys were in their prime or a season or two away from it.

The Lakers won 47 the season before Magic.

 

Nixon was 17 and 11 after he left the Lakers and Wilkes scored 20 a season while shooting between 50 and 53 percent from the floor. Jamison is the only player who might be able to be mentioned in the same breath as these two.

Plus, this is such a watered down NBA when you look at the number of teams, that players like Mo Williams and Hughes can put up decent numbers because they are playing against guys who would have never been in the league back then.

There are eight more teams dressing out players now than there were in the late 1970s.

 

I would agree with you that the "Lebron didn't have the supporting cast" excuse is way overblown. And, while they might've made some poor decisions about who to sign, NOBODY can ever claim that the Cavs weren't willing to spend the money or make the effort to give Lebron the help he wanted.

Gilbert spent over the cap and had to pay the luxury tax and was constantly making every effort to upgrade the roster. When people said the Cavs needed a new point guard, he went out and signed a solid starter in Mo Williams who was an all star last year, when people said he needed another big body to put on Dwight Howard he went out and signed Shaq, when people said mid-season that they needed another front line scoring option, he went out and got a guy putting up 20 10 all star type numbers in Jamison.

Steve Nash has a legitimate gripe that his Suns teams never broke through because their ownership was too cheap and didn't make the effort. Lebron can't say that. Gilbert spent every penny that he was allowed to and was constantly making every effort to upgrade the roster.

And the Cavs did not lose this year because of the supporting cast. They lost because Lebron himself laid an egg the latter half of that Celtics series (and COMPLETELY no-showed in the crucial Game 5 at home).

 

You mean guys like Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Mehmet Okur, Andrei Kirilenko (and dozens more) . . . players who would never have been in the league back then, because there were no international players back then.

It's not quite as watered down as you think. In 1980 the NBA was selecting talent from a pool of 280 million Americans. Today it is selecting from a pool of 6.5 billion around the world.

Kind of like the old Babe Ruth argument. "How would he have done against the watered-down pitching today?"

You mean the watered-down pitching that includes black and Hispanic players he never had to worry about facing?

 

Ask me again in a year.

 

Exactly. The "watered down talent" theory is so full of holes. Yeah, there's about 5 more teams and 60 more roster spots now, meanwhile there's been about a 5 billion increase in the population pool where the best talent to fill those spots is being drawn from. The idea of a 7 footer playing the perimeter like Dirk Nowitzki does was unheard of in 1980. There were far more guys playing then that could not make the league today than vice versa.