2014 NBA Playoffs thread

Easy to build a "home-grown" power when you have the No. 1 pick in the draft two years out of three, including one year after you just won an NBA title.

How many times did Cleveland own the No. 1 pick when LeBron was there, so they could fill the roster around him with a couple of Hall of Famers like Magic and Worthy?

Absolutely right. Brain-fart there.

Of course they could. Especially if Popovich is in charge of picking/coaching the team.

 

90s' Bulls >>>>> 10s Miami

That does not prove, or even imply, Jordan > James (which may be true, it's just not true because of that).

 

This is not really accurate. As soon as Moses hit restricted free agency he signed a fat free agency offer sheet with the Sixers. Knowing they wouldn't be able to keep him, the Rockets then matched the offer and then traded him to the Sixers only so they could at least get something of immensely lesser value (Caldwell Jones) in return.

So that was actually a free agency based transaction, and one that was very analogous to the Lebron situation: superstar sick of being a one man team went hunting for a title contender that already had an established superstar (Dr. J) as soon as he hit free agency in pursuit of an easier path to a title.

This whole distinction you're trying to make between "bought" and non-bought titles is rather silly. This is PRO sports, they're all bought.

 

Damn, I had forgotten about that.

LeBron was technically TRADED to the Heat.

 

Well the detail you leave out is the Rockets encouraged him to leave, to dump his salary and rebuild, then realized they could get something out of it by matching the offer then trading, which was a shrewd enough move.

But the decision had been made by the Rockets that they weren't keeping him around. The departure was mutual at best, but really, it was Houston's decision. It certainly wasn't a case of Moses deciding "I'm Taking my talents to the Liberty Bell."

 

Oh for cripes sake. You're positively stoned if you think the Rockets, only a year removed from reaching the NBA Finals, thought "you know, I want to lose the reigning League MVP when he's still young, in exchange for barely anything, so that we can drop all the way 14-68 next year because, gosh darnit, I just feel like rebuilding..."

Moses is the one who initiated the deal by signing the free agency offer from Philly, without any "encouragement" from anyone in Houston. What he did was no more noble than what Lebron did.

 

So, to sum up:

The Heat are a "bought" team. The Showtime Lakers, despite having an average payroll that was 20-25 percent higher than any other team in the NBA at the time, were NOT a "bought" team. Neither were the Bulls, even though their top 5 players took up almost three-quarters of their salary cap.

Michael Jordan - who played with exactly as many Hall of Famers as James has on the Heat, by the way (Pippen, Wade) - is better because he never lost championships. Except for the nine times he did. And, he's better because three of the years he played don't actually count toward his career as a whole. And the fact that Jordan played for one of the four greatest coaches in history, without whom he didn't win a title, doesn't matter, either.

LeBron James, who actually took a pay cut when he left Cleveland for Miami, cares more about money than winning. Michael Jordan, who threatened to leave Chicago as a free agent before re-signing for a near-1,000-percent raise from $3.8 million to $30 million, cared more about winning and the team that drafted him.

Do I have all that right?

 

Bosh is going to the Hall of Fame as well. Many of you seem to be forgetting how easy it is to get into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Also, while it's been said many times here that Bosh is really overrated, he's not. He's properly rated by those who watch more than five games a season because they realize how important he is to just about everything the Heat do well, especially offensively. His ability to step out and hit outside shots makes a huge difference for their spacing. He was a good low post player when that's what was needed of him in Toronto. The Heat invert their offense and use Wade and LeBron in the post instead because they often have better matchups down there. If Bosh couldn't shoot from the outside, they would have no space to work.

 

Important and overrated are not mutually exclusive.

 

Maybe you're right about the HOF, but that's kind of beside the point.

Is Bosh any more important to the Heat than, say, Toni Kukoc or Horace Grant were to Jordan's Bulls? I don't think so.

And, the main point really is that championships don't count more just because you win them with the team that drafted you. Especially considering Jordan and James really had similar talent levels around them.

And, especially factoring in the Jackson-Spoelstra divide.

 

Bosh is what I call a leading indicator player. That's a player who's no better than third option whose performances still have an outsized impact on team performance. That is, when said player has a big game, his team almost always wins. Cedric Maxwell of the '80s Celtics was the original model for my concept.
PS: Considering the amount of criticism he receives on this board, it's hard for me to call Bosh overrated. He has many detractors.

 

Yes.

And thanks, Rick. I took 6th grade English, too.