All purpose NBA thread 07/08

You're right Songbird. Sheed can get really annoying sometimes(I had 4th row season tickets last year. Believe me, I know how annoying he can get).

But when you think about it, who doesn't bitch about every call?

 

If Rasheed just shut up and played like a madman for 48 minutes, he'd be a wonderful speciman of the game. Instead, he stunts himself, and the team.

 

Star -- But he's been there for, what. seven or eight years?
Couple of championships.
Well worth the inevitable, I'd say.

 

I agree. Ask any GM if they would trade two titles for 7-8 years of 'Sheed's antics and every single one would take the deal.

 

They've only won once with Sheed, then lost in 7 to the Spurs when trying to repeat. Great player but I'd have gotten rid of him by now and let someone else have the headache.

 

No. ONE championship. (1). Uno. ONE.

Three embarassing flameouts in the playoffs (although the first was really more Larry Brown's fault than anything else).

He arrived in the middle of the 2003-04 season (dumped like a case of rabies by Portland), and they won the championship (he was the fourth or fifth most important player on the team, behind B. Wallace, Billups, Hamilton for sure).

Since then, he's been edging closer and closer to the completely worthless asshole he was with the Jail Blazers, refusing to play low-post (where the team needs him), hoisting up 3-pointers from buzzer to buzzer, and carrying on an utterly eternal full-throated harangue against the refs, absolutely guaranteeing that if they weren't already out to fuck him and the team over, if they hadn't made up their minds, that there would never be any doubt, and the team, of course, indeed gets completely fucked by the refs every trip down the court. As the team slides further and further out of title contention, more and more he's gonna become the NBA's Lester Burnham: just a regular guy with nothing left to lose (and also a really twisted fuck).

Oh yeah and by the way, a) Any time you hear about a 'troubled' or (especially) notoriously out-of-shape athlete coming into training camp 20 (or 40 or 60 or whatthefuckever) pounds lighter, guess what: 95% of the time, it's bullshit.

And b), Rasheed Wallace did not need to lose weight. If anything, he needed to GAIN weight, put on some muscle mass so as to be able to play better in the low post, but Rasheed Wallace doesn't feel like playing in the low post, so fuck you, me, Flip Saunders, Joe Dumars or anybody else who wants him to play the low post, fuck all of us, Rasheed Wallace is gonna go do whatever the fuck he wants.

The whole "golly gee, he's lost 20 pounds" bullshit was designed as a smokescreen to distract any attention to that final little inconvenient truth.

You keep screw-loose head cases like this on your roster at your own risk. See Artest, Sprewell, Rider, Kemp, Patterson, etc etc. Eventually it blows up on you.

 

Exactly, Starman.

 

I don't understand their unwillingness to part with Deng. Is he as good as Kobe right now? Not even close. Will he ever be as good as Kobe is right now? Unlikely.

If you want to get arguably the best player in the game, you have to give up something. The Bulls aren't winning a title, IMO, with Deng as the go-to-guy. With Kobe? I'd say their chances improve significantly.

 

Because Kobe is almost 30 with a lot of miles on the odometer. Deng is 22 and not yet approaching his prime. Throw in the salary discrepancy, and the fact that Kobe is a petulant little bitch when things aren't going his way (yeah, like that'll work with Chicago's coach and GM), and you have your answer.

 

Huh? They averaged 95.8 ppg last year with one of the worst starting fives the NBA has seen in a long time. I don't think scoring will be a problem at all for Boston. Stopping other teams, well that may be an issue.

 

The odometer point is a good one. He made it a point to lose weight to take some of the strain off his knees and in that Esquire feature someone linked to elsewhere he made a point to sit on a bar stool instead of a couch because it was easier on his knees.

I still think he's the best player in the league and will be a dominant player for a few more years. I'm not as enamored with Deng's game as others. I think he's good, and will be very good, but I just don't think he has the game to be to ever reach superstar status.

I don't know how the contracts work out, but I'm guessing Deng is in line for a payday soon, so that point will probably be moot in a year or two.

 

Deng won't get a max contract. Kobe is maxed out. My point is it's not worth gutting a strong, young team to get a 29-year-old who's starting to develop bad knees.