Linball

Verse, if all you look at are numbers, then you might think Malone is better than Thomas.
But since Thomas was not a total gunner and ball hog, his teams won. When Thomas needed to be a gunner, he turned it on.

25 points in one quarter vs the Lakers on one good leg

When he won the 1990 NBA Finals MVP against Portland, he averaged 27.6 points per game, 7.0 assists per game, and 5.2 rebounds per game. That is insane.

 

If Malone's peak hadn't lined up against the Jordan Bulls, he'd probably have two rings.

 

Using the Heat to make any kind of point here about the Knicks or Anthony is bizare, especially if you're trying to say the Bulls are somehow a greater sum of their parts because they play the right way. The Heat fucking curb-stomped the Bulls in the playoffs last year. Just destroyed them, and James had arguably the best series of any player in the entire playoffs. And I would bet the same thing happens this year in the post-season. The Heat lost a close game in Chicago recently that was the second night of a back-to-back? BFD.

There is a big difference between fake superstars and legitimate superstars. Anthony is not the kind of player who makes people around him better. James has always made everyone around him better, on every single team he's played on since he was 9 years old. It's boring as hell to watch fake superstars play basketball, but if you can get over how James ended up in Miami, it's fun to watch he and Wade play together. Especially this year. The Heat lost to the Mavs because they ran into a team that got hot at the right time and because they choked. If the core of the Heat had been playing together as long as the core of the Mavs had, I think the outcome would have easily flipped.

 

Linball is back. Barren Davis tweaked his hammy. Unusual as he as rarely ever hurt.

 

You and I have different criteria for what constitutes a curb-stomping.

The Heat outscored the Bulls by an aggregate 11 points in five games.

The Bulls absolutely destroyed the Heat in Game 1, 103-82.

In Game 2, the score was tied with 7:16 to play before the Bulls went cold. (In fairness, the Heat can do that to a team when they lower themselves to give a damn.)

Game 4 went into overtime after the Bulls led in the fourth quarter and Derrick Rose missed a potential game-winning shot in the waning seconds. The Heat had to hit 24 free throws in a row to survive.

The Bulls led Game 5 by 12 points with 3:14 to go before falling 83-80.

"This series is an absolute bloodbath. That game tonight was a total grind." - Erik Spoelstra

"The Heat fucking curb-stomped the Bulls in the playoffs last year. Just destroyed them." - Double Down

Which sounds more accurate?

 

The curb-stomping one.

It was always close until it mattered, at which point James could shut down Rose and the Bulls didn't have any secondary scoring options.

Since the Bulls haven't (and probably can't) find themselves a real secondary scoring option, the same thing is going to happen this year.

 

"the Heat can do that to a team when they lower themselves to give a damn"?

Pretty ignorant statement right there.

 

Karl Malone's teams won plenty. In the 1989 and 1990 Pistons title seasons, the Jazz won 116 games while the Pistons won 122. But Malone carried a substantially large part of the load than Isiah Thomas did.

I think saying you would rather have Thomas than Malone in the playoffs is a lot like saying you would rather have Paul Pierce than LeBron James in the playoffs. It's true that Pierce steps his game up for the playoffs. It's true that James is generally better in the regular season than in the playoffs. But the combination of Pierce's rise and James' slip does not make the players exactly comparable. James is a better player than Pierce, but the comparison is a lot closer in the playoffs.

 

Yes, Malone's teams won plenty. Except a title. Isiah Thomas won consecutive titles during perhaps the most competitive era in NBA history.

And he was the Pistons' best player; your earlier point about Dumars winning Finals MVP as some sort of proof he was better than Thomas is ludicrous. Tony Parker won 2007 Finals MVP. Are you going to try and argue he was better or more valuable to the Spurs than Tim Duncan?

 

I never said Joe Dumars was better than Thomas. My only point was that, at the time, Thomas was not a top-10 player in the NBA any longer. My point in the context of this thread was that all three Pistons championship teams won without a top-10 player. Someone had said earlier in the thread that the 2003-04 Pistons were the only team to win a title in the past 20 years without a top-five player.

I would greatly dispute the notion that he won titles in the most competitive era in NBA history. The Celtics and Lakers dynasties were on the downside, each having lost key players and had others reduced by age and injury. And the Bulls didn't have much other than Michael Jordan yet. Scottie Pippen didn't emerge as an elite second option until 1991-92.

Karl Malone's 1996-97 and 1997-98 Jazz teams were among the best non-champions in NBA history. He didn't win a title because Jordan (and Pippen and Dennis Rodman and Phil Jackson) was the ultimate roadblock.

 

Sorry, but you're wrong. The only reason Malone's teams even managed to make the Finals those years was because the West was wide open. Shaq had just joined the Lakers and Kobe was just 18. Olajuwon and Barkley were old, and Kemp's Sonics fell apart.

You want some great non-champions, look at Drexler's Blazers or Barkley's Suns. The Blazers destroyed the Jazz in the playoffs for two straight years, and the Jazz couldn't even make it out of the first round in '93, losing to ... wait for it ... Kemp's Sonics, who, by the way, were also a better non-champion than Malone's Jazz.