As a Knick Fan I really hope Carmelo leaves. I firmly believe a team will never win a championship with him as the go to guy. I also dont think he will ever relinquish the go to guy status so there the conundrum lies. It could be said he had his best statistical season last year, and the knicks finished 8 games under, they can surely do that without him. He is a great scorer and an underrated rebounder but man does he stifle an offense.
I would gladly take Asik, Lin (and a number one???) for Melo. Then trade Chandler for Lee and Barnes and sign Patty Mills. I think they would be fun to watch.
[quote]MattyXL wrote:
As a Knick Fan I really hope Carmelo leaves. I firmly believe a team will never win a championship with him as the go to guy. I also dont think he will ever relinquish the go to guy status so there the conundrum lies. It could be said he had his best statistical season last year, and the knicks finished 8 games under, they can surely do that without him. He is a great scorer and an underrated rebounder but man does he stifle an offense.
I would gladly take Asik, Lin (and a number one???) for Melo. Then trade Chandler for Lee and Barnes and sign Patty Mills. I think they would be fun to watch. [/quote]
Man, I really hope the Rockets don’t pick him up. He’s just not a good fit in that system. There’s rumblings that they’re gonna make a strong push for James though.
Along with that Knicks team I think if the early 90’s Cavs had stayed healthy they would’ve given the Bulls problems. That team was fucking loaded.
[quote]MattyXL wrote:
Even if the Heat keep Lebron, Wade and Bosh that team is going to look extremely different. Chalmers, Lewis, Anderson, Allen, Oden will all possibly be gone, It will be interesting to see what happens.
Going back to to Jordan, The 1992-93 Knicks had the best shot of beating Jordan and the bulls, won the first two games…got domed in Chicago then game 5, Charles Smith…SMH[/quote]
That left-handed flying dunk by Starks over Jordan is forever playing in my head. However, I had TOTALLY forgotten about that absurdly easy putback Charles Smith missed to lose the game for the Knicks. THANKS A LOT MATTY! SMH. (LOL)
Yeah, I squinted, looked at the TV sideways, upside down, imagined Olajuwon wearing a dress…BUT, he was still so much better than Ewing and that’s why the Knicks couldn’t beat the Rockets. That’s what I remember anyway.
I saw Embiid’s injury. Always too bad when a guy gets hurt.
If I am the Cavs or the Bucks I don’t mind. This makes choices easier at the top. But further down the board someone will have to make a tough choice. Now the question is how high do you take a chance on Embiid? We will have to wait and see more on the particulars of the injury, but also given the fact he missed the Big 12 and NCAA tournament he scares me.
[quote]JMac31 wrote:
I saw Embiid’s injury. Always too bad when a guy gets hurt.
If I am the Cavs or the Bucks I don’t mind. This makes choices easier at the top. But further down the board someone will have to make a tough choice. Now the question is how high do you take a chance on Embiid? We will have to wait and see more on the particulars of the injury, but also given the fact he missed the Big 12 and NCAA tournament he scares me.[/quote]
It sucks for the kid, and I hope what I’m going to say doesn’t turn out true because he seems like a great kid(attitude and everything), but this screams Greg Oden(or insert other ‘can’t miss big man’ that had a career of nothing but injuries here). Not that their games are the same(they aren’t) but I just don’t see him ever having a complete season really.
Simmons seems to think that if he falls to 6 Boston is taking him no questions asked, to the point that he tweeted he thinks this injury might end trade talks for Love because they need to keep the #1 pick just in case.
[quote]JMac31 wrote:
I saw Embiid’s injury. Always too bad when a guy gets hurt.
If I am the Cavs or the Bucks I don’t mind. This makes choices easier at the top. But further down the board someone will have to make a tough choice. Now the question is how high do you take a chance on Embiid? We will have to wait and see more on the particulars of the injury, but also given the fact he missed the Big 12 and NCAA tournament he scares me.[/quote]
It sucks for the kid, and I hope what I’m going to say doesn’t turn out true because he seems like a great kid(attitude and everything), but this screams Greg Oden(or insert other ‘can’t miss big man’ that had a career of nothing but injuries here). Not that their games are the same(they aren’t) but I just don’t see him ever having a complete season really.
Simmons seems to think that if he falls to 6 Boston is taking him no questions asked, to the point that he tweeted he thinks this injury might end trade talks for Love because they need to keep the #1 pick just in case.[/quote]
I was thinking poor man’s Oden before this. Oden at least had one pretty damn good college season, and he played most of it with his off hand. This kid had ONE YEAR where he averaged 11 & 8 then got hurt. Everyone’s talking about his “potential”. It blows my mind that NBA teams are so enamored with a guy who’s done so little. For Brad Daugherty (who was a damn good center for 5+ seasons) there’s ten Greg Oden’s, Hasheem Thabeet’s, Patrick O’Bryant’s, Michael Olawokandi’s… Guess if you’re gonna swing and miss, miss big.
If anyone remembers Big Z was a very similar player to Embiid when the Cavs drafted him in the first round. He had a stress fracture in his foot, and a bunch of surgeries just to be able to walk, i doubt anyone in the Cavs will want to deal with that again.
[quote]gregron wrote:
^^that’s the NBA way. Drafting “potential” that usually doesn’t pan out.
They do the same thing in the NFL but call it “upside.”[/quote]
I understand all these buzzwords “potential”, “upside”, “ceiling”, etc. I mean you want I guy that is going to get better, but don’t you also want someone who is good at the sport? People get way to caught up on ideal body type.
WhiteFlash had some good NBA examples. In the NFL Blaine Gabbert comes to mind. The guy had 16 TD passes and 9 interceptions in the Big 12 his final college season, but because he is 6’4" the Jaguars trade up to get him.
I happen to be a big fan of drafting a player who is very good at the sport he plays.
[quote]gregron wrote:
^^that’s the NBA way. Drafting “potential” that usually doesn’t pan out.
They do the same thing in the NFL but call it “upside.”[/quote]
I understand all these buzzwords “potential”, “upside”, “ceiling”, etc. I mean you want I guy that is going to get better, but don’t you also want someone who is good at the sport? People get way to caught up on ideal body type.
WhiteFlash had some good NBA examples. In the NFL Blaine Gabbert comes to mind. The guy had 16 TD passes and 9 interceptions in the Big 12 his final college season, but because he is 6’4" the Jaguars trade up to get him.
I happen to be a big fan of drafting a player who is very good at the sport he plays. [/quote]
It’s also about what’s hot at the moment. After Garnett everyone was looking for 7-footers that could do it all and were better from outside-in. Then came Nowitzki and everyone started drafting international kids that no one had really seen anything but some grainy vid of them shooting in an open gym in the Baltic mountains. The thing is that dominant 7-footers will NEVER go outta style, so someone will always take that chance. If we could do '07 again and know nothing other than Oden would be and stay Healthy (and knowing Durant would be what he is) I still think Oden goes #1. He was that good/promising, and if he woulda stayed healthy the Blazers would’ve been almost instant contenders.
It is a bit of a catch-22. There seems to be this injury risk with these 7-footers, but because of that healthy ones are even more valuable. I don’t have any data to back this up, but it sure seems like many “could be great” 7 foot+ centers have had career shorten by injury. Yao Ming had some solid years, but had trouble staying healthy after 3 years in the league. Ming basically had a career ending stress fracture. Also fill in any other names like Oden, Bynum, Bowie, etc.
That being said I like to try and not over react. Many 7-footers have had extremely healthy careers. Also smaller guys do have bad luck with injuries (Rose, Roy come to recent memory). It would be interesting to see any data or correlation with height and injury.
It would make sense for bigger guys to have foot problems given their size and all the pounding basketball puts on the body. However, this theory leaves me scratching my head thinking about Shaq. Not only is he tall, but also so heavy. He had a healthy and productive career.
EDIT: I suppose it is also worth noting Kareem at 7’2" is the all time leaders in minutes played. So, 7-footers can be very durable. And going back to weight Kareem 7’2" 225 while Shaq 7’1" 325. Wow.
Shaq and Kareem are outliers, and probably the 2 of the best 5 big men to ever touch a basketball.
The Cavs had a “healthy” bynum for the first 1/4 of last year, and nobody on the roster knew how to play with a big man. Granted they dint know how to play period for 3/4 of the season, but most guys these days dont know how to play an inside out game.
The only big man today i can think of who is dominate is anthony davis, and he not a prototypical big man.
[quote]Aggv wrote:
Shaq and Kareem are outliers, and probably the 2 of the best 5 big men to ever touch a basketball.
The Cavs had a “healthy” bynum for the first 1/4 of last year, and nobody on the roster knew how to play with a big man. Granted they dint know how to play period for 3/4 of the season, but most guys these days dont know how to play an inside out game.
The only big man today i can think of who is dominate is anthony davis, and he not a prototypical big man. [/quote]
Shaq also missed a ton of games throughout the years. Don’t think he came close to playing a full season.
Just looked it up and Shaq’s first three years were 81, 81 & 79 games played. After that he only had four seasons where he played more than 67 games. So even though he made it 18 years, he was always missing pretty significant chunks of the season.
