[dirno2000]

J-thing the year Jordan retired, Pippen averaged 22/9/6, shot 49% from the field, finished first team all defense and was 3rd in MVP voting.

It always amazes me that people overlook the fact that we actually got to see what Pippen could do without Jordan for a full year. If you want to go by the numbers he was actually better without Jordan then with him.

As far as making your teammates better, I hate that arguement because it's so subjective and people use it against players that they don't like. People claim that Kobe doesn't make his teammates better yet 82games did some analysis to show that almost to a man, the other Lakers are better when in the game with Kobe. Same thing applies to Dirk. GMC did an similair analysis to show that almost every Maverick is more efficient when playing with Dirk.

Why is making your teammates better such a big deal anyway? Like Spiral and Dtown said, great players make the team better. That's what's important.

As for the article, this is the one measure that I don't agree with:
3. If you replaced every MVP candidate with a decent player at their position for the entire season, what would be the effect on their teams' records?

I don't like this line of thinking because it gives an advantage to great players on bad teams. Of course Kobe's team is going to miss him the most, they have Smush Parker starting at PG...don't penalize Dirk for that.