After reviewing the past few posts, I thought I'd try to restate my opinion, because I may not have been very clear.
I have two objections to the idea that sabonis has had some success against shaq in the past.
My primary objection has to do with what 'success' is. That may be a good point of debate here where we often talk about how much player a will benefit team x. In this thread, we've been sort of defining 'success' as offensive, defensive, and/or contribution to team performance.
RWB threw out a hot sports opinion without really defining what he meant or what role the opinion plays in the current discussion. This leaves interpretation and argumentation to the rest of us. I interpret the statement as Sabonis the individual had success against Shaq the individual. Interpreting it in this way means that if shaq got his usual numbers, then sabonis had no effect on shaq, regardless of the outcome of the game.
Interpreting the statement as 'the blazers defensive strategy had success against shaq' is not really valid. That would be attributing blazer's team performance to sabonis, but not attributing Laker's team performance to shaq. It also completely ignores sabonis's offensive contributions (sabonis's points and assists were much lower than shaq's) and rebounding contributions (shaq doubled sabonis's rebound totals). Shaq also shot a lot of freethrows - largely due to sabonis's fouls.
Likewise, interpreting the statement as 'Sabonis's defense interrupted the Lakers offense' also ignores the (relative lack of) offensive production by sabonis, and ignores his inability to keep shaq from interrupting the Blazer's offense.
The blazers lost. period. twice. the second time worse than the first. In my own humble opinion, for players as important as Shaq, that is the best measure of overall contribution to team performance.
A secondary objection (which I have had confused with the first) is - what the hell good does it do to have 'some success' against shaq? All it means is that shaq dominates by less than he otherwise would, and kobe or the role players are left to beat you.
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