2018 NBA Playoffs

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally Posted by MavzMan

You mean him and Phil Jackson. I do see some of point but I also look at what he did when he went to Houston and Portland which wasn't much.

You mean when he was old??? He was still a damn good player in Houston, and he was 34 years old by the time he got to Portland.

I'm not sure that I would label him a top 10 player of that era either. In no specific order, consider Malone, Stockton, Robinson, Barkley, Shaq, Hakeem, Reggie, Drexler, Payton. I consider all of those to be legit franchise players and ahead of Pippen with maybe the exception of Payton.

I'll take Scottie over Drexler, Reggie, and Payton, but that's me.

The greatest team ever? I don't think so.

I mean, you're free to disagree. But I'd bet you're in the minority. Either way, they were really, really, really f*cking good, yes?

They had arguably the best player and coach ever.

You say this as if the best player and the coach are, like, not part of the team.

Valid argument, but I'm spit-balling how to prevent the Lebron and KD from teaming up or GS from forming in the first place. Yes, you water the talent pool down to balance out the teams in the league. It's not possible to give every team a Lebron or KD.

And what I'm saying is, I think that would be bad for the league. For one, I think it's borderline unethical to prevent star players from playing together just because... we don't like it, I guess? Call me crazy, but I think these guys SHOULD be able to team up and play together wherever they want. I'm generally a believer in player empowerment. I don't *like* that KD went to GSW, but I think it was absolutely his right to do so.

But more importantly, you're completely altering the landscape of the league- in a very negative way, I think. You're essentially saying that great players should never be allowed to play together- unless they happen to be lucky enough to be drafted by the same team, or someone agrees to play for much less than what they're worth. I think these would both be TERRIBLE for the league, and for the sport. You're basically putting a hard limit on how good a team can be. You might not like superteams, but I promise you, most of us WANT to see great players play together. We want to see the game played at its highest level. What we absolutely do not want to see is every superstar in the league stuck on an island, all spread out over the league, with every team being mediocre and none of them being great. We see WAY too much of that already in the league. There are already far too many lone stars wasting their careers on bad teams with lousy supporting casts.

Most importantly of all, what I'm trying to argue here is that I don't think "superteams" are some kind of problem that need to be addressed. Again, the point I'm stressing is- THIS IS NOT NEW. THIS IS THE WAY THE NBA HAS ALWAYS BEEN. The NBA has always had that one or two teams that utterly dominate all the others. Hell, look at the previous era- 9 out of 15 championships were won by either Tim Duncan or Shaquille O'neal.

Nobody ever complained before Lebron joined Miami. So apparently we don't mind one team being dominant, but for some reason we can't tolerate it when the players themselves decide where they want to play? I don't understand this.

Furthermore, people seem to think that superstars joining up in free agency is some massive trend and the league norm now. But it's been done exactly twice. Lebron in 2010, and KD last year. That's it. This isn't some long term trend- not yet anyway.

Plus, superteams built through free agency do actually have a built-in weakness. The salary cap demands that in order to have multiple max contracts, the rest of the roster suffers for it. This is ultimately what destroyed the Miami superteam. GSW will fare better, because they already had the supporting cast in place before Durant came on board. Plus they're younger and just better. Still, they'll only be able to keep all those guys together for so long. I'm betting they'll have a shorter shelf life than some of the other all-time great teams.

[MavzMan]

Originally Posted by Thespiralgoeson

I mean, you're free to disagree. But I'd bet you're in the minority. Either way, they were really, really, really f*cking good, yes?

The 91-93 Bulls consisted of Jordan, Pippen and these guys who played every game of the playoffs:
Horace Grant
Bill Cartwright
John Paxson
BJ Armstrong
Craig Hodges
Will Perdue
Cliff Levingston
Scott Williams
Stacey King
Trent Tucker

The 96-98 Bulls consisted of Jordan, Pippen, and now Rodman, plus
Toni Kukoc
Ron Harper
Luc Longley
Steve Kerr
Bill Wennington
Bison Dele
Scott Burrell

I don't consider either of those to be super-teams as of today. I give the vast amount of credit to Jordan and Phil, then a significant to Pippen and much smaller to Rodman. Other than those, it's role players who were coached or led to play above themselves.

You drop KD and Curry from GS, then Jordan and Pippen from the Bulls, and the Warriors would destroy the Bulls.

That's about all I got so I'll quit there and give you the last thoughts/rebuttal.

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally Posted by MavzMan

The 91-93 Bulls consisted of Jordan, Pippen and these guys who played every game of the playoffs:
Horace Grant
Bill Cartwright
John Paxson
BJ Armstrong
Craig Hodges
Will Perdue
Cliff Levingston
Scott Williams
Stacey King
Trent Tucker

The 96-98 Bulls consisted of Jordan, Pippen, and now Rodman, plus
Toni Kukoc
Ron Harper
Luc Longley
Steve Kerr
Bill Wennington
Bison Dele
Scott Burrell

I don't consider either of those to be super-teams as of today. I give the vast amount of credit to Jordan and Phil, then a significant to Pippen and much smaller to Rodman. Other than those, it's role players who were coached or led to play above themselves.

You drop KD and Curry from GS, then Jordan and Pippen from the Bulls, and the Warriors would destroy the Bulls.

That's about all I got so I'll quit there and give you the last thoughts/rebuttal.

I think we're again just quibbling over the definition of what is a "superteam." You say it's not a superteam because it was all about Jordan and Phil... I'm saying they were the superteam of that decade, because they utterly dominated that decade. I don't care if its one superstar or a bunch of role players, or 3 superstars and no role players... Hell, Jordan was a "superteam" by himself, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm saying that team as a whole with every guy playing their part was the- in my opinion- the best team ever. Those role players- the Kerr's, Cartwright's, Paxson's, and Kukoc's of those Bulls teams all played their roles perfectly. They did exactly what they needed to do, no more, no less.

I agree that the current Warriors without Curry and Durant would destroy the Bulls without MJ and Pippen. I don't care about that though. All I care about is which team would win with both teams at full strength. I'd put the 1996 Bulls against the 2018 Warriors any day. Since we can't do that, all we can do is look at what each team has done in their respective era. Jordan's Bulls won 6 titles in 8 years- and I firmly believe it would have been eight consecutive titles if Jordan hadn't left to play baseball. They also never at any point in that entire decade lost more than 2 games in a row. That seems impossible... But it happened. The current Warriors are still early in their run, but I don't think they will ever reach that peak. No other team has dominated the league that way in the modern era (Russell's Celtics don't count. The sport was in its infancy.) THAT is what I mean when I say that Jordan's Bulls were the greatest team ever- and the most super of all superteams.