in the end, george got his payday and the destination he ultimately wanted. i'd say he's laughing his way to the bank...right now. but we change that by busting his a**. health permitting, i think lebron and davis will do just that to leonard/pg.
^the narrative is so overwhelmingly pro-clippers. I get the hype with Leonard as he is coming of off another championship. But honestly, I'd take James/Davis over any pairing in the NBA. The only thing that might not work in our favor is James age and mileage and that he might decline just enough for Kawhi/PG to trump them. But as of right now...James is already in unprecedented territory so obviously general rules of nature haven't applied to him yet. So there is also a chance he continues to re-define aging and continues to put up 27/7/7 which is really unprecedented for someone with 17 years and countless finals trips. LeBron James might not be the clutchest bucket getter, he might suck at the FT line and what not...but he is one of a kind. Nobody knows how his script is going to end because nobody has been down this route ever...
Both of those guys can take turns defending Lebron and shutting him down offensively at this age. Other people will have to be major contributors. And please no nonsense about him being the PG Less touches, not more, so he can conserve energy for when it’s needed.
they can take turns getting scored on by davis, too. feel like people have forgotten how good that guy is.
we sure about that? i can say that every time we played NO, i prayed for his rests because they beat our a**** like a drum when he was on the floor. not his fault his teams were total s*** for most of his time there. i think folks are about to find out that he's that caliber of player.
Jordan is close. He won his last ring when he was 34, and he was still the best player in the league at that point. Granted, the mileage on Jordan wasn't near as high as Lebron. Although Lebron didn't stay out gambling, drinking and smoking cigars for 8 hours the night before games either as Jordan regularly did.
^I agree with you completely....Jordan is probably close. One thing I would note though is that the game today is more dependent on athleticism than it was back then so aging has become somewhat more difficult. In today's NBA, most players are out of the league at age 35,36 or at least they are close to irrelevant...guys like Dirk, Vince etc. are exceptions. In the past the game wasn't as dependent on athleticism, so it was easier for these guys to hang around with skills. Guys like Malone, Stockton, Kidd, Pippen, Payton etc...all able to be major players late in their careers. Jordan was the best athlete in the NBA, so he was able to "slack" and still dominate late in his career because he had skills advantage and still athleticism advantage. James is playing in an era where everyone is an athletic freak. For James to remain among the best athletes at 34 is really crazy.
Hmmm, but the game back then was more physical. Players got beat on more than is allowed in todays game. I think the average player today is more motivated to stay in shape, that's for sure, but there were guys back then who worked as hard as todays players.
Yeah. And look who we're comparing Lebron to: the "consensus" best player to ever live. Jordan was really just a freak as well. He was an athletic beast who could essentially do whatever he wanted to his body. I swear, his body probably figured out how to turn cigar smoke into lean protein.
^I don't think so...compare today's guys to guys 30 years ago... Larry Bird has turned into Giannis IMO there is no doubt that in 30 years, today's NBA will look slow and guys will be more athletic. The evolution will never stop. There might not be another LeBron for the next 20 years...but at some point there is going to be another freak of nature... Its just crazy to think though.
i don't know... i agree that the game is MUCH more athletic than it was particularly in the 60s/70s. but by the 80s, you started having a lot of athletes out there and fewer non-athletes. and the real freaks are super rare and have appeared since the early times. my dad claims prime wilt would be an athletic freak in the modern nba, and i believe it. he says same about bill russell. but david thompson, shawn kemp, vince carter, lebron, shaq, even westbrook--all super rare athletes, and i'm not sure there's really evolution there. maybe some, but i don't expect that i'll see something that blows lebron away in my time. folks say that about zion, but i disagree. and i saw him when he was larry johnson.
A bit off topic from post above .... then again it's been speculated how many in every sport beat the testing and are involved in this kind of progression. Really good movie just watched on Netflix.
I saw Wilt play but mostly towards the end of his career, but while he could still put it to Kareem. Vice versa too but Wilt would be great today, however Wilt and Shaq would suffer a bit because they were simply dunkers. Still a good shot in todays game however.
I think Shaq would run roughshod over the modern nba on offense. The dunk is still a better shot than the three. And he could get them all the time. He'd force teams to play bruisers who can't shoot threes, which would change opposing offenses. We just don't have a freak of his ilk right now.
By the time the 80's were here you had Jordan and Barkley. They both dominated the 80's and 90's. And there are guys in the 90's that played with guys that are around today. I think as a whole, the rosters are more athletic 1-12, but not so much the top guys. Jordan was every bit the freak Lebron was. KG (mid-90's) was as athletic as AD. There's enough generational crossover that we can sort of judge how much the game has changed from an athletic standpoint. And it's not all that much since the 80's when proper weight training and nutrition were implemented into these guys lives.
Yep. People say the back to the basket center is dead. I disagree. There just isn't anyone like Shaq around today. Embiid might be the closest and he dominates when he's healthy. Imagine Shaq against the Warriors. Let them try their death lineup and see what Shaq would do to Draymond. But there's only been one other player close to Shaq, and that's Wilt. That's how rare guys like him are. Two guys in 73 years. Post Jordan, Prime Shaq would be my second choice behind Prime Lebron to start a team with.
We'd see more bigs of substantial size if Shaq were in the league now, in his prime. He changed the game, teams had huge guys to try and deal with him. My favorite memory was of a 7'3" 300lb Arvydas Sabonis being rag-dolled by Shaq, Hulk on Lokki style, and then overhearing his talking to a ref (I forget the ref) who was saying "Yeah we know, he's like 350lbs, we're looking in to it" this was overheard by many as it was miked and a lot of people (on the Lakers) were saying "WTH, looking into what?" The fact that guys were talking about how to ref him shows his impact but to me, seeing a damn-near crying Sabonis was one of my NBA highlights as a fan.
