Are you saying that all those teams you listed didn't have super star?
No. But maybe I need to carefully explain every point I make slowly and carefully from now on.
nikka you listed teams with Dirk and Tim Duncan
This nikka dank is fukking dumbass
He tried to argue that the 2003 Spurs didn't have superstars
No I didn't.
I listed Duncan going up against a team with Kobe AND Shaq. If you're saying that superstars are what matter, are you saying that Duncan is a better superstar than prime Kobe/Shaq combined?
I listed Dirk going up against a team with Lebron AND Wade. If you're saying that superstars are what matter, are you saying that Dirk is a better superstar than Lebron and Wade combined?
Or is it maybe that the rest of the team matters just as much as counting superstars does?
GSW still had Curry and Klay
And yet neither of them won Finals MVP, because the Warriors were LOSING until Iggy was given prominence, weren't they? So maybe something more than superstars matter?
And Lebron was winning that series if he just had guards who could make more than 30% of their shots and anyone whatsoever on the bench. He didn't need more superstars.
Besides, ain't Klay just "B-side" anyway?
Even if they are having an off series Superstars draw a lot of attention but you never played basketball so you wouldn't know that.
Played and coached, but you wouldn't know that.
My first year coaching we kicked a kid ranked top-100 for California off our team because he wouldn't do running drills and we were a running team. His walking around the court while everyone else was running was bad for chemistry. We had a tight team without him, solid at every position, so it was better to have a full squad balling their butts off than a prima donna screwing things up, even if he was the most talented guy on the team. Later in the season he came begging for his spot back, and the team agreed to let him back if he did all the running. We were better for it, and we challenged for the league title that year.
Superstars aren't everything. Good coaching and chemistry across the full squad with 0-1 weak positions at most, matters just as much if not more than who your star is.
Let's even say those teams didn't have super stars, which is completely ridiculous,
That's still a very small amount of teams
What the fukk are you even talking about
Just off the top of my head, I gave you 11 times in the last 15 years where a team that was CLEARLY inferior in the "superstar" department was able to advance over teams that were more loaded. Three times where a guy who wasn't a superstar at all was named Finals MVP. And 15 major superstars in the last 20 years who never won a title at all, while teams like Detroit have picked one up when their best player was Chancey Billups. Hell, the Blazers were one quarter away from a likely title when their best player was Sheed averaging 16ppg.
You claimed, "Super Stars are what counts in the playoffs". I proved to you that it's obvious that other stuff counts at least as much.
He's also arguing that the east has been stronger than the West
I never said anything like that. Quote me.
I said that the teams that Lebron-led teams have beaten are better than the teams that Kobe-led teams have beaten. And proved it with a full list.
2016 Warriors (73 wins), 2015 Hawks (60 wins), 2013 Spurs (58 wins), 2012 Thunder (58 wins pro-rated), 2011 Bulls (62 wins).
Name the best 5 teams that Kobe has beaten since he took leadership of the team.
2007 Pistons, 2011 Celtics, 2011 Bulls, 2012 Celtics, 2012 Thunder, 2013 Pacers, 2013 Spurs, 2014 Pacers, 2015 Hawks, 2016 Warriors
Name 10 teams that the Kobe-led Lakers beat which were better than those 10.
Conference strength is way less important than you make it out to be, because every year a title contender is only going to play 1-2 teams with a chance from their own conference, plus 1 team from the other conference.
2008 Lakers playing the 54-win Jazz in the Conference Semis when Mehmet Okur was their 2nd-best player and D-Will was the leader.
2009 Lakers playing the 53-win Rockets in the Conference Semis when Ron Artest was leading a bunch of borderline starters.
2010 Lakers playing the 53-win Jazz team again in the Conference Semis.
None of those teams were meaningful opponents at all. So the Lakers only played ONE meaningful series in their own conference, and ONE in the other conference, each of those years.
Same goes for Lebron. Except for 2011 when the East was stacked with Chicago/Boston/Miami all still strong, Lebron's contending teams have only had one real challenge in the East as well. So he has one big series in the East, and one big series in the West.
As far as the games that really matter, it usually evens out, no matter what conference you're in.
The Spurs team in 08 still had Duncan and Parker at full strength. Manu played but was less effective.
That's still way more impressive than beating the fukking Hawks and Bulls .
You see - this is where your "superstar" theory shines through.
Yeah, the Spurs had Duncan and Parker, and they balled out even though Duncan was getting past that era when he could carry a team on both ends of the floor. The other three starters were Oberto, who was useless, and the 35-year-olds Finley and Bowen who were both ready to retire and had become trash. Those three starters COMBINED for 16-6-3 on the series and got killed on defense.
The Spurs had three of their five starters combine for 16-6-3.
Do you realize that that means those three guys averaged about 5-2-1 each, and they were
starting.
With Ginobli limping, the other guys off the bench were 36-year-old Brent Barry, 35-year-old Kurt Thomas, and Ide Udoka.
That team was
trash outside of Duncan and Parker. Duncan averaged 22-17-5 and 2 blocks/game, but Gasol/Odom combined (26-19-6 and 3 blocks) more than neutralized him. Kobe was better than Parker, and the rest of the Lakers were at least as good as the remnants that the Spurs were trying to play.
That lack of depth beyond the big 3 is why that Spurs team only won 56 games even with Ginobli averaging 20-5-5 in his best season ever. When he got hit by that ankle injury, they were dead men walking.
That's what I keep talking about with the rest of the lineup mattering. The fact that the Lakers had Gasol AND Odom, and Fisher/Vlad/Farmar at least playing competently, matters a lot when the Spurs' 3rd best player in the series was 36-year-old Brent Barry.
A 60-win Hawks team with Carroll limping (and that injury wasn't until near the end of Game 1, when the Cavs with Love/Irving/Shump all hurt were still beating the Hawks on their own floor) was at least as good a bet to advance to the Finals than a 56-win Spurs team that had lost their leading scorer and only had 2 competent players left on the whole team.
Also, I like how you're playing into my hands,
Arguing that the 56-win Spurs were better than the 60-win Hawks, so achieving an arbitrary wins milestone like "50" is meaningless.
At the same time claiming that the 2nd-best team a Kobe-led team ever beat was better than the 5th-best team a Lebron-led team ever beat.
Kobestan will NEVER keep their arguments straight without a mid-thread self-contradiction, because they have no logic to the argument.
. Baiting them into more WOAT votes. The three stooges of Kobe stan needs to include the reigning WOAT too though. To be someone who calls other fans casuals and thinks Phil coached the 1996 lakers and that oscar never won a title is some bulletin board shyt for sure though.
