What are you using to rank players? It seems almost as bad as SI's.
Memory of the climate at the time, but maybe my memory of it ain't great as displayed by some of the responses. I ain't perfect lol...
I remember his season, and I remember the conversation. I remember having and hearing debates about whether KG was better than Duncan, and the consensus was always Duncan was better. I was in 9th grade the 2003-04 year, and right around that time was kind of a KG stan, I was one of the guys who argued him as better than Duncan, but that was definitely a minority opinion at my school/circle, and seemed to be a minority opinion overall...
'04 was KG's GOAT season, I just viee it as he had the best season that year, but he wasn't the best player. It's hard for me to give it to him over Duncan, you don't become the best player with one hot year----->you can argue Duncan was arguably the best player going back to 1998-99, when you account for how he balled against LA in the playoffs and the idea that the Lakers were inadvertantly helped to their first title by not having to go thru him...
By the time '04 comes around, Duncan had been seen as better than KG going back 6 years, I can't say somebody is better than a guy that the previous 6 years have shown the other guy was more consistently great, more consistently dominant. KG had the best individual season in '04. He still wasn't better than Duncan, and I feel like Kobe and Shaq were still debated about, even if not definitively better...
He's called the "most versatile player in the league" and the "best player on the planet period" by announcers in this
The "best player on the planet period" guy is a Wolves PA guy lmao....nah I'm kidding, I get your point bro...
In real time, nobody saw Steve Nash or Dirk or Chris Paul as the actual best player in the league even when they had MVP seasons. Nobody was calling Kawhi the best either last season until the end of the Finals, Giannis was looked at as the best all year long. The criteria here seems iffy but as long as it gets clicks
Dirk was in the conversation though, Nash wasn't. Neither was Paul...
I really think Dirk's work is diminished on here and by brothers in general. I don't think he was ever definitively the best player at any time, but he for sure was on a 2-3 year streak that had him in that conversation...
Agree with you about Kawhi too. Literally nobody was calling him Top 2 before the playoffs last year. He and KD both were eating early in the playoffs, and everyone knew Giannis was gonna win MVP and he was steamrolling teams, so it was a 3-man race. But there was literally no talk about Kawhi being definitively better than anyone until they won the title, even in The Finals when KD could possibly return, nobody was outright calling Kawhi better...
You could just say Larry Bird is the better SF or something like that. After all, the guy is playing for your team now.
