Sunday Discussion: Do the Lakers win the 1999 championship if they kept Rodman?

[Liquid]

This was talked about at length many years ago, but I was just thinking of how close this series was as we are due to witness an epic western conference playoffs this year

Spoiler: ...

The East:

Spoiler: ...

The Knicks :silvugh:

A reminder: Rodman played in 19 games for the lakers in 1999 and was doing what he does, Rebound and cause problems on defense. He was too wild for the Lakers to control him, but if they did...do they win that 1999 championship? They went 17-2 when Rodman played...Here is the game log for that season for Rodman, he was actually rebounding better as the season went along.

http://espn.go.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/726/year/1999/dennis-rodman

Highlight video set along a wack ass 2pac song


The Lakers lost to the spurs in the 2nd round that season, swept actually. IMO Rodman could have greatly impacted that series as the series was closer than the sweep would indicate. The Spurs had 5 players avg double digits in points, the lakers had 4. Rebounding advantage to SA was only 1.3 rebounds more per game, largest win was by 12 points in game 3 and going into the 4th the spurs were only up 1. SA only controlled the game entering the 4th in game 1, all three others were tossups. LA just couldn't close

entering the 4th quarter:
Game 1 - SA up 9
Game 2 - SA up 2
Game 3 - SA up 1
Game 4 - SA up 2

http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_1999_WCS.html

Rodman was definitely not done, in fact he had better stats on the mavs next season.

 

[gho3st]

I'd rather not win a championship than win one with an Asterisk

 

[Liquid]

I'd rather not win a championship than win one with an Asterisk

I bet you there won't be any asterisk talk if the lakers could have closed against SA

 

[Regular_P]

This has to be one of the most ridiculous threads I've seen on here. Rodman was a complete circus for the two months he was in LA. With Rambis as the coach that had no hope of working out.

Bringing Carmen Electra to press conferences and crying at them.

The Lakers were 17-6 with Rodman in the lineup; not 17-2. That was the original OKC lineup with them. Kobe, Shaq and Rice could score, but then you had Rodman and fukking Derek Harper rounding out the starting five.

His defense was not even close to what it had been in the past either. Duncan would have abused him just like every PF did that year. Malone had a 12-12 game on him late in the season. :smhkobe: