Did you see some of those Rockets play off games in the mid to late 80's? Dream was all we had...period. We never had a guard that could hit an outside shot with any consistency and Dream always got triple teamed and most of the times had at least 4 people collapse on him because teams did not fear our outside shot. Dream still found away to win some play off series. Don't give me the poor KG story because at some point he should have been able to elevate his game in the play offs to propel his team to at least one series victory in the last 6 years. A few years ago the were up on Seatle 2 games to 1 and lost that series too. KG is not clutch...at least not yet. Dirk is all clutch... ...which brings me to the point about who out played who. Did you see game 2? If so then you know that if Dirks shots had been falling with any consistency during the first 3 quarters that he would have scored 40 at least. You would have also saw that KG having his best game ever in the play offs could not come close to stopping Dirk. Dirk drove around KG and anyone else that tried guard him like they were standing still. And if you saw game 2 then you also saw that in the 4th quarter Dirk turned it up another notch and took over the game while Garnett once again vanished in the 4th or at least was very clearly out played by Dirk during that quarter and that point is not even debatable. What was it that Magic said about players showing up for the 4th quarter?
Sure Dirk has more support, but atleast he still does extremely well on a GOOD TEAM. You cannot fault him for that, because I think he is still the best player on the Mavericks team. And if your going to use the logic that KG has a worse team therefore he is better than Dirk, than it is almost like saying Tmac and Paul Pierce are better than Kobe because they have less help and STILL carry their respective teams. Personally I feel that Kobe is not the best 2G in the league, and I do not feel Garnett is any better than Dirk. However I feel that Dirk is still the best player on his team whereas Kobe is not the best on his team.... so the Kobe to Tmac/Pierce and Dirk to KG analogy may not even be that strong because I still feel Dirk is the best MAV (where kobe is not best laker). KG leads his team yes, but so does Tmac and Paul Pierce..and I dont consider KG to be better than either of them nor better than Dirk overall. I consider Dirk to be more aggressive inside or odd the dribble or atleast is working towards that more than KG is.
That is just laughable. Garnett has more help than Duncan, that hasn't stopped Duncan from winning playoff games.
Nowitzki plays on the deepest team in basketball. Hell, their worst players (ie: Johnny Newman, Bradley), can contribute when given playing time. You're taking a pretty big leap, and being hypocritical as well, by proclaiming his greatness at the same time that you disparage Bryant. They're in the same category if you ask me- undeniably great players who you can't yet put in a category by themselves because of their secondary, or rather 'equal' in the case of Nowitzki, roles on their teams. He's still a beneficiary; not a benefactor.....yet. The difference between Garnett and Nowitzki is this- Nash and Finley are all-star caliber players regardless of Dirk's presence; Wally Szcerbiak is an average two guard nobody would care about if Garnett wasn't on that team. The fact that he could make Wally Szcerbiak a legitimate all-star candidate, let alone make the team, is a testament to his greatness. I feel no pity for someone like Garnett though; you reap what you sow, and his exorbitant contract has and will be the albatross of that franchise for years to come. PS- Nash is the most important player on the Mavs.
-Garnett has played with players like Tom Gugliotta (in his prime), Stephon Marbury, Terrell Brandon and Wally Szerbiak. All All-Star caliber. -He has had 6 trips to the play offs with out one single series victory. They even lead Sea 2-1 and lost that series a few years ago. -He only avgs 19 pts a game for the play offs while he has scored over 26 just once. He has not exactly elivated his game. The play offs are full of teams that had no talent except maybe one superstar that experianced considerable play off success: Moses Malone led the Rockets to the finals in 1980. The Nuggets beat the Sonics in 1995. Just to name a couple. Even the Mavs last year with no play off experiance last year beat the play off veteran Jazz. Garnett has no excuse for his repeated failure.
except for being outmanned every single time. if you don't think garnett is outgunned vs the mavericks you are a moron plain and simple. please tell me you do not believe this. as for the debate, i'm not sure who you call better, but this excessive bashing of garnett is ridiculous and magic was way out of line. must've been nice having kareem and worthy out there magic. dirk and garnett are both amazingly good. garnett puts up huge numbers, dirk puts up huge numbers, dirk has more help therefore dirk wins the close games. that seems to me to be the only real conclusion you can draw from this.
1. The mavs absalutely have more talent on their team. But did anyone think the Mavs were a better team than Utah before last years play off team? No. 2. What I am saying about KG is that if he is a true superstar in the class of Duncan, Shaq or even Dirk then needs to find away to get his team past the first round at least once. Did you know that the 5th sead has a winning record against the 4th seed in play off match ups? It is not uncomon for the underdog to win and KG should be able to find a way. Not neccesarily against the Mavs but against someone. 3. Dirk and Garnett are both amazing players. I agree with this statement. But you can't depend on Garnett to raise his game come play off time and his numbers through six years of play offs backs me up. Dirk on the other hand elivated his game last year in the play offs and he has done so this year as well. Garnett is good but he does not belong in the class of the elite until he can prove that he is capable of elevating his game when it matters most. Dirk is an elite player. Give me Dirk.
KG is overrated. Look at him in crunch time, he almost always defers to his teammates and he lacks a go to move to get good shots in the clutch. I liken him to Cris Webber or David Robinson in his prime. Very good players who aren't big time players in the clutch or in the playoffs. Dirk I believe is separating himself from KG this series. He's clearly outplaying KG right now. I'd rather have Dirk on my team than KG. Sure, he doesn't play D, but Garnett's offense in the clutch is pretty dang weak. Dirk is establishing himself as a bigtime clutch player. Aside from Duncan and shaq, dirk may be the best player in the NBA right now.
have y'all thought about..if garnett would have went to college for 1 or 2 years...he could have become even better? i think that college experience would have helped him become a more polished player and to be able to play better and dominate in time. and i know y'all will bring up kobe, mcgrady to compare w/ garnett. but what kobe mcgrady had that garnett didn't have was: *less pressure (kobe and mcgrady were all brought up slowly and didn't play much) *more experienced players around them (kobe had shaq and mcgrady had some other good players) what i'm gettin at is that i think if garnett would have went to college even for a year, he would learn how to dominate late in games moreso than now.
Duncan is a better scorer than Garnett, but I believe we are talking about Dirk and Garnett. Also, the Spurs have just as good as supporting cast as the Wovles do. What's laughable is saying that Player A is better than Player B because Player A's team is leading a best of 5 series over Player B's Team. crash, Hakeem was a better player than KG is at this point, and anyway I don't think the Rockets won too much in the post- Malone, post-Twin Tower 80's. And KG drove around and muscled in a variety of Mavs players for just as many points as Dirk did. He also did so taking a few less shots. And, I will give you the "poor KG story" as long as KG attracts four Mav's at any given time while Dirk trots down to the other end of the court and posts Sam Mitchell up. That's not what I'm saying though. Hardly anyone can elevate their game in the fourth quarter to the point that they can consistently score over 3 and 4 defenders. But that is what some seem to expect of Garnett. It is unfair to compare Garnett to Dirk because of their respective team's performance. When Gugliotta was in his prime, neither Garnett nor Marbury were in their primes. Now that Garnett and Wally are in/entering their primes, Brandon is declining. Hell, Brandon hasn't even played this series.
KG is an awesome franchise player, but until he learns how to dominate the game offensively when it counts, he will not be a COMPLETE player and he'll never win a series(let alone a championship) unless a better offensive player than him ends up on the team. The dude is anti-clutch and cannot create offensively in the 4th. I'll take the guy who can make an offensive play when it counts over a defensive presence who can score for 3 quarters anyday.
KG may have had decent numbers at the end of the game today but any one watching him saw that he completely chocked. Missed lay ups and missed free throw during an elimination game say a lot about how a player performs under pressure. At one point KG had missed 3 out of 4 free throws and in the fourth when the Pups were trying to mount a come back KG misses open lay ups and even more free throws. At least Wally stepped up in the fourth and tried to bring the Pups back. If he would have had a little help from KG the pups may have actually pulled it out. Dirk stepped up in a major way today starting from the very begining hitting every open shot and knocking down every free throw until late in the first half when he got hit in the nose by Billups. KG is a very good player but he is not in Dirks class.
Think what you may, I would still take Garnett over Dirk. He did have a rough game today, and should have played better. IMO, the Wolves were one Terrell Brandon away from winning this series.
What I don't get is how somehow Garnett "made" Szczerbiak, the 6th pick in the draft and an All-American, into an All-Star, while Nowitzki gets penalized for having a guy like Nash on his team, and Nash is 'already good'. That's rrrreal convenient. In Nash's first year with the Mavs, he averaged 8 points, 5.5 assists, and shot 36 percent from the field. His second year, he averaged 8.6 points and 5 assists. Nowitzki has always been better than Nash -- Nash didn't excel until Dirk started to become dominant. Finley's a very good player (Wally was an All-Star this year, Finley wasn't), but Dirk's better than him too -- quite a bit better. One thing we can all agree on though, is that Nowitzki is way better than Bryant.
The Nash argument doesn't work: he was injured his first two years with the Mavericks if I'm not mistaken. I could just as easily say that Nowitzki only started playing at this level when Nash realized his potential. Base your view of Wally Szcerbiak on what he's done in the league; not on his play at some mid-major school where players like Harold Arceneaux dominate. The bottom line is, he's a minimally talented shooting guard, relative to the league, whose strengths are exploited to the fullest because of Garnett's presence. Wally without Garnett is not an allstar caliber player. Nash and Finley without Nowitzki are all-star caliber players. That is the difference. It's a wash as far as creating in the clutch- Nowitzki gets single coverage, Garnett gets triple-teamed. It's hard to gauge a player's clutchness when he gets that kind of pressure and his name's not Shaq. I'm forced to agree with you on Nowitzki versus Bryant though
Nash did have some injury problems his first couple of years but they were not season ending or career threatening injuries by any stretch. Even when Nash was healthy he was not producing for what ever reason. Did you know that almost the entire city was ready to ship Nash off to anywhare for a bag of chips a couple of years ago? Did you aslo know who almost everyone wanted as the starting PG back then? Robert Pack. The same Robert Pack that now plays for the Pups. The reason Howard Eisley was brought in last year was because the Mavs did not have confidence in Nash. Nash worked his ass off to become the player he is today but he certainly was not that player a few years ago...healthy or not. You say base our opinion on Wally by what he has done in the league? I think we are. What are you basing your oppinion of Wally on? Wally has shot over .500 every year with a career avg of .509 That is pretty damn amazing for someone that scores almost all of his points from outside. Wally shot .455 from behind the arc this year with a CAREER avg of .408 He shoots .842 for his career from the charity stripe. What would you like us to base our oppinion of Wally on? Who was it that almost brought the pups back against the mavs in the 4th? It was Wally. What other guard in the league can boast same type of numbers that Wally can? None. In the play offs Dirks opponents have been Malone, Duncan and Garnett and yet he has thrived in the playoffs turning his performance up several notches both years. Last year against the Spurs Dirk had a monster games single handedly allowing the Mavs to win one. Against the Jazz he once again had great games and lead the Mavs over the Jazz. I think we can both agree that both the Jazz and the Spurs have a lot better defense than the Mavs and yet Dirk raised his level of play considerably. The Mavs have been critasized all year for their poor defense and now all of a sudden because KG (once again) does not performe the way everyone expects it is because of the Dallas defense? The only question left for Dirk is can he improve to become better than Duncan. IMO Duncan is the only PF better than Dirk at this point in Dirks career.
I remember the pre-bandwagon days quite well, crash. I also remember Nash not being very forthright about his condition....in other words, he came back too early from injury, thus augmenting the recovery time. Another thing I remember, is people questioning the selection of Nowitzki after his not so stellar rookie season which, coincidentally, was the year Nash suffered from lingering injuries. Coincidentally, there's a distinct correlation between Nash elevating his play and Nowitzki becoming the player he is today. Szcerbiak's numbers only prove what I've been saying....Garnett basically 'made' a jumpshooter an allstar. Every player in a situation similar to Nowitzki's should have a bias held against them. To not do so is to not be an objective evaluator of talent. The situation in Dallas is different than say LA because the relationship is symbiotic- they benefit from each other. In LA, it's reciprocal- the rest of the team benefits from Shaq. Either way, players of both teams should be scrutinized more closely because of their favorable conditions.
Actually Dirks success started in his second year when he avg'd 17.5 pts a game. Nash was still putting up very poor numbers and did not have a break out year until last year. Dirks success has more to do with growing up than it does with Nash. Dirk is just now 23 so he should be better then he was when he was a rookie. He was only 20 in his rookie year and had never played against top notch compatition, that is why he only avg'd about 8.5 pts a game. Wally's numbers in no way suggest that KG made him an all star. Wally is doing the same thing in the NBA that he did in college. Wally's numbers suggest that he is a premier shooter in this league. What exactly are you basing your theory on about Wally not being a good player? Because KG is on his team? You need to come up with something better than that. And of course people questioned the selection of Dirk. Paul Peirce was still on the board when Dallas drafted and they took Tractor Trailor and then let Boston take Peirce before the trade to the Bucks that brought Dirk to Dallas. I was one of the ones doing the critisizing...and I was wrong. The one thing I am not wrong about now is that Dirk is better than KG.
Dirk played a great game tonight, but it was Michael Finley and Eduardo Najera that ended the series for the Wolves. With just minutes left, Najera drew a charge, picked up a steal, and extended the lead to a two-posession game. Finley was the guy that ended most of the Wolves' runs. I can't believe how sure of yourself you are on this. Jackie Chiles, do you not agree that all three games were close games? Terrell Brandon, while aging, is still one of the better mid-range shooters in the league. You cannot deny the impact that Terrell Brandon could have had on this series.
