choked when it mattered just like George Karl.... man, he has coached more choke jobs than any coach in the history of sports first he coached the Sonics into a first round choke job. then he coached them into another first round choke job. and then, in his best choke job ever, he took a Bucks team that was in 1st place in March and ushered them into the lotto by the third week of April. anyway... went off on a tangent there.
so driving to the basket, scoring, and making the free throw and then blocking a shot at the other end to send game 7 against the spurs into overtime(and eventually winning to go to the conference finals and then on to the finals) is choking when it matters most? so malone and stockton are "proven losers" as well then? pretty much any star player that didn't win a championship is a "proven loser" to you?
Some really great players never won a title. Barkley... Ewing..... Reggie Miller.... Stockton.... Malone.... Chris Mullin....
so other than the best player of all time, a hall of famer, and a borderline hall of famer they lacked talent? other than those 3 kukoc, harper, bj armstrong, and horace grant were pretty good players. and kerr is one of the best shooters ever. those teams didn't lack talent. without jordan they won 55 games.
He did kick ass in that Spurs series. But then, when it really really mattered, and his team was up 13 in the 4th quarter in Game 3, he let it slip away. He didn't step up and make sure his team won like Dwyane Wade DID. I like Stockton and Malone. They gave it their all. And they got robbed in 1998. In the first half of Game 6, Howard Eisley made a long buzzer beating three and they waived it off. Said it was a shot clock violation. But if you watch the replay, he got it off in plenty of time. THEN, in the second half, Ron Harper made a shot that was ABSOLUTELY late and they gave him the two points anyway. So that's 5 points that the Jazz lost. And THEN, Jordan pushes off, commits the foul, travels, and then makes a shot to win a game that should've been over if Howard Eisley's basket had counted. It's total bullshit. There should've been a Game 7.
Poor Bison Dele... disappearing like he did He had a fucking great series against the Sonics in 1994 with the Nuggets. Remember LaPhonso Ellis? He was great too. My brother immediately ran out and bought a LaPhonso Ellis jersey that spring.
dirk didn't have the luxury of going to the free throw line 97 times in those 6 games. that's 16 times per game. yeah but if they weren't such losers, they would have stepped up and made sure their team won like jordan did. sounds dumb, doesn't it?
I think it was pretty obvious I was focusing on the later Bulls teams... not the Bulls from the early 90's. And I never said they "lacked talent". I said that once you got past Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman, the team was very average. Yes, they had Kukoc, but Kukoc was also one of the streakiest players on the team. Some nights he was on fire, others he would disappear. My point is, The team was built around Jordan and Pippen. Just a bunch of role players, none of whom went on to do much of anything on other teams (outside of Kerr). They even plugged in Robert Parish for one season... that's just proof that they could put almost anyone in their center spot and win games. Parish was so far gone at that point, it was sad to watch him try to run up and down the floor.
Dwyane stepped up and made big play after big play. He went to the line because he was aggressive in getting to the basket. But it was his midrange game down the stretch that impressed me. He hit every big shot. It was one of the most impressive individual performance in an NBA Finals series ever.
