If the Cavs called tomorrow...

For as 'great' as Chris Paul is, he's never been the conference finals. He's been on some pretty good teams.

 

I had this conversation the other day in a thread about LMA getting a max. Paul has a history of bad knees/missing games, he's the same age as LMA, yet nobody would blink giving him a max deal. He's gone as far in the playoffs as Damian Lillard has in 4.5x the seasons. He's only played over 70 games once in the last 5 seasons.

Chris Paul is my favorite non-Blazer player to watch, fwiw.

 

Paul generally makes everyone around him better. That's extremely valuable. He's not a guy that's going to carry a team though. He's not an Isiah Thomas. He's not a Stephon Marbury. He's a John Stockton. How good would the Jazz have been without Malone? Obviously Stockton was amazing, but could he have carried that team? I don't think so. Similarly, I don't think Rondo can carry the Celtics. There's two types of point guards. There's guys like Derrick Rose, John Wall, and Damian Lillard, who are scorers. They can carry a team offensively, but they don't really make others around them better. That's not to say Dame isn't a good point guard, but he's not a pure point guard. Paul is cut from a different cloth. There aren't many like him.

 

That would be the Pistons with Isaiah Thomas.

 

In today's NBA guards and wings are more important by far. In the 80's and most of the 90's it was the other way around. Power forwards actually played with power, Even centers played with more power back in the 80's and 90's then they do in today's NBA. In today's NBA most power forwards want to play like wings and pretty soon it wont be long till centers play like wings because everyone just wants a jump shot. Today's NBA is more finesse & flashy. There's no real contact in today's NBA where the league use to allow defenders to be more physical.

 

Of the 5,000 posts by BGD this is his first decent one.

 

[video=youtube;1-9rj_vrAoA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-9rj_vrAoA[/video]

 

More often than not the title team has the best player in the NBA a lock for the Hall of Fame. There have been a couple of exceptions but teams shouldn't be built based on exceptions.

 

So 25 years ago. My point stands, and Zeke wasn't the Finals MVP in the first Piston title, either.

 

You can make all the excuses you want, but Chris Paul has yet to make it out of the 2nd round of the playoffs. This year's team with Jordan/Griffin/Redick/Crawford couldn't do it.

That's 2 All-Stars, the 6th Man of the Year, and an all-defensive player in Jordan.

 

So, title teams aren't built around either a PF or a PG, outside of the Spurs. Yet the Blazers are built around a PF and PG. Hmm...

 

I always thought title teams were built around 6 elite players, 3 great players, 3 mentors and 3 talented projects under a great coaching staff

 

Chauncey Billups

And yes, Tony Parker does count

 

If he wins a title in his career? Possibly so. Two titles, and he's a lock.

 

That team was built around Ben Wallace and Rip Hamilton as much as it was Billups. The crazy thing about Billups is that he was 29 y/o before he ever made an AS team. Talk about a late bloomer.

 

The Hall Of Fame isn't about championships it's about stats. Unless he breaks a lag or something goes terribly wrong he's pretty much a shoe in. You can pretty much tell if a guy's going to be a hall of fame player or not.

 

If he breaks a lag there would be a ton of gamers that would love him.

 

He's already broken a leg, just not his own.

 

It's hilarious how you literally use the playoffs as your trump card in every single argument about point guards.

Andre Miller? Playoffs.

Chris Paul? Playoffs.

You talk about certain advanced stats and how they're an imperfect way to measure production, and yet you use the absolute dumbest way of measuring singular success. It's a team game. No one player wins games. It's extremely difficult to advance past the first round in the west, let alone the second, and yet that seems to always be your excuse when ever we're talking about point guards. And you seem to use it for point guards over any other position. Why is that? John Stockton never won a championship. Does that mean that Avery Johnson was a better point guard? Jason Kidd never won one. Neither did Gary Payton. Does that mean that Ron Harper and Steve Kerr were superior at the position?

Chris Paul has never made it out of the second round, but Russell Westbrook has, so obviously RW is the better point guard, right?