Look, Cassel and KG were a huge duo in their first season togther. Cassel will be fine by the time next season rolls around and I can only imagine the 2 getting better. Tho, Spree isnt as offensively capable as Cassel, you dont really see him having 40 point games, so those 2 are gonna be it on that team. Just wait
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">For all the guys who claim Kobe fans are just "fanboys" or whatever...why wouldn't that be the case for McGrady fans? Nobody liked him when he was a loser on the Raptors, but when he got his own team and started being a selfish player, he became this huge superstar in the East. Here's my take on this situation: last year, in alot of forums, guys that didn't like Kobe would still say that he's one of the best players in the league. Well, I go through the forums this season and all I see are guys saying, "He's nothing without Shaq. He can't win. He can't lead a team to a ring." Okay...well if he can't, fine. Neither can McGrady. Everyone just likes to jump on the bandwagon and hate Kobe for his legal troubles...and now that he's got a flaw, guys like to bring that out and use it to discredit him, on and off the court. Come on...the Magic started the season 0-18. Stop giving McGrady so much credit. Look how he played when he was alongside Vince Carter. Put T-Mac on the same team as Shaq, and he'll be playing like he's 12 years old. For a more accurate statement, "Superman" won't be winning games with McGrady, because playing on the same team as T-Mac is like playing with kryptonite. Ask Howard, Gooden, Lue, and the rest of the Magic. Good luck Yao.</div> uhhh okay Juss cuz i like TMac doesnt mean that i dont appreciate Kobe. Kobe did alot of stuff worthy of consideration but its tainted by the fact that he plays with the most dominant player today. Im sure he will just as good as TMac when playing by himself, he that stretch of 10 staright games with 35pts +. But the fact is almost every single one the games he shot the ball 40-50 times. Its a fact go check the box score. Your talkin about Tmac being selfish but taking 40-50 shots by urself? thats pretty selfish. And Tmac wasnt hated when he was a raptor, he was barely known when he was a raptor. It was all VC when tmac was a raptor. Tmac and SHaq would coexist well because Tmac and Shaq are well known friends and cuz of that Shaq would feel better to give up shots to Tmac and vice versa. Bring me a qoute where it says taht the Orlando players say Tmac is selfish. TMac over Kobe No contest
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting KG-MVP:</div><div class="quote_post">K I don't know what T-Mac has proven. I honestly hardly know crap of T-Mac's details. ABout Kobe,all hes got is AS selections and Defense Team selctions. Kobe hasnt proved that he can carry a team(soon to be seen), that he is a superstar, overall, that he deserves the massive amount of credit he gets. I mean, that stuff is just the success of a general, good player. Not a superstar. Superstars never give up, they carry team to titles , get MVP awards etc. Come on, you have to agree that Kobe has a lot t prove to show that hes as good of a player as hes made outto be. No? Well T-Mac does too, but Kobe obviosuly in the lead so far as accomplishemnts. I'm just gonna say that we will probably all begin to see this next season.</div> I do agree that both TMac and Kobe have a lot to prove. Kobe has to prove if he can carry a team without Shaq and TMac has to prove what he can do now that he has help that he apparently didn't have in Orlando. In my opinion, they are each in two very different scenarios trying to do the same thing. Prove their critics wrong. Kobe's critics say he can't win without Shaq. We will likely soon see. TMac's critics say he isn't a team player, blah blah. Well, if he is going to be successful next year, he's going to have to be a team player. He's got a luxury next year. He wasn't able to carry the Magic this year by himself. He's got Yao now. In essence, it looks like Kobe and TMac have switched places. Kobe goes from tons of help with Shaq to little help. TMac goes from little help to a bunch of help with Yao. This will be interesting next year I think.
Basically, Your seeing the 2 switch positions. Your seiing T-Mac, the guy from a crappy team go to a team with Yao, which if it works out correctly, will be exactly what Kobe HAS had. So in reverse Kobe wil likely be leaving the luxury of a dominant big man and going to a worse team to try and lead them. I'm not sure if it's fair to say that T-Mac already failed at what Kobe's going to try to so, due to the fact the Magic were a hopless team. But we wil see how the 2 do in the reverse roles, plus the fcat that its the first time T-Mac has played in the West, the more competitive part of the league. So that will realy bring out how good of a player each of them really is, and who is really better.
I personally don't think TMac failed too terribly, but, he sure as hell didn't succeed much either. Never got out of the first round and just lost 61 games. But, I don't think his teams were that bad either. He had Drew Gooden the last year and a half, had Mike Miller for a while. Tyronn Lue isn't terrible. Keith Bogans had a good rookie year. Gordon Giricek wasn't a bad player by any means. Overall, I think TMac had more help that what people think. It was just a matter of utilizing it in the correct way, which he didn't apparently.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Moo2K4:</div><div class="quote_post">I personally don't think TMac failed too terribly, but, he sure as hell didn't succeed much either. Never got out of the first round and just lost 61 games. But, I don't think his teams were that bad either. He had Drew Gooden the last year and a half, had Mike Miller for a while. Tyronn Lue isn't terrible. Keith Bogans had a good rookie year. Gordon Giricek wasn't a bad player by any means. Overall, I think TMac had more help that what people think. It was just a matter of utilizing it in the correct way, which he didn't apparently.</div> The thing here is, those are good players not good teams. And by saying good im being generous. Those were all OK players, but none of them could pair up with T-Mac to make a successful team. Obviously, it takes a team-full of good player to create a playoff or championship worthy team. So I really dont think any of those player counted as much help. As far as utilizing those players, im not sure if those are just that bad of players, or perhaps T-Mac doesnt have any leadership skils. Id ont honestly think tho, that T-Mac has ever had a real fair chance to make a good team, except I guess for that year where they went to the playoffs.
TMac actually went to the Playoffs at least two times that I can remember. The year they lost to the Hornets in the first round and then when he opened his mouth when his team went up 3-1 and went on to lose the series in 7 to Detroit. Those are the two I remember. I'm not sure if there was another, actually, I'm pretty sure there wasn't another. So, he has been able to make the playoffs a couple times with some sub par players around him. But, this past season when he had pretty much the same team around him as the previous year, all they did was add Howard, and that should have helped. But, yea, I don't understand what went wrong this past year. Should have had the best team of his 4 year tenure in Orlando in my opinion. He had a solid player with Howard. A developing talent with Gooden who only got better as the years went on. Then the rest of the supporting cast, everyone from Bogans to Lue. But, I suppose we'll see what happens when he truly does have very good players around him. All I can say, if he doesn't have success with Yao, I think that will say something about him as a player. That being that he is not a player to build a franchise around due to his lack of leadership abilities. But, I do believe he and Yao will be a successful duo next year. Well, I hope for his sake that they are, cause, if not, he might be looked at as a good individual player, but a terrible team player. By that I mean, he can compile great individual stats, but, when it comes to being a team player and doing the other things to help his team win, he'd suck at it. We will see though. Cause, I don't think Van Gundy is going to give him the amount of freedom Doc gave him and whoever the other coach was after Doc got fired.
plz kobe and shaq are 100 times better then yao and mcgrady mcgrady scores all his points without a star he cant do tht any more and HE DONT PLAY ANY D also yao is just a twig he is 7'5 and dosent even average a double double come on he is suppose to be a beast he aint at shaqs level yao would rather shoot a j then pipe it on somebody
We can't say that Kobe/Shaq is better than McGrady/Yao when the latter part of those two duos haven't even suited up to play a game together. Yao, for one, doesn't get a double double yet because he doesn't get a lot of minutes. JVG tries to sit him whenever he possibly can. He tries to keep him fresh because his conditioning isn't to the point where he can play good for 40 minutes or more. And, he's actually not a twig. He's over 300 I believe, he just looks like a twig cause he's so damn tall. But, when he gets someone like TMac who will draw double teams and what not, he's going to get better. I think TMac and Yao will be a very good duo. The two players will be able to feed off eachothers game. And I think the TMac lacking defense will change because Van Gundy won't let him get away with lazy defense. Van Gundy has always believed in and preached defense to his players so TMac won't be an exception just because of his superstar status.
For those of you who are saying that T-Mac and Yao cannot share the ball, just think of this one thing>>> T-Mac wanted to be traded to Rockets IN THE FIRST PLACE. If we all agree on this fact, then whould T-Mac thought about (1)sharing the ball w/ Yao (2)the focus of the team (3)JVG's vision of the team before he told the media about his intention to join the Rocket? Beware that these are things that T-Mac and his agent would have seriously considered.
T-Mac is way worse than Kobe, and though Yao has a way better jumper than SHAQ, Shaq is way more powerfull, dominant, better dunker.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting KG-MVP:</div><div class="quote_post">So in reverse Kobe wil likely be leaving the luxury of a dominant big man and going to a worse team to try and lead them. I'm not sure if it's fair to say that T-Mac already failed at what Kobe's going to try to so, due to the fact the Magic were a hopless team. </div> hm, lakers will be as bad as orlando is this year? so they're gonna trade shaq for someone like shawn Bradley? cmon, they'll get 3 decent players out of that trade, and that's gonna be far better then orlando since the days of penny and shaq
