Overrated? How exactly is Kawhi overrated? He was the #1 player on the 2nd best team in the league, the DPOY, with a PER above 26, and the 4th best TS% of all 30+ mpg players. Honestly, I think he's severely underrated when it comes to his offensive contributions, specifically because he's so good defensively.
You don't bench your best player. No, what we should have done is exactly nothing. That is, let Brian walk and don't trade Jermaine. Then Jermaine gets Brian's minutes. Also, we should have ditched Dunleavy and got a coach who was prepared to give Jermaine a shot (like Isiah Thomas did in Indy).
I've got to agree with Eric here. I always thought Jermaine was overrated in Indy. I bet he wouldn't look that great with today's advanced stats.
I mean overrated in terms of fan love, he's a fantastic player but he is NOT a superstar. Its my opinion but I think a superstar is a guy who everyone looks to in the "moment" too, Kawhi just doesn't seem to be that type of player. He is closer to Al Horford than LeBron James. Still, a fantastic player. Definitely top 15 in the NBA.
I find it hard to believe that our best player was a 35 year old man who played 26mpg and averaged 12/8 with 1 block a game when the roster also had Rasheed and Pippen on it, but I never got to experience Sabonis truly so my opinion or thoughts on a situation that happened 16 years ago is meaningless.
Super like. After the 4th quarter melt down in Game 7 of the WCF, Whitsitt panicked. He'd built a championship team, with great depth and a good balance of proven veterans and hungry young players. That team was well stocked and still had room to improve. But, one ice cold shooting 4th quarter caused him make some desperation moves that came back to bite him in the ass. Trading Brian Grant, the heart and soul of that team for a 350 lb., coked up Shawn Kemp was the worst. Kemp was nowhere near the player Whitsitt had drafted in SEA and his failure to realize that destroyed any chance that team had of winning anything. Throw in trading Jermaine for DD, Rod Strickland, the sequel and special treatment for Detlef Schrempf destroyed team chemistry and any hope of ever advancing past the first round again. What a waste of talent. Whitsitt fell in love with the rush of making trades and signing guys we didn't need that fractured an already fragile locker room. Each move he made, made the team worse, not better. Whitsitt was right about one thing he wasn't a chemistry major. Things were actually going well up until the all star break,. In spite of Pippen being injured, the team was cruising long. Stacy Augmon was playing the best ball of his career in place of Pippen, and while Kemp was a disappointment, he was not yet a distraction. After the all star break the wheels fell off. There were already squabbles about playing time (Damon vs. Greg Anthony and Bonzie vs. Steve Smith), but things had not yet come to a head. First, Pippen came back from his injury. Not that big a deal, by itself. It meant Augmon would have to move back to the bench, but at least he'd still get significant minutes, that he'd rightfully earned in Pippen's absence. But then, Whitsitt had the brilliant idea to lure Detlef Schrempf out of retirement by telling him he didn't have to practice with the team, would instantly be part of the rotation and could return to Seattle to be with his family between home games. So, Augmon went from productive starter to 3rd stringer getting zero minutes. On top of it, the guy who bumped him out of the rotation was getting special treatment. Then Whitsitt gets the brilliant idea to sign Rod Strickland. Damon was already paranoid and whining about losing PT, especially in the 4th quarter, to Greg Anthony, and now they bring in yet another guy who has been a starting PG his entire career. It was completely unnecessary and further shattered the confidence of our starting PG. And then, Kemp quit on the team and entered rehab. The team fell from 1st seed to 7th in just over a month and got swept in the first round. The franchise would not make it past the first round again for 14 years, when Damian Liliard hit his series winner with .9 seconds left on the clock against HOU. I'm glad we finally have a GM that understands team chemistry and continuity. The Spurs have understood that for the last two decades. Nice to see we're catching up in that department. BNM
That fourth quarter haunts my dreams. But people always forget that we'd actually come back from 3-1 down in that series. If we could've hung on to just 1 of our 15 point lead, the Lakers would be known for an epic collapse. Instead, we are. (And one of those 3 was because of a RON HARPER jump shot, Goddamnit.)
The difference in entitlement. By the end of the year, that 2000-01 team had more than 10 guys who all thought they deserved to start and play big minutes. Most had been starters their entire careers, or at least before they arrived in Portland. And Whitsitt just kept adding more guys who thought they should be starting. Steve Smith started the season as our starting SG and lost his staring spot to Bonzie ( Dunleavy wasn't totally against playing the young guys). First, Bonzie was disgruntled because he thought he should be starting, and then Smitty was disgruntled because he lost his starting spot. As I mentioned, Pippen was our starting SF at the start of the season, but when he went down to injury, Stacy Augmon filled in, played great and the team kept cruising along. Then Pippen comes back AND Whitsitt lures Schrempf back out of retirement by offering him special treatment. Now, we have three guys who all think they deserve big minutes at SF. A log jam of veterans who have all been starters and expect starter minutes. Plus, one of them is getting special treatment. A sure fire recipe for locker room discord. Next up, Damon was our starting PG but had been paranoid and whining about losing PT to Greg Anthony (who had previously been a starter before coming to POR), especially in the 4th quarter, going all the way back to the 1999 WCF against the Spurs. Damon was also smoking a lot of weed back then (or at least getting arrested for it a lot - the yellow hummer, the tin foil incident at the airport, the pound bag found in his closet by the local authorities that conveniently ended up belonging to someone else, etc.). That probably contributed to his paranoia. Enter Rod Strickland who had been a starter his entire career and once again, we are three deep at a position with veterans who all expect starters minutes. That was when the team imploded and started losing. They hadn't lost more than 2 games in a row all season, and immediately went on a 5 game losing streak - including losses against some of the weakest teams in the league. The front court was also stacked with guys who were used to starting. Sabonis, Dale Davis, Sheed and Kemp had all been starters for years. Plus, Kemp was an unmotivated lard ass with a huge contract and and even huger coke habit. He'd been drinking like a fish going all the way back to his Seattle days and put on about 70 pounds. But hey, lets pay him even more than Brian Grant wanted and let Dunleavy figure out the PT. In early April, Kemp finally quit on the team and entered rehab for substance abuse. On that 2000 team, Jermaine and Bonzi were both young guys that wanted more minutes. That's only natural. They brought in Dale Davis to split time with Sabonis so he wouldn't have to play so many minutes during the regular season. Plus they also brought in fat ass Kemp, who had been playing center in CLE since he was way too fat to guard PFs any more. They would have been much better off just giving those minutes to Jermaine. It would have kept him happy and let him get the PT he needed to reach his potential. Adding more guys who think they should be starting isn't exactly the most intelligent way to deal with PT issues - especially when one of those guys is a severely overpaid, severely overweight drug addict. BNM
Yep, we could have kept him and simply given him the minutes they gave to his replacement Dale Davis. They wanted to reduce the wear and tear on Sabonis during the regular season, and could have just given those minutes to Jermaine - both problems solved. See how easy that was? BNM
At 25 he was the best player on a 61-win team that went to the ECF. He was 2nd team All NBA, behind only Shaq, and came in 3rd in MVP voting. Sounds kind of superstarish to me. Prior to the Malice at the Palace melt down and subsequent suspensions, that team was poised to be the dominant team in the East for years. BNM
That's one of the biggest urban legends/outright myths ever. Yeah, Dale Davis went toe-to-toe with Shaq in the 2000 NBA finals, but to call him a Shaq stopper is hilarious. Shaq barely broke a sweat in that series and averaged 38.0 ppg (to Davis' 8.7), 16.7 rpg (to Davis' 10.0) and 2.7 bpg (to Davis' 1.0). He easily won Finals MVP. His average GmSc (small sample size equivalent to PER) was 30.6. The second highest Laker was Kobe with a GmSc of 9.6. Shaq COMPLETELY dominated that series and destroyed Dale Davis. Yeah, Davis was an all star in the East that year. Big deal, he actually had worse numbers (10.0/9.9/1.3 vs. 13.6/10.3/1.2) than Jamaal Magloire the year he made the all star team. Sabonis and company actually did a MUCH better job slowing down Shaq that year in the WCF than IND and Davis did in the Finals. Shaq's numbers against POR: 25.9 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 1.9 bpg, 20.6 GmSc Shaq's numbers against IND: 38.0 ppg, 16.7 rpg, 2.4 bpg, 30.6 GmSc Bringing in Dale Davis and expecting him to slow down Shaq was just plain insane. BNM
Read my other post. Shaq scored 38 ppg in that series against IND. He completely dominated Dale Davis, MUCH more than he dominated the Blazers in the WCF. Perpetuating this myth that Dale Davis was some kind of Shaq stopper has to stop. He wasn't. If anything, he was one of the worst centers in the league at guarding Shaq. Not really his fault. He was basically a PF that was forced to play center and totally outclassed by Shaq. Luckily for him, when he was in the East, he only had to see Shaq twice a year, outside of that one disastrous finals series when he was COMPLETELY OWNED by Shaq in a way few others have ever been owned. BNM
Shaq was just insane.... And after watching that 30/30 about the Magic, I have to think that the front office in Orlando should have been banned from the NBA for life for low balling him.
