Best team without their best player?

[orangeparka]

OKC, especially if they can get another rotation wing.

Have Kmart fill in KD's off-ball role and give RW the remaining shots, and I don't think they'd too as much worse off as any other team, by far.

[22haytham22]

Raptors play better without bargnani hahahaha

[HEAT33]

The Heat.
Wade would step into Lebrons role of being the main go to player.

2 offensive weapons with Wade (healthy) and Bosh is what most teams would dream about.

Then you have Ray Allen also being an offensive threat. Wade could play SF in certain matchups playing small ball and have Ray Ray at SG.

Small Ball
PG: Chalmers
SG: Ray Allen
SF: Dwayne Wade
PF: Battier/Haslem
C Bosh

[nikomCH]

Spurs, Knicks, Thunder I think would all do fine without their best player.

The Lakers would be a wreck without Kobe (as the roster stands right now) and the Heat would be pretty bad without LeBron imo especially with Wade not playing well.

[oaklandwarriors]

If Bogut is the Warriors best player, it's the Warriors.

[Rapcity_11]

Surprised no mention of the Nuggets yet.

It's between them, Spurs, Warriors and Bulls.

I think the Heat would be much worse than a lot of people think. Same with the Thunder.

[kaulkhara15]

Who should be considered the Spurs best player now anyway?

[Sinant]

I think the Heat would be much worse than a lot of people think. Same with the Thunder.

Yeah it's funny, I think the Thunder should be an option in the poll simply out of respect to Westbrook, but there's some people that go way too far into reading the names on the back of the jerseys and underestimating how important LeBron or Durant are.

There's no indication that Wade as he's currently playing could just step in and replace 90% of LeBron's production. That team falls off a cliff defensively without him, and they're definitely worse offensively even if Wade+Bosh(upgraded roles) and shooters will be a good offense. They would look a lot more like a .500 team than an elite team most nights without LeBron.

Same with Durant and the Thunder. Even if you slide in Martin and move Thabo to the small forward, you're replacing the best scorer in the game with strictly an off the ball shooter. The Thunder lose their entire post game (outside of the rare Ibaka hot shooting night) and teams just double off Thabo or Perkins on Westbrook with reckless abandon. You make an already ineffective scorer (which Westbrook is, because that volume with that inefficiency is not good scoring) an even more ineffective scorer. Not to mention that you go from a, by most metrics, great defender in Durant to a turnstile in Martin.

There's a reason those two guys are considered the best two players in the world. They don't do it alone, no elite team does it alone, but they're vitally important and certainly nowhere near easy to replace.

[cube]

Wolves are 6. in the west (0.550) without Rubio + Love missed several games at the beginning of the season and hasn't still fully recovered from his injury. Adelman is propably the best coach to get the maximum out of bench players as pretty much every theam he has coached has had injury problems with star players.

[28reloaded]

very easily the knicks imo. they're probably 50-55 win team without melo assuming stat can come back healthy.

[clippertown]

The Clippers have Bledsoe, Chauncey and Crawford to fill Pauls shoes if he goes down. It would suck, but every team would feel some pain if their best player went down. I just think the Clips could weather the storm more easily than any other team in the NBA right now.

[taii1234]

Its obviously the Knicks, I mean, there best player has been out for the whole year. They have really done good without Amare.

[TheKingOfVa360]

Heat, they would have a great lineup without Lebron

[GrandTheftRondo]

Spurs. /thread

[ozzykhan16]

Am I missing something? The bulls are a borderline playoff team without Rosé.