Talking about Artest's average? You'd expect him to average the same? While not being second, but third-fourth option? There is just no way to average many points without ball in your hands
i believe your point was that najera's won games for us. my point is that artest does the same...only moreso and he does it in nearly every game instead of showing up once a week (or once every 3 weeks in kleiza's case). particularly against a team like the spurs where he can defend ginobili and use his size on the inside.
yea, his scoring would drop. but his consistent impact is greater than that of lk & eddie combined.
two good players don't make a great player.
"Nene's supposed" sounds nice. But for christ sakes, what can you expect from him?
to come back, take up space and be a big body that can set screens and finish a little bit in the remaining games.
what's funny to me is that you act as if najera is some gigantic power forward and we'd be left with this wimpy, gimpy, thin frontline without him.
what have we relied on this whole season? camby/martin/najera, right?
you do realize that artest is not only taller than najera, but he's stronger, bigger and a better defender (against bigs or small) too....right?
sure...we lose eddie, but we're left with a frontline that's actually bigger. what's the problem with that?
And we still talking about 15-20 games without any big bodies. Hunter averaged 13.8 that season, where did you get that 20? Plus he has long history with his knees and when he's out, you don't have ANY replacement on the bench. ANY! It isn't such a big deal or what?
Oh, btw- playing for the Suns means any skills? Comme on, Piatkowski, Shirley, Pat Burke. Just a few names who also played for the Suns. Anyone can play for the Suns
that's my error on the minutes. i thought he had played a little bit more.
but 14mpg in 76 games is pretty decent. and enough that we should be able to rely on him for more than 7 minutes a game in 12 games this season.
btw...burke, shirley & pike have never played near that many minutes for the suns. they've all been players restricted to use in blowouts (like wafer/green/. hunter was a rotation player who got minutes basically every single game. and d'antoni has always stuck with a very limited 8-9 man rotation.
I don't take seriously your statistic, too. Jumper from the paint isn't what I'm talking about. If you want to tell me Melo goes as agressive, strong and with passion to physically beat his defender inside as last season did, I don't believe you watch every Nuggets game twice...
watching
this team once is more than enough, i don't think i could take any more.
and melo does still attack the rim at a high rate and beats his man up inside physically. he just does it in different ways because dre/blake aren't there to throw him lobs or get him the ball in positions where he can score as quickly and aggressively in the paint (atkins should help immensely here, as well as in spreading the court for him). there's a reason he's averaging a career high in offensive rebounds, and its not because he's become soft.
But can't understand how having three injury-prone big guys and one comming back from cancer isn't such a big deal.
its the same deal as it is right now. having najera doesn't make us not rely on 3 injury prone bigs.
in fact we're worse off now because eddie's just not that big and he's not that good of a defender. i saw a picture last year of him standing side by side with smith....and jr had an inch on him.
Or having crazy Artest who probably wouldn't respect such ass like Karl at all
i believe it would have been worth the risk. better have him and make the attempt at a title than sit where we are now with an 80 million dollar payroll, four aging vets (three of which are injury prone....and 3 of which have been remarkably healthy this season), a young sg that needs an extension, no money to use on other free agents, an inconsistently average SF, and a 9th seed.
