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Worthy vs. Goodrich? Who was better in their primes? Who was better overall?

hmmm....


I'll take Goodrich. proved everyone wrong since the day he left high school for college.


same man who led the Lakers in scoring for a few years, helped them to the NBA title as part of the 69 win team, and averaged 23 points at 31 years of age.


number 25 please

Im gonna have to go with Worthy on this one. He was the glue to all those Laker teams. he was simply amazing. He's also one of the few players who started and finished his career as a Laker, so I give him a few extra points.

I do think Worthy at one point was averaging over 20ppg on over like 55% shooting or something. I dont remember teh exact numbers, but it was something like that. Then you add the fact that he was a SF, and the fact that he was an active hustler, and you got yourself a special talent.

But I do have to say that Ive never liked comparing players from different eras. There were too many differences in the game in that 20 or so year gap between them.

Well I only have seen Gail in old highlights. James. Big Games. One of the top 10 of all time. I say I am glad they were both Lakers

Goodrich was a #1 option on a very talented team and IIRC he was part of the Lakers team that went undefeated 33 games or so. So gotta give the edge to him though Worthy was a special player too.

j-far wrote:Goodrich was a #1 option on a very talented team and IIRC he was part of the Lakers team that went undefeated 33 games or so. So gotta give the edge to him though Worthy was a special player too.

Even with Goodrich being a #1 option, Worthy still put up almost identical stats (some may argue them to be better), even thought he was behind other All-Time greats.

I don't think it's fair to consider Goodrich as a true No. 1 when you're playing next to Jerry West. Gail might have taken more shots, and scored more points, but even in his 30s West was still a huge figure on that team. Plus, that team had a great supporting cast in Wilt, Flynn Robinson and Happy Hairston. So I don't think Goodrich, great as he was, was a No. 1 option in the true sense of the term.

Probably because I saw him play, I have to go with James. He was a key contributor and an absolutely ideal fit for one of the great dynasties in NBA history. And he always came up biggest when we needed it most.

I do have to wonder, however, about a couple of anecdotes I've read about West being totally torn up until draft day in 1982 about whether to pick James or Dominique Wilkins. Worthy worked out great, but it's pretty interesting to think about Dominique running the court with Magic. That would have been an unbelievable combination...

James Worthy came into a team that was already the league's best and he was able to prosper right away alongside Magic and Cap and the showtime offense whereas Goodrich's career had more ups and downs than Worthy's. He played at a time when we were suffering losing seasons and only when we acquired Wilt did we manage to start winning again. By the end of that era with Wilt and West retiring, Goodrich was the Lakers' star and his career highs of 25.3 PPG in a season with 33 straight wins indicate true first option numbers and a scorers' mindset whereas Worthy as good as he was, he still was a good player on a great team.

He did shoot pretty good % but how much of that can be attributed to playing alongside Magic and hustling on offense when compared to Goodrich's scoring caliber? I certainly have no idea since I've seen neither of them play except for a few clips of the showtime on DVDs but even if it comes down to it, I'd rather call it a split than give the edge to Worthy.

Re: Putting up big numbers despite an all star cast, even Goodrich played considerable part of his career alongside West, Wilt, Baylor, Hairston etc.

I'm going to go with Worthy, because if you watched him play he was a lot better than his statistics indicated because of the talent level of the teams he played on. This is a guy who managed to win Finals MVP on a team that featured Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (although Kareem was very old at that point of his career).

Again, I haven't watched Worthy play but finals MVP has become rather less glorious simply for the fact that a consistently good player over 4-6 games on a very good team can win it, like Tony Parker/Chauncey Billups etc. I can't use that to argue their superiority towards someone like Jason Kidd or Gary Payton throughout an overall career.

Worthy does have a 12th overall finish for regular season MVP from 85-86 too though, and to the best of my knowledge Goodrich never received an MVP vote.

Worthy was a seven time all star, Goodrich a five time all star.

Goodrich does have a 1st team All Leauge selection (his only all league selection), while Worthy has 2 3rd teams.

If you want to go by scoring, Worhy has 7 seasons he averaged over 19 ppg as a Laker compared to Goodrich's 5.

And of course Worthy has 3 championship titles compared to Goodrich's 1.

Unless you want to value one single first team selection as a greater accomplishment than 2 extra championship rings, one Finals MVP, better statistics (not just scoring), two 3rd team all league selections and a top 12 regular season MVP finish you gotta go with Worthy over Goodrich without too much hesitation.

The fact that the Lakers retired Worthy's number within 2 years of his retirement compared to the 17 years it took after Goodrich's retirement for us to retire his jersey should speak volumes when you compare those two as well.

If we're going to credit some of Worthy's success to playing with a great team -- which is very fair -- then the same standard must apply to Goodrich as well. The starting lineup on that 72 team was almost perfectly constructed. Goodrich's job was to score, and he did it very, very well. But not any better than West as one of the great combo guards in league history, even at that late stage in his career, or Wilt as a defensive anchor.

Plus, Goodrich averaged a mere 0.1 points more than West did in 72, so how can he be considered the clear-cut No. 1 option? Especially considering West averaged twice as many assists and took almost exactly the same amount of shots? Without having watched that team play a second of live basketball, I can't imagine there were too many close games where Sharman didn't put the ball in West's hands and let him decide the outcome.

Re: Goodrich's first team selection, yes that cannot be viewed as a deciding factor but two more all star appearances aren't greater either on Worthy's part.

Goodrich also did not play his entire career in LA and had a very good season in Phoenix, so obviously the edge would go to Worthy here for playing on the Lakers for a longer duration.

My point was that Goodrich was a potent offensive option who was regraded as a "Great offensive player" by his coach, Sharman at that time while Worthy was a hustler who benefited from Magic Johsnon's fastbreak prowess. I have to admit that there isn't an old Laker game I watched on DVD/Youtube that doesn't have Magic feeding Worthy for easy dunks on the break.

Again, both players made it to the basketball hall of fame and both have their jersey numbers retired. 17 years is a long time to retire a jersey but even Jerry West's jersey was retired 9 years later which doesn't make him any lesser player than Worthy does it?

Other than that Goodrich played in an era dominated by the great Celtic teams and the Lakers had to make a move for Wilt to regain the championship at the end of Jerry West's career, which makes him a very valuable player than Worthy, whose presence didn't exactly turn the tide on a showtime team that had already won an NBA championship before he was drafted in.

Worthy was an incredibly talented scorer regardless. Guess who was the leading scorer on his UNC championship team that featured Michael Jordan (freshman) and Sam Perkins. Yup, Worthy was. Big Game James could've been a pretty impressive player if he was on a less talented team, but sacrificed himself for the betterment of the team. His scoring volume was not that high only because of Magic Johnson. In fact, I'm pretty confident Magic and Kareem held his scoring average back.

When Michael Jordan was asked to name his dream team, Worthy was his pick at power forward over guys like Karl Malone and Charles Barkley (MJ had Magic at PG, Bird/Pippen split at SF, Worthy at PF and Olajuwon at C).

Well if thats correct then obviously my logic would be fallacious. I just haven't watched him and wouldn't know his offensive arsenal. If he did sacrifice himself for the cause of the team, that automatically puts him at a higher position imo.

j-far wrote:Re: Goodrich's first team selection, yes that cannot be viewed as a deciding factor but two more all star appearances aren't greater either on Worthy's part.

Goodrich also did not play his entire career in LA and had a very good season in Phoenix, so obviously the edge would go to Worthy here for playing on the Lakers for a longer duration.

My point was that Goodrich was a potent offensive option who was regraded as a "Great offensive player" by his coach, Sharman at that time while Worthy was a hustler who benefited from Magic Johsnon's fastbreak prowess. I have to admit that there isn't an old Laker game I watched on DVD/Youtube that doesn't have Magic feeding Worthy for easy dunks on the break.

Again, both players made it to the basketball hall of fame and both have their jersey numbers retired. 17 years is a long time to retire a jersey but even Jerry West's jersey was retired 9 years later which doesn't make him any lesser player than Worthy does it?

Other than that Goodrich played in an era dominated by the great Celtic teams and the Lakers had to make a move for Wilt to regain the championship at the end of Jerry West's career, which makes him a very valuable player than Worthy, whose presence didn't exactly turn the tide on a showtime team that had already won an NBA championship before he was drafted in.

That's not exactly true, however. Yes the Lakers were coming off a championship in 82.

But look at the bookend title teams, from 1980 and 1988, and you'll notice they are almost entirely different. Key contributors like Nixon and Wilkes are gone, Kareem had slowed down considerably. Really, other than Coop and Magic still playing at high levels, there isn't much similarity between the two teams at all.

It's not easy to retool championship teams on the fly. That's the main reason why the Celtics couldn't keep pace with the Lakers in the 1980s -- they couldn't infuse their roster with new, difference-making blood, while the Lakers did in the person of Byron Scott, A.C. Green and most importantly James Worthy.

No doubt Magic deserves the lion's share of credit for Showtime's success. He was the engine, the brains, of that team. But just as a computer is worthless without quality software to bring out its full potential, Magic was able to reach his maximize his talents in part because he had a collection of ideal wingmen, of which Worthy was by far the best.

Tall, strong, athletic, fast, great hands -- he had it all in that respect. Plus, you're really selling James short if you think he was just getting spoon fed by Magic all game. He was an outstanding post player who was able to fortify the half-court offense whenever Kareem was on the bench. Plus, there's the indisputable statistical proof that he was one of the rare players who got better as the stakes got higher.

Subtract Worthy from those teams, replace him with even an above-average SF, and those Laker teams in the mid to late 80s wouldn't have been nearly as good as they were. No way do they win three championships. Maybe one, possibly two, but not three.

Very good post Sedale. Worthy's post game was quite dirty. His spin move down at the base line was incredibly good.

Also, that click shot he had across the lane was insanely accurate.

BTW, what about his like 35/16/10 performance in an NBA Finals Game 7? That was one for the ages.

Doubled his career scoring average and tripled his career rebounding and assist averages for the only triple double of his career -- in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

That sums Big Game up to a T.

Well, I admit that I didn't know Worthy was as efficient in the half court sets. I knew he had a legit post game and some pretty good spin moves as well as a great reach to finish around the rim but this part is something that I was totally unaware of.