ozwizard8 wrote:Chanel Bomber wrote:ozwizard8 wrote:Again my point stands, KG does not belong to same tier with Hakeem. There is miles of difference between two. Hakeem won titles as #1 option. His game was so much more dominant. He was the best big men in his time. That is dominance.
KG was not even able to win his matchups in his conference. Duncan, Dirk and Shaq were easily better players than him. I dont think KG was clear winner of matchups against C.Webber, Pau Gasol either.
Curry winning multiple rings with Klay-Draymond is not the same thing of KG ring-chasing with 3 HOFers. After all he only have one ring too.
If Lebron only won a title with that Miami Heat team, he would have much worse reputation.KG had the image, PR for him. I know he has good amount of fans. But lets be honest, he wasn't even a top 3 big men in his conference. Duncan-Shaq-Dirk... All-schooled KG and his so-called great defense. On offense all three were reliable offensive juggernauts and KG was not at that level. Flashy blocks and dunks should not make him tier 2. I am not sure about Wade being tier 2 either.
Being unlucky in terms of injury cannot be involved in the discussion. D.Rose, B.Roy, T-Mac/Yao and even G.Oden can make top tiers if we try to create a fictional world.
With your comment on Wade arguably being below tier 2, I suspect this is really about Dirk and the Mavs, and not about a balanced discussion about the all-time greats.
Wade demolished your team in one of the greatest individual Finals performances in the history of the NBA, while Dirk shrunk in his first Finals appearance. I'd be mad too, no doubt. But Wade is an all-time great, same as Dirk.
Anyway - yes, Dirk more often than not won that matchup against Garnett. This doesn't mean Garnett wasn't an all-time great. Dirk also consistently had better teams around him, until Garnett went to Boston at age 31. Garnett had to deal with generational FO ineptitude in Minnesota.
Somehow, the comparison to other players never accounts for his defensive impact, which was massive. Pau Gasol? Garnett destroyed him in the 2008 Finals. Webber? C-Webb was coming back from a major injury in the one series they played. Garnett completely dominated that matchup, since you brought him up. And I don't hold that against Webber, who was on the decline.
Your paragraph on injuries is besides the point. I'm not talking about a what if. I pointed out how Garnett reached the WCF with the only good/decent team he had in Minnesota, and even then his team was plagued by injuries in the playoffs that one year. Some players are just more lucky than others when it comes to external circumstances. Garnett was on the extreme low end of that spectrum until he went to Boston. To pretend that this had no impact on the outcome would be simply delusional or flagrantly simplistic.
Also, Garnett was traded to Boston. By all accounts (Saunders, Billups, etc.), he actually wanted to stay in Minnesota, and only expressed that he wanted to end up in a winning situation since Minnesota communicated to him that they were looking to rebuild, possibly without him. He didn't force his way out. And who cares anyway, even if he had asked out, he was entitled to want to play with other great players. The other 2 hadn't won before either, so this was not a Kevin Durant situation.
The LeBron point is not particularly pertinent because LeBron and Garnett are not a 1:1 comparison to begin with since LeBron is tier 1, also because the supporting casts were different, also because the coaches were different (Spo vs Doc), and also because KG had to undergo knee surgery at 33 and missed the 2009 playoffs after the Celtics won 62 RS games. Would LeBron's stint in Miami have all of a sudden been a failure that he was responsible for if he had missed the 2013 playoffs because of knee surgery? Or would that have been a mitigating circumstance?
I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but it doesn't seem that you have any interest in factoring in circumstances or having a balanced view because it doesn't fit your pro-Dirk crusade - which let's be honest is really the agenda at play here. KG refuses to give Dirk his respect, and that's annoying, but that's life.
Sorry but you cannot argue about the argument at all. You're going far away to find sth for yourself. It sounds like a desperate attempt. I am not a Dirk fan; I was not even a Mavs fan or sth. Just a bandwagon for Luka. All of your writing has this funny prejudice of me being Dirk fan
The point is KG was not even a top 3 big men in his conference. Duncan-Dirk-Shaq **** him easily. I was not pointing out to any playoff series when I was referring to Webber and Gasol. I am trying to say that if you're early 2000s Kings fan you dont worry that Garnett to dominate the game.
If you have Shaq, Duncan or Dirk you now you'll beat Garnett. Hakeem was not like that. Hakeem was great on both ends and he was winning most of the matchups. He was a force.
If Hakeem is tier 2, then Garnett is tier 3. I am not saying Garnett is trash here. This is about comparison. KG has highly overrated image on some people. He was not reliable on offense for playoff game as #1 option.
His defense was nice for highlight videos but Dirk-Duncan-Shaq did not lose sleep over him.You give example of other stars teaming up too. And I said we would consider that for other stars as well. Like if Lebron only won with Miami then everybody would regard him lower than his perception today. KG only won when he teamed up with 3 HOFers and Rondo. That was the argument. There were no Lebron-KG comparisons like you somehow derived from the conversation.
Wade's title is one of the most suspicious one in 2000s. The amount of bull calls that Wade got in that series was ridiculous. It was a ref job big time. Even if it was not, that does not mean Wade is a tier 2 for his single run with Shaq. Wade did not put significant stats to be tier 2. But this is debatable. So I'm fine with your take.
Well maybe Kings fans should have been worried because Garnett had one of the best game 7 performances against them in the WCSF:
But again you're overlooking circumstances (and the defense).
Is it that Duncan, Dirk and Shaq didn't worry about KG? Or could it be that that Duncan with Parker and Ginobili, Dirk with Finley and Nash and then Terry and solid depth, or Shaq with Kobe and great role players, didn't really have to worry about KG and Trenton Hassell and Wally Sczerbiak and no depth at all (outside of 2004)?
The guys you mentioned, two of which won 4 and 5 rings and belong in a different tier
anyway, had a lot more help than Garnett.
Also I didn't say you compared KG to LeBron. But I mentioned a point you made using LeBron (whereby LeBron hypothetically winning only one ring in Miami would have hurt his legacy). If he had only won one in Miami with the same circumstances, sure, you're right, his legacy would rightly be affected. But would a
career-altering knee injury after his first championship like the one KG suffered in 2009 make him a lesser player if he hadn't been available to play in the 2013 playoffs? Would this be a mitigating circumstance for LeBron and not for Garnett, since the implication from your comment used the fact Garnett only won one as evidence that he wasn't
that great? Do you assess that a major injury wouldn't have significantly affected the outcome (for Garnett and hypthetically for LeBron) upon which your premise is based? I'm just asking you, these are open questions.
I personally still wonder how injuries should be viewed in retrospect, especially for great players who did win (e.g., Walton), not the Roys and the McGradys. I lean towards non-contact injuries being more immuable and inherently part of a player's journey, which is why I focus more on Minnesota's FO incompetence than Garnett's injury in 2009.
Also Garnett didn't join 3 HOFers, he was one of those 3
Come on bro you're reaching on too many fronts
Even if we assume that your theory about the officiating in the 2006 Finals is true, why would these external circumstances now be taken into account to penalize Wade, yet these external circumstances aren't taken into account for Garnett (mainly the lack of help due to FO incompetence in Minny, to a lesser degree the injury in Boston)? Or are you just selectively using these circumstances when you want to elevate or diminish a player? Sorry, just challenging your argument.
I don't really care about Garnett being tier 2 or tier 3 or tier 29. He can go to hell for what he did to Melo anyway. And you're entitled to put him anywhere you want to. I just don't think your arguments are really fair, because they completely ignore circumstances.
A healthy Garnett played on two good/great teams and he reached the WCF (by which point the team was plagued by injuries) and won a championship with them, respectively.
His rosters were largely awful all these other years, and then he had knee surgery at 33 after his first title. I'm not saying that there's any guarantee he would have won X number of championships with better circumstances. But to hold it against him that he only won one
considering the circumstances that he had to play through just seems a bit unfair to me.
