ken6199 wrote:GusFring wrote:og15 wrote:I understand people not valuing rings as much and others who also place higher value on them. For the first side, the reality is that opportunity is nowhere close to equal among players when it comes to getting rings. That's from things like luck (and/or strength) of your team in drafting, attractiveness or timing of cap space in free agency, so the strength of your team's management in general. Then also the type of owner your team has, some want to win at all costs, some are just happy to have decent teams. Then there's not just your own health, but the health of your teammates. The era/time you are in the league also matters; if you and your team peak at a time where you just have another team with clearly better talent and maybe even better financials, your chance of winning goes down, etc, etc.
That's why a guy like LeBron James went out and created his own opportunity, because he knows that people don't really care too much about context. Yes, some people do, but most or at least many people just care about end result, ring or no ring, and they will insert the narrative of why the player failed or succeeded after the fact, so LeBron was not going to put his legacy in the hands of all those factors.
For example, a player plays a pretty good, but maybe not great, certainly not perfect game in the conference finals or finals, and his team loses to a clearly better team. After the fact, a narrative will be that he had his chance to beat said team, and he didn't bring it, while citing this or that run, or this or that situation in the game where the player should have answered back and taken over. Of course, that also neglects that the stars on the better team would have themselves needed to essentially "fail" and not bring it when needed for the star on the inferior team to have his individual performance overshadow both theirs and their whole teams. Also the stars on the other team, as long as they win, any little extras they do in the game will now be narrated as the keys, while all the extras the losing star does will be ignored and it will basically be diminished to "well they didn't score enough or carry the team on their back enough."
In the end, not every player is as proactive about carving their legacy and getting themselves into championship position as others. Some land in situations where they don't need to create their own opportunity, it's there.
James Harden had the opportunity last year but I'm not of the same hive mind that the warriors are an unstoppable force. James Harden also had that bizarre series against the spurs where he got slammed when the claw was out. Its not like this is a KG scenario where he's stuck on minny. Houston cares or cared about building a contender and they did. He shouldn't be blamed for these losses of course as he's not the only reason but how can he be put above guys like wade or kobe. I don't really value the RS much.
From your post I feel like you didn't read og15's response above clearly. He wrote a perfect piece, yet it seems like you are still stuck with your old narratives.
Houston peaked last year, offense and defense. They had their franchise W-L record with a historical ortg. Most of their core players were on team friendly contracts, Capela as a rookie, Paul opted into his player option, Ariza on his expiring peanut contract which he signed right before the salary cap spike. That's an as clear definition of peak as you can get. Just like og15 said, unfortunately there was another team named GS out there who were better than them on every aspect, added by a player, again like og15 said, who choose to create a winning situation for himself with the sacrifice of probably being regarded as a weak minded player for the rest of his career. And when the WCF finished, people, again like og15 said, started to insert narratives like this guy cannot bring his team over the hump when needed, that guy delivered for his team when needed, etc. etc.
People choose to remember his game 6 against Spurs, but without realizing his super efficient game 4, 28+12, brought Houston back into the series to avoid a 1-3 down having to face 3 elimination games. People also choose to remember his 11 TO game back in 14-15 WCF, but forgot he started the series with 2 excellent games in Oracle, took the team whtin a striking distance to come back to Houston with a 2-0 lead. Same for the series before, his game 6 4th quarter sitting on the bench vs his game 5 (which was again, an elimination game he saved for Houston). And the LAC-SAS series before, Paul's heroic game 7 vs Spurs makes him a playoff performer, yet those who only remembers his OKC game 5 will call him a playoff choker. So what indeed is Paul, I am confused.
Houston took a huge gamble last year and it almost paid off. If it paid off, Harden would be considered a much better player than he is now, but only the sane heads will credit his ring, a solid part of it, to Moray and how he operated last year. It was one of the best gambles one can ever wish for. Unfortunately the gamble didn't pay off, and Moray took 2 further gambles: 1) a huge gamble on Paul's next 4 years, 2) a smaller gamble on signing 5 minimum wage players. We all know 1) is looking worse every single day, and 2) has been a complete failure with all 5 of them gone by February. Moray failed real bad this year, and likely handicapped Houston's cap space for the next 4 year to remove them from the elite contender tier. If Harden doesn't win a ring in the rest of his Houston career, how much blame do you put on him for not delivering when needed, and how much do you put on Moray for taking that huge gamble which obviously backfired? Then how much do you put on luck (yes, I can shoot better than 0-27 in the gym with hands in my face)? Or more ridiculously, the peaking of the Warriors team at the "wrong" time.
Sorry for the rant. I just feel like lines like "we play the game to win of course winning is all it matters" just doesn't belong to a place like RealGM. It's more for Instagram and Facebook comment area.
