LAL1947 wrote:When you've made a mistake, I think it is better to accept your mistake gracefully and learn from it, and not accuse me of purposely misunderstanding something in bad faith.
I didn't make any mistake though and you clearly misunderstood me.
Are you trying to say it is "arguable" that James Worthy, AC Green, Mychal Thompson, Byron Scott were comparable to or less talented than Lamar Odom, Ron Artest, Pau Gasol, Derek Fisher? This has reached laughable levels now. Magic most certainly had the better or more talented supporting cast. This is not "arguable"... it is inarguable. The only people who would try to "argue" it are those trying to play mental gymnastics for another purpose.... or fans of Lamar, Artest, and Fisher. Since I assume you are not the latter, it means you are doing the former. James Worthy > Lamar Odom. AC Green Ron Artest. Byron Scott > Derek Fisher. Pau Gasol is the only one better than his 1988 counterpart, Mychal Thompson.
Could you make a solid case for 1990 Lakers being clearly more talented than 2009 or 2010 Lakers? Just please, try to go further than "it's laughable, everybody knows it".
I don't understand why you even mention AC Green or Mychal Thompson. Thompson's only value was his scrappy post defense, but even there he was undersized. He wasn't much of a rebounder, he was a bad passer, he couldn't create his own shot and he wasn't a good finisher (outside of his outlier 1989 season). He was past prime undersized veteran with extremely limited role. He was much worse than both Gasol and Bynum. I fail to see how AC Green was better than Artest as well.
Worthy vs Gasol is a good debate, I prefer Gasol personally for his better defense and passing. It is close though, you are right.
Odom vs Scott is only close because of how well Scott fit next to Magic. All-around, Odom was more versatile and valuable player.
Again, these teams are definitely comparable. It seems that you throw around names without knowing much about them.
Kobe was not the team's facilitator... and your point is irrelevant since the original point was that outside of assists, Kobe was more skillful than Magic and took more of his skills to new heights. Magic has never displayed Kobe's level of individual brilliance... not because he never wanted to... but because he didn't have the same skill level and was good at other things. So quit being disingenuous by bringing team-play into it. You also tried to use other "stretches of imagination" even there, trying to say that Magic's shooting was "comparable" to Kobe's. No, it just was simply not.
But your vision of "skills" is only limited to scoring skills, which is very crude way of looking at basketball. Players can impact the game in variety of ways and the impact is more important than any number of skills shown on basketball court.
Anyway, I'm not going to spend my days debating all of your mental gymnastics and "arguable" stretches of imagination. This "debate' is already very tiresome as it is... since you are re-writing history to fit your Timmy-loving narrative. If you keep doing stuff like that, I'm simply going to point it out... and not engage you in conversations.
It's very, very ironic coming out of your mouth. I don't care what you think about me, I also don't care if you like Duncan or not. You accuse me of being Timmy-lover, but I don't spend all my time on this board trying to make my favorite player look like a god. I have a lot of basketball idols from various eras and I can look critical at Duncan when necessary. Try to do the same thing with Kobe next time
