falcolombardi wrote:also just because a player is a flawed first option star doesnt mean he is a bad second option or second best offensive player
i think we are starting to punish second rate first options too much compared to first rate second options
is somethingh i thought about in the time of the stockton pick over players like patrick ewing, who is to say patrick ewing couldnt have been a "perfect second star" like stockton was if he got the luxury of playing with a player better than him?
in that regard i think a lot of guys who were "THE GUY" like iverson, carmelo or such could have thrived as second options even if their styles scream "first option with low portability". think of how kirye worked well enough with lebron despite not being a picture perfect second guy (neutral ish defensive side impact, needs the ball in his hands and played with a first stae who also needs the ball). and it worked pretty damn well
RE: Who is to say? People who analyzing what a player's actual attributes are and considering how they'd fit in different roles. Period. That's the deal. Yes, we can be wrong about things we've never seen, but if you're judging Ewing by saying "Maybe he could have played like Stockton, who can say?", you're quite frankly not drilling deep enough.
You mention Kyrie. How did that work? It worked specifically when Kyrie had the ball and the defense was still more afraid of LeBron, so Kyrie had a lot of room to work with. It worked with Kyrie getting to play alpha against softer defensive pressure than the vast majority of players get to work with.
Now, if you want to say that guys like Iverson or Melo might be able to play a Kyrie-like role, this makes some sense despite the fact I've been so vehement in my criticisms toward Melo.
But it makes no sense at all to say "Well y'never know, maybe Melo will turn out to be a Stockton-level passer if we tell him to do that instead of scoring." Nope. The only thing Melo ever really developed was his ability to score. That's what made him special, and putting him in any role where he was expected to focus energy on anything else is just insisting that he does what he's bad at rather than what he's good at.
And what I'm saying in general about Melo is that he's just plain not good enough at scoring to expect to lead an elite offense, he's a weakness in most everything else in his game, and if you're playing Melo next to a better scorer, that better scorer would be better suited to play with a different player type.
For example, we can say nice things about how Kyrie looked with LeBron, but what we saw from AD last year was vastly more valuable to LeBron because he brought stuff to the table LeBron could not rather than just being "a second scorer".
Last thing I'm going to say is this - and I want to apologize up front for being on a mean streak right now:
The general rule is that what top tier talents want around them are smart team players. Guys who are good at making decisions. Guys who are good at understanding what their teammates need. Guys who work together as if they are part of a hive mind.
And this more than anything else is the issue with the Melo's of the world. Melo always played dumb. Even when he had the ball in his hands looking to score, he wasn't good at figuring out how to get the super-efficient shot, and that was literally the smartest part of his game.
So when I see something along the lines of "Who can say? Maybe this individualist whose always seemed clueless to the needs of his teammates will turn into John Stockton if he just played with a better scorer.", to me that's just a non-starter.
Okay, I think I should stop. My apologies for my rudeness.
