Dupp wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:therealbig3 wrote:Wouldn't give LeBron all that much credit for Dwight buying in and being an impact player for them, I think that's more on Dwight. He had been bouncing around the league still trying to be what he was in Orlando, and was on his way out of the league in fact. I think he realized at that point that changing his approach and buying into a team concept and focusing on the things he was still good at was his last real shot at still being a valuable contributor on a team. And of all teams you better make that change for, the Lakers with LeBron/AD and championship aspirations are definitely one of them.
I think you have more faith in Dwight's ability to grow up right when he needs it than I do. I think he should have been looking at things like "this is my last chance" since he was in Atlanta. I don't think it's a coincidence that he bought in when joining the team of the most empowered superstar in the league who was also all-in on building a hard-working culture built around him.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that Rondo woke up in the same context.
I'd say it's really the same type of thing we saw from Rodman on Jordan's team. Yes, Rodman was still a wild card, but looked at Jordan as his boss. I'm pretty dang sure that Howard & Rondo look at LeBron similarly. I mean consider the alternative: You think it's Vogel who has the magic spell? Pelinka? The Buss family? Nah.
I will say this though: Give an assist to Kobe's Laker success and, tragically, Kobe's death.
This is the kind of thing when evaluating players or leaders we really don’t know how big of an impact someone had.
Like really how much credit do we give to lebron? How much to the whole Lakers staff, AD, the team and of course Dwight himself? It all factors in im sure but how much credit do you give lebron? Maybe Dwight just legit grew up and thought I’ve been on trash teams nearly 10 years now this maybe my only shot to win a ring. I’m sure Vogel and bron had a chat with him but maybe that’s the same chat Lillard could have had with him if he joined Lillard on a legit contender.
At the same time the opposite is thrown around too. Like lebron made love worse. When in reality after the initial growing pains ( yes lebron deserves some blame here) the only decline in love was his play around the basket. That was almost certainly due to weight loss/injuries. He played there less of course because he was shooting a lot of threes but he was no welters near the force around the rim he once once.
If we want to be petty we could say kawhi made Paul George worse. In reality sometimes good players just get worse or don’t mesh and there’s no one else to blame. I’m sure bron would be getting killed if PG played this way next to him after how great he looked the next to Westbrook. Which is funny given all the criticism Westbrook gets.
Absolutely agree. We have an uncertainty to reckon with always and particularly with this intangible stuff. When you add in that various factors aren't additive so much as multiplicative, our tendency toward weighting schemes totally fall apart.
I will say that the fact that Lillard is also a great leader doesn't really matter to me here except so far as we want to have an actual LeBron vs Dame debate. The fact of the matter is that I think LeBron did have the impact I said he had and that the respect I have for Dame is also why I really felt compelled to at least have him in my Top 10.
Re: LeBron & Love. I still think there were better ways to play and empower Love in Cleveland and LeBron could have done a better job there, but at this point there's really nothing to indicate that. I had so much hope that Love would prove himself to be the kind of heady player who would fill in the gaps that a top tier BBIQ is, and in the end it just doesn't seem like he's quite got it. Higher than average BBIQ, particularly strong in some facets, but limited in his ability to adapt.
I also think that there's plenty of blame to go around for LeBron's 2nd Cavs run. I don't like the ownership, I don't like Blatt, I really don't like Kyrie, and both LeBron and Love disappointed me in their own way. I maintain all of that...and yet still acknowledge that LeBron made that team get to 4 finals and beat a 73-9 team in the finals.
It's amazing, and I really think he's gone about building up the Lakers way more wisely which may lead to a more dominant run that he's ever had before, depending on his ability to stay in prime. Of course in some ways, I think it's as simple as AD having a much healthier team philosophy than Kyrie. LeBron deserves more credit than AD for the Laker culture right now, but AD had the power to gum up the works if he wanted. Instead, he seems almost like a giddy child and at times I feel like LeBron's just watching him and marveling at his joy.
Re: don't mesh no one is to blame. I would disagree with that assessment when you're talking about a team being assembled betting on established star talent. I don't blame the 76ers that much for struggling with one to do with Simmons & Embiid given that they acquired both in the draft, but if a team purposefully put together a Simmons-type with an Embiid-type I would blame the organization for not understanding basketball fit.
When it's the players who force the bad fit? I direct my ire at the players. I blame Kawhi for forcing the Clippers to give up the greatest trade haul in NBA history for a guy who had obvious fit concerns now that I know wit a certainty that Kawhi had no special knowledge of how he and PG would work together. I gave him the benefit of the doubt up front, but now, man. How much better shape would the Clippers be in if Kawhi just acted like a normal free agent and said "I want to play for you because you're from my hometown and you seem to be doing a good job building up your roster and culture. I'm in. Build the best team possible around me." But he didn't trust them to do that, he trusted his own individualist myopia as informed by playing for possibly the two best coached teams of the 21st century and apparently crediting himself for everything good that happened to him.
Now, how much do I blame him in a POY discussion? Not enough to move him below a guy I thought he was better than and then beat in a playoff series (Luka). I'm not horribly punitive here, my general rule is simply that you don't get to play the "weak supporting cast" card once you pull this type of stuff, and to me that's an important thing because otherwise you end up effectively incentivizing top players to play with ineffective teammates.
Of course I realize that my personal evaluation of this stuff isn't driving player decision making, but I think that in the name of the most meaningful metric, choosing an approach that would incentivize the right stuff in theory is the right way to go.
And I think Harden is instructive here.
On one level, it's very impressive that Harden took a team to the 2nd round while saddled with a has-been who never learned how to think on the court and now can't shoot who is taking up around $40 million dollars that could have gone elsewhere. I'll be damned if I reward him for forcing his organization to swallow that albatross though.
