Cavsfansince84 wrote:One_and_Done wrote:
Now imagine a team who won an average of 42 games for the first 10 years of their 'stars' tenure. Oh wait, I don't have to imagine, because that team is the Pacers, and that 'star' is Reggie Miller.
The Pacers only got good after the team was loaded, and they won as an ensemble cast. Reggie was just the face of that cast because he got to score more, as often happens. It's little different to the Derrick Rose Bulls, except Rose and the Bulls were better prior to his injury.
The league also wasn't very good back then compared to today, and nobody understood the importance of defending the 3pt shot properly. Now defensive schemes are geared around it.
In those same 11 years I mentioned above the Pacers managed to win 58, 56, 52 & 52 games. They also made it to a finals and took MJ's 3 peat Bulls team closer to elimination than any other team managed to do. They held a lead in the 4th quarter of game 7. All with a guy who is a fringe all star as their best player according to you but then again that's because they were so stacked with talent. Even though they were sort of built for defense and still had top offenses in the late 90's. That just doesn't add up. I mean I get you may just not like Reggie and tbh I still don't really like him but I can be objective enough to understand that what he did had a big impact on a bb court.
I mean, it makes perfect sense, because Reggie wasn’t doing it alone. He had a bunch of other guys, most of whom were very underrated because they were defensive players rather than exciting 3pt shot makers. His 98 team who took the Bulls to 7 featured all-star big Rik Smits, all-star bigs Antonio and Dale Daniels. Ace defensive role playing small forward Derrick McKey. Former all-star guard Mark Jackson, who wasn’t an all-star talent anymore but was a very good starting point guard. Then they had a young Jalen Rose, and a cagey vet in Chris Mullin was was a fabulous role player for them. For those who only remember Jalen Rose for his commentary, he was the guy who led the Pacers to the finals just 2 years later, and at 25 years old was only being held back from putting up big numbers due to the fact that he was the Pacers 6th man.
That was a fabulously good and deep team. They had at least 4 all-star calibre guys, another who would have been playing 6th man, an elite role player at the starting 3 spot, and 2 former all-stars who were now playing the role of solid vets for them in Jax and Mullin. Gosh, I wonder why they were so good. You focus on their top 4 offense, but their D was top 5 too, which was something Reggie had little to do with. He was the worst defender in their starting 5. Yes, Reggie helped their O a lot, but so did the steady offensive management of Mark Jackson, and Mullin shooting 440. from the 3. Jalen was an key offensive contributor too, and Smits jump shooting at the 5 was very handy. That was an ensemble cast, plain and simple.
