Superstar with worst supporting casts ever for career?
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Superstar with worst supporting casts ever for career?
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Morb
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Superstar with worst supporting casts ever for career?
Superstar with worst supporting casts ever for career?
PG Lebron '09, SG T-Mac '03, SF Durant '14, PF ????, C Wemby '26.
no-zone-baby))
no-zone-baby))
Re: Superstar with worst supporting casts ever for career?
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Owly
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Re: Superstar with worst supporting casts ever for career?
Of those in the poll ...
Gervin is curious (to put it gently) choice. Even excluding career bookends playing with Dr J and Michael Jordan - his teammates were generally not untalented. James Silas was considered his superior in the ABA (and came back to a degree). Artis Gilmore was pretty darned good. Larry Kenon was quite productive, if not necessarily a stable/reliable/fundamentally sound type. Nater and then Paultz weren't bad centers, Johnny Moore is overlooked historically as a good point guard. One could go one (Olberding, Banks, Mitchell).
King ... What are "his casts"? Are we counting his Nets spell? Utah (with Dantley and initially, on paper, Maravich)? Golden State (with Purvis Short, World B Free, Joe Barry Carroll and Larry Smith)? Or are we focusing on New York and Washington? If Washington was he necessarily always the best player there (for a spell I'd have John "Hot Plate" Williams over early-ish recovery King). Is Ewing part of his "casts" (injuries meant they didn't play much together).
Wilkins lacked good star power, though he had a brief spell with less good "stars" (later career though still good Moses and swiftly exposed to expansion, notionally "star" Theus) and at his best played with solid depth (Rivers, Webb, Levingston, Willis, Carr, Rollins, Koncak).
Maravich ... If you leave aside questions as to whether he was a superstar level player ... yeah an expansion team gutted future picks (and ABA contraction picks? not sure otoh) for him and Goodrich and then Goodrich gets injured. Then just at the end Dantley and King arrive. Atlanta ... albeit losing "Pogo" Joe Caldwell, had been pretty good before his arrival though. If you focus on the Jazz, his best years (ignoring Atlanta and the curtain call in Boston) then he's a serious contender.
McGrady, otoh, and nonrigorously, takes it for me. There was talent in Toronto. There was talent in Houston. There was certainly talent in San Antonio if that counts. But for the sheer depths of at or sub- replacement level minutes he played with at his apex in Orlando ... it's a shame. It really takes the biscuit. Again if you want to count Hill this changes. And I don't know about a thorough average. But McGrady stands out for a low low-point (perhaps also moreso than Maravich because of the greater degree to which he stood above it).
Gervin is curious (to put it gently) choice. Even excluding career bookends playing with Dr J and Michael Jordan - his teammates were generally not untalented. James Silas was considered his superior in the ABA (and came back to a degree). Artis Gilmore was pretty darned good. Larry Kenon was quite productive, if not necessarily a stable/reliable/fundamentally sound type. Nater and then Paultz weren't bad centers, Johnny Moore is overlooked historically as a good point guard. One could go one (Olberding, Banks, Mitchell).
King ... What are "his casts"? Are we counting his Nets spell? Utah (with Dantley and initially, on paper, Maravich)? Golden State (with Purvis Short, World B Free, Joe Barry Carroll and Larry Smith)? Or are we focusing on New York and Washington? If Washington was he necessarily always the best player there (for a spell I'd have John "Hot Plate" Williams over early-ish recovery King). Is Ewing part of his "casts" (injuries meant they didn't play much together).
Wilkins lacked good star power, though he had a brief spell with less good "stars" (later career though still good Moses and swiftly exposed to expansion, notionally "star" Theus) and at his best played with solid depth (Rivers, Webb, Levingston, Willis, Carr, Rollins, Koncak).
Maravich ... If you leave aside questions as to whether he was a superstar level player ... yeah an expansion team gutted future picks (and ABA contraction picks? not sure otoh) for him and Goodrich and then Goodrich gets injured. Then just at the end Dantley and King arrive. Atlanta ... albeit losing "Pogo" Joe Caldwell, had been pretty good before his arrival though. If you focus on the Jazz, his best years (ignoring Atlanta and the curtain call in Boston) then he's a serious contender.
McGrady, otoh, and nonrigorously, takes it for me. There was talent in Toronto. There was talent in Houston. There was certainly talent in San Antonio if that counts. But for the sheer depths of at or sub- replacement level minutes he played with at his apex in Orlando ... it's a shame. It really takes the biscuit. Again if you want to count Hill this changes. And I don't know about a thorough average. But McGrady stands out for a low low-point (perhaps also moreso than Maravich because of the greater degree to which he stood above it).