Jaivl wrote:The further we go back and the less data we have, the margin of error of our (in this case, my) analysis becomes much higher (although we do have quite a decent amount of film of the Showtime Lakers). That's to be expected whenever we make these kind of comparisons.
I don't think Worthy was the scorer Thompson was, personally. I don't see Worthy as a dude who could sniff 70, not that there are many of those in league history. He DID drop off a cliff in terms of efficacy without Magic, though he also turned 30 and had the injury from 91 still hanging over him, then didn't even start every game he played in 93, and was fully a bench guy in his last year. Very difficult to evaluate, but yeah. He seemed to do exactly what he was supposed to: be a great second/third option, hustling all over the place and looking great from a team POV while doing it. A star-level glue guy. I think probably a more valuable player to a winning team than someone like Thompson, who didn't have huge value outside of scoring. Big year in 78, of course, so it's an interesting conversation all around.
I think people crap on Worthy a lot because they like to crap on anyone who doesn't fit their model of what a great player looks like. Don't play like Jordan/Kobe? You're inferior, instantly, even though there are many routes to the same goal (titles), etc. Lots of that flying around, and it's to the detriment of a guy like Worthy, for sure.
EDIT: Same same, like if you aren't the #1 guy, you can't be a great player. Pippen is the classic example of this. He's kind of a fair analog. Worthy was a noticeably better scoring threat, whereas Scottie derived his value from setting the table in the triangle and his defense, but same idea. They had a huge megastar in front of them, so their utility and value get lost.