RealGM

If you are a competent NBA team with the expectation of building a championship contender from scratch and you have the option of selecting Kyrie Irving or Horace Grant for your franchise to build with, each playing in their own era and with all the strengths, limitations, and issues that each had over their careers being indicated in your interview process, which would you choose to build with.

(Note that I am not saying you should make Grant, or even Irving, the #1 option for your franchise, you shouldn't. I'm saying that you will hopefully get that #1 guy, who do you prefer to win more games and titles for you.)

I think Kyrie is a better player (though perhaps not by as much as their reputations would suggest). But all the “issues that each had over their careers” is a pretty significant thing for Kyrie. You kind of have to price into things the fact that he will have years where his head isn’t really on straight and/or he has major injuries.

So I’d say a couple factors would influence me here:

1. If I think I will get a really top-tier all-time great alongside them, then that might weigh in favor of picking Horace Grant, because that superstar will make me a contender every year, and I wouldn’t want to miss contention in some years due to Kyrie being injured or having weird issues. On the flip side, if the top player I’ll have on the team is not quite at that level, then I would probably choose Kyrie, because my team will need a lot from these guys to actually win a title and probably can’t hope for more than one or two, and I think Kyrie’s peak level is higher and makes that more likely to happen, even despite him sometimes being out. Basically, in one scenario, consistency is better, and in the other scenario, having peaks and valleys is better.

2. Relatedly, it might depend a bit on who I’m getting as a coach. If I have a guy who I think can really reach difficult players (Phil Jackson seems to have been a good example), then that’d make Kyrie more attractive than he otherwise would be.

penbeast0 wrote:If you are a competent NBA team with the expectation of building a championship contender from scratch and you have the option of selecting Kyrie Irving or Horace Grant for your franchise to build with, each playing in their own era and with all the strengths, limitations, and issues that each had over their careers being indicated in your interview process, which would you choose to build with.

(Note that I am not saying you should make Grant, or even Irving, the #1 option for your franchise, you shouldn't. I'm saying that you will hopefully get that #1 guy, who do you prefer to win more games and titles for you.)

Interesting comp. As you aluded to, it's a player who won't put up gaudy stats but will have a tremendous impact (Horace) vs a flashy player who can put up an impressive PPG while playing no defense.

I'm going with Horace. At his prime he had a tremendous impact on winning. His defense was fantastic. He was the 2nd best defender on the 3-peat. Helped lead the 93-94 team to 55 wins, then they feel felt apart when he left. The team he goes to heads to the finals.

Kyrie is without question not a #1 option. He won as a #2 when he had LeBron playing like a god. Horace as a #3 resulted in an all time great dynasty. I feel that this is almost comparing Draymond to Kyrie. No, Horace was not as great as Draymond. But he was a fantastic defender that was incredibly important to 3 championships with the Bulls (and another one later on).