Vote: Marques Johnson
Nominate: Vince Carter
ElGee has touched on Marques plenty of times, so I don't think I need to explain that...but regarding Carter, I made this post before about him:
I think there are aspects to VC's game that are underrated, namely his rebounding and his playmaking. He was never like T-Mac as a playmaker, but he seemed to be at least as good as say, Paul Pierce, whose playmaking, although not otherworldly, is generally considered a positive. And Carter was also one of the best rebounding SGs in the league since he entered the league.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y4=2008As you can see, when compared to Wade, Kobe, and T-Mac, three of the best rebounding SGs in the modern era, Carter compares favorably, and is in fact second only to T-Mac, who's bigger than the other three players and played half his prime as a SF. It's a little skewed in the sense that Kobe had his two lowest TRB% seasons in his first two years, and Wade's first season was his 2nd-lowest TRB%, but T-Mac actually had some of his best TRB% years in his first few years in the league. Overall, it's a little biased towards Carter, but still gives a pretty good estimation of their respective rebounding.
So considering that, I think Carter has generally performed well in the playoffs, namely in 01, 05, and 06. Everyone knows about 01, and his showdown with AI, but in 05, he played the best basketball of his life after the trade to the Nets, and I would definitely have ranked him top 10 in the league during that stretch (MAYBE top 5-7). The Nets were overwhelmed by a far superior Heat team, with Wade establishing himself as a superstar, and Carter's efficiency suffered. It didn't help that the 2nd best scorer on the team, Richard Jefferson, had just come back from a season-ending injury and wasn't nearly his old self, and that Jason Kidd was not really a guy who was going to alleviate the scoring load for you, especially at that point in his career (although he did average over 17 ppg in that series). So I can excuse Carter for having a 48% TS, and I'm actually impressed with the fact that he averaged close to 27/9/6 for that series.
In 06, again, the Nets lost to the Heat, who decided to play up to their potential once the playoffs rolled around. Wade again dominated. But Carter held his own. For the playoffs, Carter averaged 30/7/5 on 56% TS. This was clearly his best individual playoffs.
His 07 playoffs was pretty inexcusable though, because although he was still rebounding and distributing at a high level (and despite what the overall numbers say about his Toronto series, he played very well), he got owned in a head to head matchup in the 2nd round against...Sasha Pavlovic. Pavlovic guarded Carter and shut him down, and he even had a few nice offensive games of his own on Carter. If Carter played just a little better, the Nets could have easily won this series and advanced to the Conference Finals. It also kind of wasted the best playoffs of Kidd's career too. But again, Carter was still a good distributor and rebounder for the Nets.
Overall, I think Carter was that "all-around" type player that I don't think people really give him credit for, and he was a better playoff performer than people give him credit for. He was obviously not perfect and had plenty of flaws, but he was a very good player that could carry an offense and explode for huge games in the playoffs when asked to. Similar to AI and Dominique in that sense.
