Rodwilliams wrote:BombsquadSammy wrote:As much as I'm personally enjoying what happened for obvious and well-known reasons, the truth is that it's folly to judge players on their low points.
Every player has low points along his career, and for most players, the lows are pretty low. Every guy's blown it at some point; not every guy's won a ring or an MVP. What are a player's high points? That's what we should evaluate them by.
You can easily recognize when someone has a clear agenda against a player, because they'll only talk about that player's low points (LeBron lost six Finals, Kobe only shot 31% in the clutch, Jordan couldn't get out of the first round until Pippen came, etc.) while in the same context only talking about their guy's high points.
Kawhi had a rough series and a lousy game, but he didn't have to turn in his rings or his Finals MVPs because of that.
This logic doesn’t work AFTER you won championships. Kawhi has 2 rings and then chokes a 3-1 lead against a Nuggets team with Jokic and Jamal Murray. No excuse for that. Choked in game 7. No excuse. Half that stuff you named with Kobe and Jordan happened before they won championships. Can’t apply that to this situation.
That's not true. Jordan's path is that least traveled; very few players retire on top (and if we factor his Washington years, which we should if we're being fair, even
he didn't).
Kobe was the Lakers' biggest negative factor in their loss to the Pistons in the '04 Finals; he shot them out of that series, and that was after he'd become a three-time champion. He gave up a 3-1 lead to Phoenix a few years later.
'Tragic Johnson'--Magic's choke job in the '84 Finals; he was a two-time champ
and a two-time Finals MVP by that point.
Steph came up short in 2016, and he was a champ and a two-time MVP at that point.
Some say the Spurs choked after being up 3-2 against Miami in 2013, and their championship mettle was more-than-proven by that point.
It happens. This stuff is dynamic-- it's not as though once someone figures out how to win, they become impervious to losing or struggling.