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Re: Underrated/Overrated Greats
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Originally Posted by kflo
i can't believe what i'm reading here. worthy was the #1 pick in the draft. he was an exceptional talent who lived up to the hype. he gave up an advantage to noone he played against. again, the lakers wouldn't have traded him for anyone at his position. cedric ceballos!!!??? jeezzzus. ceballos was a garbage man scorer, who found ways to score but wasn't very reliable in the half court set. which is a large part of why he usually went awol in the playoffs. worthy was an elite 3. as an offensive weapon, he was up there with anyone.
his prime playoff scoring average was 23 pts/40 with 60% ts%. i mean, discussing worthy hitting open jumpers - he was an offensive focal point - he had a post game, and could generate his own opportunities on the perimeter. he ran the floor better than anyone at his position as well. imagine how good magic really is if we only consider worthy to be a very good at one dimension player.
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Worthy was unstopable on offense. The same way Kevin McHale was, and the same way Duncan is/was. He was just not a volume scorer. One could say he didn't have to be, considering the teams had the likes of Magic, Kareem and Scott. And that's the thing, really. Worthy didn't have to score in bundles, or pass the ball much (who would one prefer handling the ball? Magic Johnson or any forward in the history of the game?). So i can't see why this could be used aginst him. He was not a top-notch defender, but he was a reliable one. The only knock i see in his game is his poor rebounding numbers. Which can be explained somewhat by playing SF and having to play with a PG who would grab 6/7 rebounds a game)
This thread has the title "Underrated/Overrated Greats". Which makes me ask: are we talking about who are the GREAT player or who are the BEST players? Because there's a whole lot of names being thrown around that don't touch Worthy if we are talking about GREAT players.
It's easy to say "hey, if _____ played with Magic and Kareem he would have been great too." But i don't buy that argument. There was a reason the Lakers picked Worthy above Nique and Terry Cummings. They knew what they were doing. And who has the rings?
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West was motivated by a relentless drive to succeed. Years after a game in which he hit 16 of 17 shots from the field, sank all 12 free throw attempts, and notched 12 rebounds, 12 assists and 10 blocked shots, West told the National Sports Daily, "Defensively, from a team standpoint, I didn't feel I played very well. Very rarely was I satisfied with how I played." This obsessive quest for perfection was a constant during West's playing years, and it continued in his later roles as coach and general manager of the Lakers and, currently, as president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.
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