Best Player to Wear #3?

[e-monk]

Originally Posted by Mattsanity

LOL I'm sure the average person knows who Bo Derek is.

you do right? are you so special?

[Mattsanity]

Originally Posted by e-monk

nope, sorry - you have now been disqualified from further contributions

it's not close, not debatable, not even a little bit - one guy was the best player in the league on the best team in the league who dominated the league like no one since Wilt

and the other was a ball hog who shot a lot on a team built to let him do it that wouldnt have been good enough to get into let alone out of the second round in the west

SO 29ppg 12.7rpg 3.7apg 2.8bpg PER 30.2 TS% .574 efg .572 WS% 14.9

AI 31ppg 3.8rpg 4.6apg 2.5spg PER 24.0 TS% .518 efg .447 WS% 11.8

even without the clearly dominant efficiency numbers Shaq simply had better stats, was the better player on a better team - it was a travesty and any clear headed unbiased individual with knowledge of the game will tell you so

I still say it's debatable but you can go ahead and believe your opinion as fact. That's fine with me.

With that being said, you would probably deny AI into the hall of fame. he must've done something to your favorite team or player back in the day.

[Hyperion]

Originally Posted by Mattsanity

LOL I'm sure the average person knows who Bo Derek is.

Everyone knows who Bo is. Bo knows baseball. Bo knows football.

[Mattsanity]

Originally Posted by Hyperion

Everyone knows who Bo is. Bo knows baseball. Bo knows football.

sorry man but I don't get your pun.

[Hyperion]

Originally Posted by RollWithEm

"They even put a zone in the league to try to stop him."

You know what's sad? This rap feels like a freeflow but he actually wrote this rap down and did drafts. This was the best version.

[Hyperion]

Originally Posted by Mattsanity

sorry man but I don't get your pun.

[e-monk]

Originally Posted by Mattsanity

I still say it's debatable but you can go ahead and believe your opinion as fact. That's fine with me.

With that being said, you would probably deny AI into the hall of fame. he must've done something to your favorite team or player back in the day.

my opinion of AI: he's not better than Wade (the point of this thread), I dont get the influence thing, he was the face of olympic futility but he probably has HoF cred - but so do guys like Dantley or English who spent their careers putting up points and not much else (and did it with a lot less chucking than AI did) - there is room in the hall for scorers but to claim that he was anything more? nope

and personally his playing made me sick - just the worst kind of anti-team me first chucking but if that's your thing then cool

as for my opinion vis the MVP question sure, it's supported by facts but not to be confused with the same thing - maybe you can look at those stat comparisons or the roles both players had in their team's success and make some kind of twisted argument to the contrary but my brain just isnt up to that kind of tortuous (il)logic

[Jamel Irief]

Originally Posted by Najee

Even if you're going by the argument that Allen Iverson's game and persona somehow translated well with streetball-type players, he wasn't the first by any means.

I mean, unless you were 10 years old in the mid-1990s and didn't associate that style with Julius Erving, Tiny Archibald, Earl "The Pearl" Monroe and numerous others who actually played in that environment. And yes, those guys had the swagger (albeit in a much more positive fashion than Iverson).

Just say Iverson "was the first NBA I can recall in my life who looked like the hoodrat on the corner" and leave it at that. But let's not try to make him out to be some sort of revolutionary in that respect.

It's not a Najee post without him somehow mentioning how old he is. Well buddy, hate to point this out to you but I'm 95. See my profile.

The players of the 70s were street, and the NBA wasn't mainstream back then. The league became mainstream in the 80's, and Iverson was the first guy that was a superstar without conforming to what white America felt a black man should look and act like.

Just like Snoop wasn't the first gangster rapper, but he might of been the first one to blend in well with white america.

[Najee]

Allen Iverson, Adrian Dantley and Alex English were more than "just scorers" -- they were scorers at a level few players in NBA history could match. In Iverson's case, he did it for an exceptionally long period (he averaged at least 24.8 points per game for 12 straight years) in addition to the volume. Again, you're talking fairly rare area in a major category.

Iverson wasn't totally one-dimensional. He played the passing lanes well (he led the NBA in steals for three straight seasons and averaged 2.2 steals per game for his career). He got to the free-throw line at an incredibly high clip for a guy his size (he averaged 8.9 free throw attempts per game for his career). Despite his style of play, he did average 6.2 assists per game for his career. He was an all-NBA player for seven seasons. Again, we're talking about a perennial top-level player during his run.

The problem is in this comparison, where he is going up against a player who can be considered his equal in Dwayne Wade but with far less baggage. With all things being equal, I'm choosing Wade because he can bring the productivity Iverson could but with more efficiency and you're not resorting to building a team of role players around him because of his style of play/ego.

[Najee]

Originally Posted by Jamel Irief

The players of the 70s were street, and the NBA wasn't mainstream back then. The league became mainstream in the 80's, and Iverson was the first guy that was a superstar without conforming to what white America felt a black man should look and act like.

That's funny. I don't recall white America sending memos telling Clyde Frazier, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan how they should look and act like. I also didn't know Allen Iverson was a definition of "what a black man should look and act like (which in Iverson's case, was a hairstyle that was becoming popularized again because of former prisoners)."

But maybe that's your point. The "nonconforming black man" in your opinion has a defined look. Because it's evident you've mistaken a fashion statement (one popularized in the criminal justice system) for militancy. In reality, you're defining players by some vague definition of what is a "standard" by another racial group.

[e-monk]

Wade at his peak was just a better player - just as explosive an offensive player, just as capable of getting to the line, much better defender, much better teammate

[e-monk]

Originally Posted by Najee

That's funny... ...was a definition of what you define as "what a black man should look and act like (which in Iverson's case, was a hairstyle that was first popularized by a hot blond woman in a dudley moore film)."

But maybe that's your point. The "nonconforming black man" in your opinion has a defined look. Because it's evident you're mistaken a fashion statement for militancy.

ftfy

[Mattsanity]

Originally Posted by e-monk

my opinion of AI: he's not better than Wade (the point of this thread), I dont get the influence thing, he was the face of olympic futility but he probably has HoF cred - but so do guys like Dantley or English who spent their careers putting up points and not much else (and did it with a lot less chucking than AI did) - there is room in the hall for scorers but to claim that he was anything more? nope

and personally his playing made me sick - just the worst kind of anti-team me first chucking but if that's your thing then cool

as for my opinion vis the MVP question sure, it's supported by facts but not to be confused with the same thing - maybe you can look at those stat comparisons or the roles both players had in their team's success and make some kind of twisted argument to the contrary but my brain just isnt up to that kind of tortuous (il)logic

you can show off advanced stats, but what's done is done. Steve nash didn't even make top 10 in player efficiency and he still won mvp both seasons, but that's a different topic.

[Najee]

Bo Derek wore braids, not cornrows:



And even then, that's a hairstyle was popularized way before she wore them in "10."

[e-monk]

Originally Posted by Mattsanity

you can show off advanced stats, but what's done is done. Steve nash didn't even make top 10 in player efficiency and he still won mvp both seasons, but that's a different topic.

it's exactly the same topic - Nash wasnt the best player in the league but at least you could make the argument that he made his teammates better, that's not an AI argument you should try to make to someone drinking a glass of water unless you want to see a spit take