Dreams to remember
The reason I haven't jumped to my own defense is that I'm taking care of some other business, business that has rendered me semi-incapable of viewing or caring about the playoffs. It's called driving across Texas when you're sick and ending up somewhere that's about to slide into the Third World at any moment. I both fear and respect this open referendum on my awful influence, but would invite everyone to take into account what a trifle FreeDarko began as. Then again, I think we believed this stuff much more ardently before defending it on the regular suddenly became one of speaking's preconditions.
It's also all my fault for there being no McSweeney's this week. I have two semi-shitty drafts that probably should, at some point in the near future, be loosed upon the interwebs. For now, though, I wanted to chime in briefly on the central theme of one, which I believe someone already touched on in the comments: fuck Shaq. He clearly needs an HOF-caliber guard by his side to seriously contend, and I'd hardly call his dependance on Wade' budding internal megaphone "proving the Lakers wrong." Yes, he's older, and no, I'm not claiming that he's not decisively valuable to any serious effort to capture a title. But Kobe's proven he can compete without him (how impressive does that near-upset look now?), as did Wade in last year's playoffs. And scary as Shaq is/was, we forget so readily that Jordan, master of them all, was the unquestioned ruler of his team as a guard. That Shaq couldn't deal with first acknowledging an coequal partner in grown Kobe, and then taking on the 1-A role himself in LA, suggests that his ego is every bit as impractically monsterous and unwieldy as TS's.
Who's to say that, were Wade not such a stone gentleman, we wouldn't have seen an accelerated version of this scenario from the minute he touched down in Miami? Does anyone believe for a second that Wade only suddenly discovered his own greatness in the postseason? Or, rather, is it any coincidence that he did so sans Shaq? Centers always need guards to emerge victorious from the frays that count, but Shaq's good fortune to have been paired up with such absolute fucking studs has to compromise his apodictic standing in bedtime story version of the league's history.
The better Kobe or Wade gets, the more championships they win, the more Shaq's reputation suffers. We've been taught to understand centers in terms of the Wilt/Russell dichotomy: Wilt, the freak of nature whose sheer presence was his best ally and worst enemy, and Russell, the consummate winner whose play was the essence of those twelve zillion Celtics titles. As his two "sidekicks" continue to excel, Shaq seems to drift more and more toward Wilt: breathtaking component in a dynasty, but not the man who himself willed it to exist.
PS: I think we all know who the wild card is in this discussion.
ADDENDUM: This is wildly lame, and I like most of you am too busy watching an actual basketball game to bother with this. But I've decided that my initial post really doesn't make much sense without this long comment/response to a comment I left earlier today. Consider it FreeDarko's first-ever appendix, and please read it if the initial post led you to doubt the reason I live.
People: I know who Bob Cousy is. I know about Oscar/Alcindor. But with Shaq, it's been assumed that life as the franchise was the center's to lose. And remember, conventional wisdom doesn't merely hold that Shaq was one of the finest centers ever: he's on the short list for MOST DOMINANT BASKETBALL PLAYER ever. This is what's fuelled his identity in the league, and what he and others have used to mount the smear campaign against Kobe.
Cousy was a point guard and Russell wasn't an unstoppable offensive force. Robertson was old and had toned it way down by the time he hooked up with Alcindor. Wilt on the Lakers was looking to blend in. None of these involve an "absolutely unguardable big man" . . .with an absolutely unguardable off-guard taking the heat off of him.
I remember young Shaq, and i'm not really going to put Penny into this conversation. But for damn's sake, his legacy rests on his rings, and his role in the postseason has always been understood as "no way to gameplan for him, no way to guard him, nothing to do but sacrifice lives for the cause." Aren't these things as true of Wade or Kobe? Who's to say that they weren't when, because of Shaq's performance, they didn't explicitly dominate the ball as much?
Shaq is thought of as bigger than the team, which is a strange thing to say about someone who has a teammate nearly as good as him. And it makes it difficult to say whether this delusion was intended to stabilize the order of a team or keep his myth at its apex.
posted by Bethlehem Shoals @ 5/26/2006 12:13:00 PM
26 comments
26 Comments:
yes, i know that neither kobe nor wade has won a championship without him. i sincerely hope no one was looking to correct me on this--the point is that there's a good chance that either/both of them WILL do this in the future. jordan did it without shaq.
great post, but hopefully you realize its a simplification of a far more complicated issue -- namely, this entire post and thought experiment is complicated by the way the salary cap has destroyed the ability to team-build. any team that wasn't able to "lock up" their franchise (duncan, shaq, kg, dirk, etc.) or gets brilliantly lucky/clever (detroit w/ chauncey/ben on the cheap, and even they are paying rip/tayshaun/sheed 30 mil per year now) b/f the new cap rules will have an impossibly complicated time winning some shit.
im glad you took the time to sing a song for dwyane (somewhat) this morning, but i dont think his or kobe's temporal success means much about shaq. it is just as hard to build a champion around a slow footed center as it is around a dynamic guard these days. its just not easy to build a team anymore. look at all the awesome young gun teams (arenas-hughes-jamison, the baby bulls, nash-finley-dirk, etc.). even the cavs, exciting as they are, are now fucked cap-wise. it is just a very unforgiving world, which allows a single great (cheap chauncey) or poor (zach randolph extension) move to dramatically alter a franchise. in shaq's case, the heat traded their most valuable non-dwyane commodities to get him (as they rightly should have), and he landed in a capped out environment where they now have to surround him and dwyane with bit parts and overpaid wannabes.
remember this as houston continues to struggle to build around tmac and yao. there's even the chad ford prediction that they'll draft redick. god save us all.
But MJ did do it with HOFer Pippen (the aforementioned Lachey), which, to your credit, did defy the big man paradigm of decades prior. However, was not Cousy one of the best points ever to lace-up? Surely, Russell's dominance had something to do with that. Likewise Jerry West and Wilt. Oscar Robertson/Magic and Alcindor-Jabbar. Just how does Shaq's legacy suffer in the comparisons? I don't understand your argument. Kobe and Wade are badass, but no less so than West or the Big O.
I totally agree with your assessment of Shaq. What I find impressive about him though is the subtle way in which he's able to manipulate the media. I'm pretty sure he is very well aware of the fact that he needs a star guard alongside him (with his 4th quarter ineffectiveness due to his FTs and all) and that he gets alpha dog status more on resumé now than on actual achievement on the court. That's why in my opinion he crafted the Penny/Kobe/Wade analogy, to preemptively influence the discussion about his regression into a second banana.
He explains it by saying that Wade is the vastly superior teammate and person (keyword 'unselfish') to Penny and Kobe and that he doesn't have a problem of adapting for such a great guy. You can't blame Wade for this at all, but pulling Kobe (and to a lesser degree Penny) through the mud like this smells fishy to me, given the fact that Shaq couldn't do anything really significant with the Lakers until Kobe took it to a new level.
Also, I'm wondering whether trading for Shaq might have actually been a bad move. Certainly we're talking about what-if's here, but as it stands now the window for the current Heat roster to win a championship is this season and probably next one.
Shaq and Zo probably won't be half as scary another two years down the road and the number of veterans that will sign on for cheap because they didn't win it all in the Jordan years is decreasing quickly. Now think about the alternative, a Wade-Odom-Butler core with Haslem as a solid 4. Maybe they could have gotten Zo without Shaq with Riley doing the lobbying. Now you need another defensive stopper at guard (ala Raja Bell) and a solid PG to put next to Eddie Jones, Rasual Butler, Skip to my Lou (and Wang Zhi Zhi). Wade-Odom seemed to work much smoother than Kobe-Odom, so I think the window for such a team would have taken another season or two but would have been open much longer.
wv: sholm (Stockholm syndrom for the US media - feeling sympathetic towards the guy who's holding them hostage?)
I concur with Shaq-as-Wilt (right down to their excellent passing when so inclined). More than that, beginning with Shaq's first trip to the Finals, the league's GMs decided winning required a dominant big--this would be the way through Jordan. It skewed draft and free-agent strategy for a decade, even before the salary cap. (Bryant Reeves better be thinking fondly of the Diesel as Big Country rides around his ranch on his Clydesdale or whatever he's up to these days.) Size, which can be neutralized, was valued over speed, agility, and accuracy, which can make adjustments. The liquid giraffe, indeed. Even now, after the rule changes, the PHX phenomenon befuddles folks.
If only the teenage Sabonis had snuck away from the Reds and enjoyed the career and the rivalries we all deserve to have witnessed....
I think all these comments on Shaq can only make sense today, when he is slow, overweight and old.
I mean really, with all honesty, did anyone of you thought that Shaq wasn't the true Finals MVP three years in a row. It's easy to look back now and change our interpretation of what happend, but come on, did anyone say: ''This is bullshit, Kobe was the main factor''? It's not like we're talking about 10 ot 20 yars ago. Just 3 years, and we all remember how unstopable Shaq was then.
I agree that the Lakers did the right thing by trading Shaq since their future looks brighter with Kobe. And Miami knew what they were doing by trading for Shaq. Yeah the window is closing but so far they've gotten to 2 Conf. Finals in a row, and i guess that is a risk they chose to take: smaller window, better weapons.
Let an old center die in peace and don't judge him by his last (and worst) season. Just one year ago, half the globe believed that not naming Shaq as the MVP was a stupid thing to do.
I don't know if there has ever been a center so dominant that he won a title by himself. Hakeem had Drexler and Maxwell, Shaq had Kobe, Walton had Mo Lucas, Russell had Cousy et al., Wilt didn't even win one until he had Greer and Cunningham with him in Philly (one should note that the Celts dynasty surely prevented Wilt from capturing a few rings with the Warriors).
Dominant centers are usually oversized and immobile. Although they can score every time they get the ball, they can't magically achieve posession. Even when a center is so dominant as to score 50 a game, like Wilt did, somebody else has to put the biscuit in the basket.
word verification: qsdeu
translation: qui est dieu?
people: i know who bob cousy is. i know about oscar/alcindor. but with shaq, it's been assumed that life as the franchise was the center's to lose. and remember, conventional wisdom doesn't merely hold that shaq was one of the finest centers ever: he's on the short list for MOST DOMINANT BASKETBALL PLAYER ever. this is what's fuelled his identity in the league, and what he and others have used to mount the smear campaign against kobe.
cousy was a point guard and russell wasn't an unstoppable offensive force. robertson was old and had toned it way down by the time he hooked up with alcindor. wilt on the lakers was looking to blend in. none of these involve an "absolutely unguardable big man" . . .with an absolutely unguardable off-guard taking the heat off of him.
i remember young shaq, and i'm not really going to put penny into this conversation. but for damn's sake, his legacy rests on his rings, and his role in the postseason has always been understood as "no way to gameplan for him, no way to guard him, nothing to do but sacrifice lives for the cause." aren't these things as true of wade or kobe? whose to say that they weren't when, because of shaq's performance, they didn't explicitly dominate the ball as much?
shaq is thought of as bigger than the team, which is a strange thing to say about someone who has a teammate nearly as good as him. and it makes it difficult to say whether this delusion was intended to stabilize the order of a team or keep his myth at its apex.
(wilt was too big for a team, but found redemption only when forced to fit in; russell was team itself, even if he became the heart and soul of that dynasty)
what the fuck? i just wrote 1200 words in response and it's only showing up in the "post a comment" window. thanks, god.
I don't believe that the success or non-success of KB or Wade will have any impact on the legacy of Shaq.
Regardless of whether he can win titles without stone cold killer guards or not is beside the point. We will remember him as an absolute force of nature. When Shaq was/is on, he becomes something elemental and unstoppable. A natural disaster unleashed upon the basketball universe. He reminds me of some sort of norse god. (other than the fact that they were all blond)
BS, can you tell me that when you think of the players of this era that Shaq won't stand alone. To some degree, all these SG and SF can blur together. Shaq may or may not need one, but they obviously aren't unique. Replace Kobe with a healthy Mcgrady or VC and the 2000 Shaq wins a title. Jordan was, because he created the template, but there are a lot of players like that. Shaq can't be repeated. But, given that,
the clumsy, bullyish Shaq pisses me off too. This last game was particularly brutal. Anyone else remember how many charges there were in the third quarter? He wasn't the only one, but that move where he comes around with his elbow and clocks a mofo looks ugly to me.
But, in his younger years he beat people with speed as much as force. I've never seem a more nimble giant. Wilt maybe, but who else?
While obviously close to the end, I don't think he's neccessarily done. With a few more moves like that little flip hook, some more movement inside (curls, freethrow line picks, etc) he can still dominate. He just seems a little confused by the fact that what used just happen isn't anymore.
His legacy ain't the rings, it lies in his uniqueness.
You curse him, but wait till Gotterdamurang....
that makes shaq into wilt: mind-blowing phemonenon, problematic in application.
Also, I'm wondering whether trading for Shaq might have actually been a bad move.
7 Game loss in the conf finals last year, and have seized HC in this year's. Perhaps our expectations are set a little high? Seriously, is there any meaningful possibility that a Wade-Butler-Odom team achieves that much over the last two seasons?
Everyone can be problematic in application. Do you think that a young kobe wins titles with a good to real good big man or another guard? Not even close. Just as a wade, butler (and I like butler, he looks positively goblinish,) odom combo wouldn't have the voodoo to challenge.
Every player needs the right gestalt to flourish.
What's the difference between KG and Bill Russell?
Obviously a whole shi* load of titles.
Past that, not so much. Is Nash worth watching because he personifies team, or that his game is unique?
I like style and magic.
David Hasselhoff is in the building!!!!
everyone can be problematic, except no one wants to admit that shaq was.
This may be totally moronic:
Would our perception of Penny/Kobe/Dwyane change if we flipped the order around a little? Let's say Dwyane switched up with Kobe in the Shaq-averse, wouldn't Shaq be saying the same shit about Kobe he is about Dwyane?
That's what makes this whole Shaq-can't-get-along-with-Kobe thing all the more mornoic. It was just a symptom of when Kobe appeared in Shaq's career; the middle portion where his dominance began to fade at the end. Would Dwyane have run an aging (that's what Shaq is and was) out of town because he saw that they couldn't continue to coexist productively? We'll never know.
What we do know is that Kobe has become a force unto himself, a force possibly greater than Shaquille himself, and that Kobe's power is only growing as Shaq attempts to discredit him. All the while, Wade sits in the background, winning all of Shaq's games.
Pooh, I think I didn't express myself clearly enough, of course you're right in that a Wade-Odom-Butler core wouldn't have gotten to that game 7. And yes, my expectations are a little high, but that's what Shaq brings to a team, being that unique game-changing force that he is. Plus, he himself also guaranteed to bring a title to Miami.
My point was that in two years you have to start almost from scratch to build around Flash, guys like Haslem and maybe J-Will being the keepers. But the team most likely will be without Shaq/Mourning/Payton (and Walker's not getting younger either). And then you are going to look for exactly the pieces that you gave away for Shaq.
Maybe it was also just bad luck that the Shaq trade coincided with the Pistons entering their prime, otherwise they would have probably reached the Finals last year (with a team that made way more sense than this years' squad) and probably this year and my whole point would be moot.
But think back to their 2004 playoff run and of how Wade emerged as the leader of that team. I personally saw something special in the Wade-Odom-Butler core, something like a team other than the Suns that could be successful playing small or maybe an improved version of the Odom-Miles-Richardson Clippers that was not only a great idea in principle but actually applicable to reality.
I hope I'm making some sense here. That was my feeling at the time, that the Heat maybe were breaking up something truly special. Of course you never know how that dynamic would have developed. But you have Odom who was successful as the Heat's PF and now has adjusted to playing point forward (for a lack of a better term), so my guess is that he wouldn't have just stayed at the level he was playing at for the Heat. And Butler is now flourishing in an offense dominated by a high-scoring guard and a lanky forward who does most of his damage starting from outside.
As I said in my previous post, you had an above-average PF in Haslem, especially on defense against the Wallace's, Duncan's and Amare's of the league, and an aging but still capable defender and shooter (minus the 4th quarter) in Eddie Jones. Those two and the spare parts around them would have been much easier to replace than what Riley will face once his veterans will burn out or fade away.
Anyone else got that feeling during the Heat 2004 playoff run or was it just me?
The other sad thing resulting from the Shaq trade is that it took away the angle of the Heat really being Wade's team (and seeing how far they could go with him as THE GUY) and replacing that with another round of 'let's see how successful Shaq is with a new and improved sidekick'. So now we're stuck with that Dwyane Wade who we can't really grasp for a lack of personality and no proper angle to criticize his game on the court. The qualities and duties he would have had to show as the sole leader are now Shaq's responsibility. Maybe we would be able to talk differently about Wade if we could really discuss things like his leadership qualities.
the suns kind of have opened up all sorts of "what if they hadn't sold the farm for the big man" scenarios around the league. then again, none of those teams have nash; you can roughly correlate phoenix now with what miami might've had, but skip/wade running an offense just ain't the same as the mvp.
i will say, though, that that kind of thing might've been much easier to pull off in the east as it seemed at that time. or that, as rad as butler/odom was, from a functional standpoint it doesn't have shit on marion/diaw. we've heard brickowski's marion for mvp case; i'm on the verge of coming up with a "diaw is the most valuable player on that team, though maybe not the mvp" post.
I for one am not convinced that Shaq wins those titles with VC or McGrady taking the place of Kobe.
Neither of those two have proven themselves to be anything other than exceptional players in regular season situations. MDE or not, Shaq needed Kobe to hit some big shots in order to win those titles.
Come on, in 2001 they lost 1 playoff game with Fisher, Fox, and Horace Grant starting. The leauge was weaker then, but there's not 1 current player who ever dominated in a manner comparable to that. If you value longevity a lot, Shaq isn't hands-down the best since Jordan (2000-01 and 2000-02 were his only great years), but you could argue that no one, even maybe Jordan, had 2 seasons that good.
I throw out the "Where would the Heat be if they hadn't traded for Shaq?" question to friends every once in a while, and while they would have had a weak frontline, they could have drafted Jameer Nelson instead of the high-schooler (Wright?), giving them a backcourt of Nelson, Wade, Eddie Jones, Coran and Lamar, with perhaps Damon Jones coming off the bench.
Also, remember the Wade-Odom-Butler team was the 4th seed in the East that year, and with the Pacers falling and the Nets not really improving themselves that much, the Heat might still very well be the 2nd or 3rd best team in the East, although the trade-off would be their performance against Detroit this season and last against the number of years your championship window is open.
I tend to think that this post overstates its case rather severely. Kolby Bryant is a great basketball player, but at no point in his career has he inspired the opposing team to send out cannon fodder from the far end of the bench to foul him when he got the ball.
While Michael Jordan is likely the best basketball player ever to play the game, to say he "carried" the Bulls single handedly through any number of seasons and to championships is revisionist history at its finest. As I recall Scotty Pippen happened to be on the same team, whom had a Hall of Fame career for himself. There also happened to be some fairly solid players in Dennis Rodman, and Horace Grant on the court.
But really, the entire premise of this discussion happens for the most part to be stupid. Shaq when he's old and beaten up can still put up 20-30 points a game. He put up more than that when he was in his prime and caused match-up chaos. But ultimately no team can rely on a player to score more than 35 or so points on a regular basis. If the rest of the team can't come up with 65 or so points between the remainder of them, they lose.
All the team's you've described had several good players. Otherwise they would not have been sucessful. No team that's blatently one diminsional is going win anything. The Timberwolves Kevin Garnett and the first 4 fans we pull out of the stands approach to basketball simply doesn't work. Teams need depth in order to win championships.
But to return to the Kobe v. Shaq thing. I put it to you this way, while Dwayne Wade, Lebron, Kobe. Arenas are all guards that can go head to head at a high level, and there are likely more that simply don't readily spring to mind. The only person in the last decade whom has had any hope of competing one on one with Shaq is Tim Duncan. And the fact that over a 10 year span only one person at your position can compete with you speaks to a dominance that Kobe will never have.
pointing out that there are very real limitations to shaq's game that require him to have very, very elite sidekicks to close out games does not "happen for the most part to be stupid." especially not when the prevailing opinion holds that shaq in his prime was hands-down the greatest asset in the history of basketball.
your comment re shaq and duncan being the only two big men you can hold up as equals hits on why i found the spurs' loss so devastating -- for once, we had the opportunity to see shaq and duncan go at it in the finals, rather than somewhere in the west, for all bragging rights (and bowen on wade would have been entertaining as well). not that the two really ever play one another, but it would happen if close (watching shaq guarding duncan at top of key as timmy hits a fallaway jumper was tremendous, even if fisher's heroics quickly killed the moment).
re: shaq and duncan. i'm not trying to take anything away from either of the two when i say this, but both have played in what has been arguably the golden age of guards (typed with the utmost ambivalence). still, the fact that there have been a ton of awesome guards doesn't diminish the greatness of those who are head and shoulders above their peers.
My point is essentially that if you had to pick one active player in his prime to build a team around, a majority of people are going to pick Shaq. He's been a tremendously talented and agile big man, and arguably the only better big man than him is Wilt Chamberlain.
I do think your argument is fairly weak, considering that you simply point out that it takes more than one player to win a championship. No kidding, you need to have 5 players on the floor at all times. Your chancing of winning with only one player whom is any good tend to be negliable. Every team needs secondary scoring. Which really is why I suggested this line of reasoning is stupid. Wilt the stilt had one 100 plus point game, which is what you generally need to play a basketball game. But he's likely the first or second best basketball player ever. You always need other players who can score on the court.
Your right to point out that this may be the golden age of guards. Right now there is a fine crop of guards floating about. But really remove Kobe Bryant from the Lakers and insert Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, Gilbert Arenas, Dwayne Wade, Lebron James in there and you ultimately get the same result. You could probably even argue somewhat less credibly that Chauncy Billups or Manu Genobili could replace Kobe and they're still going to win championships.
On the other hand, take Shaq off those Laker teams and the only person you can credibly say is possibly analogous is Duncan and he's never been quite the dominant force that Shaq in his prime was. But don't get me wrong Duncan is a heck of a baller.
"basically stupid" would also be pretending that all talented guards are created equal, and that there's no difference between kobe and wade (in shaq's league, history-wise) and vince or t-mac.
you're falling into exactly the trap i was bringing up at the outset: in this guard-rich era, shaq is thought to be such a singular blessing that people forget what kind of singular blessing the PARTICULAR guards he has had are. more guards doesn't equal less value to them, just a better chance of great ones coming along.
the fact that my initial premise is a little shaky doesn't mean you can discount the differences between non-post players simply because they all cropped up in the same decade.
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