Comments on: In his criticism of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade playing together with Miami Heat, Tracy McGrady rebukes Joe Dumars’ positional philosophy

By: Laser

Laser — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:09:31 +0000

1) if lebron joined the heat thinking he would win a championship right away, he’s a bigger idiot than i thought. hell, maybe he is. but how stupid can you be? the lakers are STACKED, boston is deep as HELL. i’ve been saying since the jump that there might be a significant period of time before wade and lebron jelled together AND that it’s probably going to take a few quality MLE additions before they could be true contenders.

2) speaking of which, i felt that way because i never thought aging ring-chasers would be enough of a support system to win a championship, but they could get some serious firepower with a few MLE contracts. two players on full MLE deals, depending on whom of course, might put them over the top… if and when they learn to play together. big “if.”

3) i knew what everyone was getting at, and i don’t think i jumped on anyone unfairly. but i can’t imagine a realistic scenario where the heat trades wade ever, assuming his desire is to retire a heater. the guy brought excitement to the heat, brought them a championship, consistently carried a weak supporting cast to the playoffs, and delivered them lebron and bosh. they owe him for life. he’s a lifer. lebron may come and go; wade’s the franchise. i’d be astonished if they didn’t extend him the common courtesy to allow him to ride out his career there if he so desired. and imagine the return they’d get for lebron; much much more than for wade.

4) i think there were a few reasons he went to the heat when he had his choice of anywhere. i think he wanted to play with his friends, with real stars, for a good organization. new york didn’t offer hardly any of that. and lebron’s so big, putting on a knicks jersey wouldn’t have a seismic effect on his profile. the guy was a household name playing in cleveland.

By: gmehl1977

gmehl1977 — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:55:41 +0000

@Laser
I was just querying that if the Heat don’t win it all and more importantly still don’t jell like everybody has expected then ‘when’ and ‘if’ it was to be a choice of who to trade then who would it be? Personally i think they will win championships and eventually jell as a team. You are very quick to jump on peoples comments without noting what point they are getting at. Odeh brought up the topic and clearly stressed it was hypothetically speaking. Of coarse the Heat will not break up the big 3 after missing the conference finals but what happens if they just plain don’t 3-peat eventually like the Lakers have done. With the amount of money they have put into 3 guys and the crappy draft picks they will be getting they will have to rely on adding veterans looking to win championships. Finally i will stress that i do think they will get there with time but if your telling me that LeBron signed with the Heat thinking he would have to wait 2-3 years for a ring then i think he should of stayed with the cavs and just got Bosh to join him.

On a side note just imagine if LeBron had signed with Knicks and they had started just as bad. The New York media would of been vying for his blood which leads me to believe was the main reason he didn’t go there.

By: Laser

Laser — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:09:37 +0000

also, forgot to add. i think it was insanely stupid for miami to unload all their draft picks from here until oblivion. i mean, maybe they did think they were going to be picking in the late-20s for eternity, but how stupid can you be? at minimum, i would have held on tight to this year’s first rounder, just in case it took some time to jell. and probably next year’s too. if they were smart, kept a few upcoming picks, and used their exceptions wisely, they’d probably be picking in the late 20s for the foreseeable future. but they give up what could be valuable picks, and for what? the right to lebron and bosh for another year? if things were going swimmingly, those guys would have stayed anyways. i don’t get it.

By: Laser

Laser — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:03:56 +0000

@nuetes: “equally talented” sounds like they’re talented. i prefer “equally mediocre.” that said… i’ve been saying the particular distribution of talent is a veritable nightmare for years. it’s keith langlois who’s been calling it a good problem. in fact, he’d tell you every problem this team has is a good one. because lord knows nobody could say with a straight face that anything else about the team is good. i’ve long maintained that until we can turn some of this mediocre talent into players who fill our many holes, none of our problems are good. and our record has been supporting that theory quite nicely lately.

in short, i fully agree about a hierarchy and defined roles being extremely important. the only players on the team who are probably distinctly better than the other guys at their position are tayshaun and body. i think the case could easily be made that villa is the best PF. and body is obviously a very limited player, and villa’s got his obvious flaws too, so yeah we’re a joke. i do think that certain combinations work better than others. i think rip pairs nicely with bynum, t-mac and tayshaun. i think gordon and stuckey should be playing together a bunch. i don’t think stuckey-gordon-tayshaun is a bad perimeter, nor is bynum-hamilton-mcgrady. but bynum and gordon are so small it’s a matchup problem every night, and stuckey and rip combine to form my personal nightmare. so, uh, in the absence of actual talent, it would be smart to at least use the best combinations.

@gmehl: i don’t know what you’re talking about with that championship-or-bust miami talk. maybe they’re nuts enough to think they’re the best team ever, but that’s just not a reasonable take. i said long ago that they’d need time. but if they stay together and continue to add pieces (the right pieces, like a strong point guard and center), they should be a great team in two seasons and for a long time to come. but these things take time. chemistry is important, especially for guys who are used to dominating the ball at all times. and they need better supporting players. also, it sounds like you didn’t know this, but the heat have a very poor fanbase who has better things to do than support them. they’re just a sh*tty basketball town i guess. so everyone who cares is probably pissed, but that’s not very many people. but seriously, patience is a virtue. i don’t know how people who fancy themselves basketball “experts” thought they’d run away with the east and win ten championships off the bat. also, they’re not trading wade ever. smart money says he will retire a heater. lebron is 50x more expendable for every reason imaginable besides the not-so-big talent gap and their respective ages. but you can bet pat riley isn’t going to pick lebron over wade. ever. never in a million years. heck, wade has been the franchise since he got there, he brought them a championship, he brought them lebron and bosh; he couldn’t possibly have done more for the team. you don’t trade that guy. get real. every miami fan in the world would join al-qaeda. or something.

By: gmehl1977

gmehl1977 — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:24:29 +0000

@Odeh
You bring up a great point in…Do you trade Wade and build around Lebron?
It would be very interesting to see what Miami would do if they don’t at least make the conference finals. There roster to me is built to win and win now and nothing less than a championship is acceptable. I could only just imagine how much cavs fans are loving how much of a flop the heat have turned out to be. As far as trading Wade who is supposed to be there favorite son who brought them there only championship i think that would be a very cold move. By memory all of the big 3 have a clause in the last year of there contracts. Who would you expect to land for Wade? I think Rondo and Ray Allen would fit perfectly on that team. Dwayne Wade/Mike Miller for Rajon Rondo/Ray Allen. Funny thing is i can see Boston turning the deal down.

By: nuetes

nuetes — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:16:24 +0000

maybe i’m defining roles differently, because obviously the player’s abilities define his role. your not going to ask jonas jerebko to be PG or anything. i mean more so with minute allocation. who is our best PG? SG? PF? Who are our best players at each position? i’m talking a tier system where you need clear cut #1 options at positions. we have a very deep team full of equally talented guys from the 1-12 spots practically. whoever said that was supposed to be a good problem to have is out of their minds.

it leaves way to much room for second guessing. why did rip play in the 4th and not gordon? why didn’t Monroe play? why did Mcgrady play more than CV? why this why that the why’s never stop because you can second guess every single substitution because nobody is better than anybody else. you could have stuckey, gordon, mcgrady, cv, and wallace on the court in the 4th, and if they lose it will be well why wasn’t tay out there? why wasn’t rip out there? it doesn’t matter who is out there because there is always someone else that could be out there. you need player tiers. some guys that are clear cut above the rest to get a rotation under control.

As far as the Prince thing PCB brought up it’s an interesting take with absolutely no evidence, but something to think about. Prince had made some post-game comments about the Pistons getting killed on the glass and about it being a team effort, and he did talk about Daye prior to the season saying how difficult it was going to be for him. Maybe he did convince Q to get Daye out of there. I don’t think players are that stupid, and I’m actually quite surprised by that to be honest. Players seem to get what wins games, but for some reason none of that matters when they are on the court. Mcgrady talking about the Miami dynamic. Prince talking about the Pistons rebounding. Rip staring at box scores endlessly after games. These guys get it, they just can’t seem to do anything about it.

By: Laser

Laser — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:39:27 +0000

oh sorry, and finally: i’ve been saying that roles are important for a while now, and the pistons are a great example of that. it’s no coincidence that our best players happen to have the most defined roles. ben wallace defending and rebounding, t-mac making plays, charlie v hitting outside shots and occasionally putting it on the floor. everyone else is just trying to do a little of everything, and none of them are good enough for that formula to work. at least with wade and lebron, you have two guys who are good enough to make it work (though i doubt they’ll ever thrive like they probably originally expected).

and there’s nothing wrong with having a player or two who does it all. tayshaun’s a good example, as he can do a little of absolutely everything. but it’s just too sloppy of a system to have everyone doing that. the Goin’ to Work pistons had such nice roles, too. it’s a wonder joe got so far from that.

By: Laser

Laser — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:34:03 +0000

and for the record, i don’t think kuester “caved to prince’s demands” on the daye situation, but i think it’s a fair assessment that prince thought daye starting at PF was a bad choice. then again, who wouldn’t think it was a bad choice? pcb? that’s probably it for the planet. even kuester couldn’t have really thought it would work out. or maybe he could have. he’s a dud. so many duds on this team, so little time.

By: Laser

Laser — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:31:40 +0000

@pcb: if you think his best position is at the 2 (and i don’t necessarily disagree), that’s surely a concession that his worst position is the 4. i’ll never understand the point of having “versatile” players who can play multiple positions and locking them into their weakest position. positional versatility is meaningless if there’s only room for a player at his worst positions (stuckey, daye, jerebko). you’re better off having a GOOD power forward than a small forward who can technically slide over playing the position full time and struggling. neither jerebko nor daye is a power forward of the future for this team, and we all know what stuckey is.

the truth is that the pistons, despite joe dumars’s jabbering, are not a versatile team. versatile teams can throw different looks at teams. they have different KINDS of players. there’s no point in having a roster where everyone can play the 2 or the 3 if there’s no room for them to play there. the pistons can only go big on the perimeter, and with all the guards in their rotation who aren’t going anywhere and need minutes, we’ve blocked a lot of our own versatility.

as for the heat, i was saying the same thing. i don’t know why anyone assumed they’d hit the ground running, but i was saying from the get-go that there would at least be a likely adjustment period since both of these guys were used to having the ball in their hands at all times. i also said they might need a few more MLE additions to be able to hang with teams like boston and LA. smart money says they eventually make it work, though they’ll probably have a similar problem to the one detroit is enjoying right now and for the near future, where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. only they could trade lebron for a king’s ransom. imagine that: the guy pisses off the world and goes to miami to play with his friends, and pat riley goes and trades him to some rubbish team that had to gut itself to get him. would that be poetic justice or what?? if miami can’t get all that excited about the heat and needs to “fan up,” maybe trading lebron is the shrewdest move.

as for the pistons, there’s a difference between the redundancy of wade/james and hamilton/gordon. specifically, it’s hard to have two guys on the same team who basically need the ball in their hands at all times. it’s easier to have two similar players who don’t tend to dominate the ball. now, only an idiot would think rip and gordon would be a good fit to play together (though they can both hit outside shots and come off screens to catch-and-shoot), but it’s a very different situation.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:55:47 +0000

@PCB:
“But Prince froze him out and Q caved in to his vetern demands.”
I’ve mentioned it before, but that’s your perception of what happened, not an actual fact.
I find it hard to believe that Prince would tell the coach to start Maxiell over Daye and that nothing would get leaked to the media. Stuff like that ALWAYS gets leaked because the player getting benched (Daye) or teammates who support him would have a vested interest in getting it leaked.
The fact is Maxiell starting at power forward gives the Pistons a better chance to compete defensively than Daye does. So spout all of the conspiracy theories about Prince being some sort of puppet master all you want, but moving Daye out of the starting PF spot made sense, although I disagree that Maxiell should’ve been the player picked to start.