The Second Banana: Dirk vs. Manu

[benefactor]

Man...this is starting to look like 90210 getting owned in the NFL forum. It's just getting silly now.

[ohmwrecker]

Alright...let's settle this. If you had to pick a PRIME version of either as a compliment to Tim Duncan which would you pick? I'd like to see some valid arguments too.

Alright. Why would you start this thread with this question and then proceed to argue with someone who disagrees with you. Was that the purpose of this thread? If I had known that, I wouldn't have said anything.

Do you not understand your own question? The question, as I understand it, is who would make for a better compliment to Duncan. Not, who is a better player or who is a franchise player or whatever other inane arguments have predominated this thread. I answered based on the known fact that Ginobili is a great compliment to Duncan. Whether or not Nowitzki would be better or not is only debatable and not based on anything else.

[ohmwrecker]

Man...this is starting to look like 90210 getting owned in the NFL forum. It's just getting silly now.

I have no ing clue what this means. Maybe you should spend a little time away from the internet.

[ohmwrecker]

There is this thing call an educated guess. Basketball front offices use them all the time when building a team. You choose to got back to the "no one knows because they don't play together" argument because you have no facts to stand on that support Manu being a better compliment to Duncan than Dirk would be. If you were a GM building a championship team and you had Dirk and Manu to choose from to place around Duncan you would be foolish not to pick Dirk. If you think this is wrong then please supply something with a little more meat to support your position.

Ok...but his game is mostly perimeter based and he is most effective from there, so it is a pretty far reach to suggest that Dirk would somehow hinder what Duncan does in the post.

You said this:

What the do those two statements have to do with each other? Your statements make no sense in regards to the topic at hand. You said nothing in support of Manu over Dirk and you made no argument that suggests Dirk would be a bad fit with Duncan. If anything all you did was compare Dirk to Duncan and Manu to Duncan...which has nothing to do with this thread. Again, you are just saying stuff and none of it has anything to do with anything.

Jesus. You are dense. I didn't state any facts to support Nowitzki being a better compliment to Duncan because there are none. Do I need to explain to you what facts are? My comments are based on the fact that Ginobili already is a great support player to Duncan. I'm not dealing with unknowns.

[Rogue]

I believe the only "bad" thing you can say about Dirk is that he has horrible taste in women.

Barack Obama has a terrible taste in women too, just take a look at his wife, SOS and Supreme court judge then you can easily get the same conclusion. None of these 3 women can ever make a erected even when they are naked.

[benefactor]

Jesus. You are dense. I didn't state any facts to support Nowitzki being a better compliment to Duncan because there are none. Do I need to explain to you what facts are? My comments are based on the fact that Ginobili already is a great support player to Duncan. I'm not dealing with unknowns.

So why are you posting in this thread then? If you are not here to take the dynamics of each players games and make and educated guess as to which one would be the better fit then you are just wasting time. If you haven't figured that out by now, then I am not the dense one.

[benefactor]

Alright. Why would you start this thread with this question and then proceed to argue with someone who disagrees with you. Was that the purpose of this thread? If I had known that, I wouldn't have said anything.

Do you not understand your own question? The question, as I understand it, is who would make for a better compliment to Duncan. Not, who is a better player or who is a franchise player or whatever other inane arguments have predominated this thread. I answered based on the known fact that Ginobili is a great compliment to Duncan. Whether or not Nowitzki would be better or not is only debatable and not based on anything else.

Notice that in the statement after my question I asked for valid arguments...which you have offered none.

[Rodriguez]

Leaving alone the topic of this discussion, Dirk is apparently the better one as an individual and Dirk's MVP trophy also WEIGHS more than Manu's rings do. However, what you have been debating on is who WOULD HAVE been a better second banana, obviously Manu easily won this le over Dirk who was born to be a leader.

[VivaPopovich]

i'd like to see Dirk play SF for a change

if he successfully played as SF to Duncan's PF then i'd choose Dirk

but not if Dirk was PF and Duncan was C

Dirk at C? Please

[Findog]

Positional designations are becoming obselete. There is no PF or C anymore- you have two bigs, one of whom is hopefully at least a 7-footer. Then you have two wings, not a SG or SF. Finally you have your PG.

[ohmwrecker]

Notice that in the statement after my question I asked for valid arguments...which you have offered none.

I think I did, but if you need them stated more clearly then I can do this:

These are the skills where I believe Ginobili excels over Nowitzki: ball handling, driving to the basket, passing, creating his own offense and offense for teammates. I also believe Ginobili is a better defender, at his position, than Nowitzki.

No one is arguing that Ginobili is a better all around player, obviously, but I am saying that he is a better player in a supporting role. No one has ever seen Nowitzki in a supporting role because he has been "the man" in Dallas from day one. You could make the argument for Steve Nash early in Dirk's career, but it has been pretty clear (as with Duncan) that Dirk was to be the franchise player.

I don't know how much clearer I can be. If that's not good enough, then we will just have to agree to disagree.

[Nathan Explosion]

Dirk appears to have the personality similar to Duncan's in that he doesn't have to be the focus of attention and is willing to take a secondary role if it means winning.

Dirk is a far superior player to Gino. Add in the mentality and I have no doubt that Dirk would excel alongside Duncan. In fact, I am 99% sure that the Spurs would have more les now than they presently do if Dirk has played alongside Duncan since 2003.

[ElNono]

Notice that in the statement after my question I asked for valid arguments...which you have offered none.

You still didn't answer my question... what were your expectations when you created this thread? Were you expecting everyone to jump on Dirk's jock?
There has been valid arguments why somebody would pick Manu in his prime over Dirk in his prime. That you don't like them or agree with them doesn't mean they're any less valid.

[lotr1trekkie]

How about if we had Dirk for 10 years and the Mavs ended up with Tim?

[benefactor]

You still didn't answer my question... what were your expectations when you created this thread? Were you expecting everyone to jump on Dirk's jock?
There has been valid arguments why somebody would pick Manu in his prime over Dirk in his prime. That you don't like them or agree with them doesn't mean they're any less valid.

I expected to expose our super homer DAF86...which has happened repeatedly. To my surprise there were actually others who agreed with him. The plain reality of it is without being a homer, there is not real valid argument that suggests one would take Manu over Dirk to pair with Duncan. Saying you would take Manu suggests that you hate the Mavericks so bad that you are blind to the player Dirk is and you overrate Manu in your own mind because of this. This was just proven a couple of posts ago when ohmwrecker suggested that Dirk would struggle in a supporting role. He is just lying to himself. Nothing in Dirks game suggests he is not a team player and would struggle in a supporting role.

[benefactor]

TBQH...if I would have known that Spur fan would have come to this thread and made himself look this stupid then I probably wouldn't have started it. Shame on me for once again underestimating SpursTalk.

[dbestpro]

If it was as simple as putting the best players on the floor then anybody could be a GM and Iverson would not still be looking for a job. The question was in regard to econd banana or who would compliment Duncan more. Facts are facts and we know that Duncan has one with Manu. Manu does a lot of dirty work that Dirk would not do. Of course Dirk is a PF and Manu is a SG so to try and compare does do justice.

Also, would Dirk be able to get his flop foul shots on a team with Duncan. Manu doesn't get them. And would Dirk melt down if he had to take some of the shots Manu has had to take.

In the end the Lakers with Malone and Payton has taught us that you can't just slap great players together to make a great team. We know that Manu compliments Timmy as a team mate and they have the rings to prove it. Anything else is just fools gold. Ask the Lakers team that lost to Detroit.

[angelbelow]

This is ridiculously hard. Dirk would probably be the better choice. His style would create too much of a mismatch especially with Duncan there.

[werewolf]

Wow! Even on a Spurs board, I wouldn't have thought that it would be this close. Must be a lot of hatred for the Mavs.

This would be like me saying I wouldn't take Kobe over Josh Howard.

[DUNCANownsKOBE2]

With the logic Manufan is using in this thread, Robert Horry is better than both Manu and Dirk since he has 7 rings.

[DUNCANownsKOBE2]

Positional designations are becoming obselete. There is no PF or C anymore- you have two bigs, one of whom is hopefully at least a 7-footer. Then you have two wings, not a SG or SF. Finally you have your PG.

I agree here. Maybe there used to be two guards, two forwards and a center, but now it's more like two big men, two wings, and a point.

[Nathan Explosion]

If it was as simple as putting the best players on the floor then anybody could be a GM and Iverson would not still be looking for a job. The question was in regard to econd banana or who would compliment Duncan more. Facts are facts and we know that Duncan has one with Manu. Manu does a lot of dirty work that Dirk would not do. Of course Dirk is a PF and Manu is a SG so to try and compare does do justice.

Also, would Dirk be able to get his flop foul shots on a team with Duncan. Manu doesn't get them. And would Dirk melt down if he had to take some of the shots Manu has had to take.

In the end the Lakers with Malone and Payton has taught us that you can't just slap great players together to make a great team. We know that Manu compliments Timmy as a team mate and they have the rings to prove it. Anything else is just fools gold. Ask the Lakers team that lost to Detroit.

That Lakers team lost to Detroit because Kobe shot something like 31% from the field and tried to take over as the leader while Shaq was dominating the series shooting 63%. It's really that simple.

There is NOTHING to suggest that Dirk and Duncan don't have the personalities to work together. That 2004 Lakers team had Shaq and Kobe battling for alpha dog status. I doubt that would happen with Duncan and Dirk. From what I've seen, I think Dirk would understand that Duncan was the man, but Duncan would allow Dirk to flourish if the situation called for it.

To suggest anything else is to underestimate Dirk and shows a major lack of understanding of the game of basketball.

[DUNCANownsKOBE2]

Mavs fans will disagree here, but from I've seen from Dirk at times it looks like he would rather be playing 2nd fiddle, like being able to play off another player would be a sense of relief. I don't think he'd have any problems adjusting to a 2nd fiddle role.

[mikekim]

IMHO, I think this poll (and its results) is a bit of an embarrassment to the intelligence and objectivity of this board -- even accounting for the fact that this is "SPURStalk" and most people here are Spurs fans. Manu is my favorite player...there aren't many players I admire more. But c'mon guys...

I guess this "prime" thing is an issue too...are we saying we'd have both in their primes for all eternity? If not, Dirk's prime is pretty significantly longer, don't you think? So...many more seasons of the Tim/Dirk duo as opposed to the Tim/Manu duo.

You just don't pass on a 7-footer who can shoot, handle, and (more recently) rebound like Dirk. Not to mention other factors (which I know isn't really part of the OP's question).

Like...

Having two 7-footers who, in tandem, can basically do almost anything a basketball player can do on the court -- and at an extremely high level -- will almost certainly draw a (relatively) comparable Manu-like swingman to our team. Going further, if we assume we're getting Dirk for the same price as Manu, we'll be able to afford this high-quality swingman. Like Stephen Jackson. Not to mention, we'll still have Tony Parker! (And we'll also add the right pieces around this core, especially if Holt opens the pocketbook like he did this past summer.)

Looked at in that light...it's almost a no-brainer.

BUT, even if you take all that out and go purely on the question of who is better for the team in their respective primes...a 70/30 split for Dirk would be about what I'd expect. (That's also the split that's going on in my head.)

But 50/50??

[ElNono]

I expected to expose our super homer DAF86...which has happened repeatedly. To my surprise there were actually others who agreed with him. The plain reality of it is without being a homer, there is not real valid argument that suggests one would take Manu over Dirk to pair with Duncan. Saying you would take Manu suggests that you hate the Mavericks so bad that you are blind to the player Dirk is and you overrate Manu in your own mind because of this. This was just proven a couple of posts ago when ohmwrecker suggested that Dirk would struggle in a supporting role. He is just lying to himself. Nothing in Dirks game suggests he is not a team player and would struggle in a supporting role.

I don't think it's as clear cut as you think it was. And honestly, I can see why.
Now, I don't subscribe to the notion that Dirk couldn't play second fiddle. I actually think that's exactly what's going to take for him to get to a championship, much like Gasol. He struggles in a leadership role because he's not a leader. It's not a knock on Dirk. Many other great players are not either.