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The only time I had ever seen Dirk play bad was in 2007.
Is this accurate? Found it on bleacher report http://bleacherreport.com/articles/3...-get-the-bling
Now, for all those who say Dirk "chokes" in the playoffs this will prove you wrong
Kobe career playoff stats 25ppg 5.0rpg 4.7apg 1.4spg 0.7bpg FG 44.7% FT 81% 2.9 TO's
*Dirk career playoff stats 25.5ppg 11rpg 2.6apg 1.2spg 1.0bpg FG 45.4% FT 88% 2.1 TO's
The only time I had ever seen Dirk play bad was in 2007.
Dirk has always been one to step it up in the playoffs. He shot poorly in the series' against Houston and Phoenix in 2005, but made up for it with fantastic rebounding, and setting up others like JET and Howard with easy buckets by using all the attention he was drawing. And the series against GS is massively overrated, as they were all over Dirk, and he was doing exactly what he should have been doing (passing it to the open man when getting doubled/tripled). Unfortunately, Terry and Stack played like absolute garbage, Harris was getting raped by B-Diddy, and while Howard was a 1st quarter assassin, he was complete garbage for the rest of the game, so Dirk pretty much was forced to shoot a bunch of forced, bad shots. Can't do it all yourself. Not even Jordan could (see Pistons series)
As far as the playoffs go.
rofl this thread opened up quite the can of worms
This will be a good thread
Dirk's rep as a choker is massively overrated, but the bottom line is that Kobe has led his team to a le as a #1 guy and Dirk has not. Of course, Dirk has never had a #2 as good as Gasol, but that's another thread...
looking at that 06-07 team, i still have no idea how those Mavericks won 67 games. they were clearly an inferior team in comparison to the two previous teams, as well as this years team (even before the Butler/Haywood trade).
It will be full of reasoned commentary and sober analysis of the relative merits of both players.
This year's team before the trade wasn't that good. The 07 Mavericks were quite dominant, they just choked against their own personal kryptonite.
I don't think Nowitzki is a choker, the thing is that in the two most memorable (or the ones that will be remember longer) playoff series he has played he shot less than 40% from the field (vs Miami in the finals, and vs the Warriors in arguably the biggest upset ever of the NBA)
I think they just were more fortunate than anything. It's rare that a team gets that fortunate, but that team was one exception. Plus the league was pretty weak that year. A lot weaker than it was both the year before and the year after.
Dirk choked once, and sadly that is what he will be remembered for, unless he wins a ring.
They had a PD of 7.2. This year's Cavs have a PD of 7.3. That's pretty dominant. That's a championship-caliber PD.
Again, in a pretty weak year in which they wasted all their focus on the regular season instead of the playoffs. They played at a high level, but again, teams across the league were pretty weak that year too.
Going back to your original point, they're still better than this year's pre-trade Mavs. Who knows what would've happened if they had drawn the Clippers in the first round instead of the Warriors? We'll never know, but I'd take that team over this year's, pre and post-trade.
IMO, Dirk isn't a choker as much as he simply is not a true franchise player. KG had a pretty sub-par finals in 2008, the only difference is he had another semi-franchise player (Pierce) to pick up the slack.
If it wasn't for the Miami debacle, Dirk would be remembered for the great series he had against the Spurs and the Suns to even get to the finals. It blows that he will always be thought of as a playoff choker by the casual fan.
Wish the Spurs had Dirk..that would be so beasty.
And yeah, the 2005-2007 era was maybe the weakest 3 year era ever.
Dirk's a franchise player. At any given time, there's about 8-12 of them in the League. Just because he didn't win a le (as of this writing) doesn't mean he's not one. He came pretty damn close in 2006 with a good but not great supporting.
You've said multiple times on this site he's a 1.5 and not a 1.
If you want to restrict the definition of "franchise player" to a pure 1.0, then that leaves only LeBron, Kobe and Wade. I think you can a win a le with a few more guys as your best player besides them.
That's my view of franchise player. I guess in this case it's just differing views. If your view is someone capable of being the #1 option on a championship team given the right supporting cast then yes, Dirk is a franchise player.
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