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Yinka Dare > Duncan > Jordan+Magic+Bird
One thing is for sure though It would have been one heck of a matchup if we ever got to see both players play.
Yinka Dare > Duncan > Jordan+Magic+Bird
Hakeem didn't have a bad team to start out with either. It's too bad things didn't work out, for whatever reason, with him and Ralph Sampson together.
Sampson was done in the NBA after his sophmore yr i believe and that whole team got ed by doing drugs. What a shame. That team was WAY WAY WAY better than our Championship teams
Yeah, I remember hearing about that. Those two should have atleast won 2 rings together.
No way. Ralph Sampson or Clyde Drexler? Jim Peterson or Robert Horry? Rodney McCray or Mario Elie? Lewis Lloyd or Sam Cassell? The '86 Rockets were basically the Jazz of the day; great at home, so-so away from the Summit. The Rockets had tons of great shooters in their le years though; no way was that team better than the 95 Rockets, and I don't think they were nearly as good as the 94 crew either (though that one's closer with Thorpe in place of Drexler).
Magic Johnson
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Michael Jordan
Wilt Chamberlain
Tim Duncan
Shaquille O'Neal
Hakeem Olajuwon
Larry Bird
Oscar Robertson
David Robinson
If Malone was such a great defender, he would be on the list every year, just like Duncan.
This is true...very good point. But based on Hakeem and Shaq scoring more than Duncan for their careers, on higher %'s makes me conclude that they were better scorers than Duncan was. I just don't see them struggling to score on those players like that (Gasol/Horry/Grant/Wallace boys).
I saw your comments about the differences in FG%'s between eras but I don't agree with your conclusion for the reasons that I stated earlier. Good point but we won't agree....
Again, this is the furthest thing from the truth. What are you looking at, his career reg season totals compared to his career playoff totals (i.e. after his seasons as an old fart)? If you look at his totals season by season, you will see an increase in scoring for basically every year up until 98/99, when he was 36. One of those seasons he had a drop (89/90). He had like a 3 point drop in 96. His numbers were basically the same in 92/93 and 96/97. But every other season (the other 9) his numbers increased. I am referring to his scoring.
You think the defenses in Duncan's era were tougher than in Hakeem and Shaq's eras, especially when it comes to defensive bigmen? Again, Duncan was not scoring as efficiently as either one of those players. You seem to think defense is better today, hence a lower FG%. We don't agree on this point.
Against what great defensive frontline? You yourself say Shaq isn't a good defender. All of the high volume series were against teams with poor defensive frontlines. What series did he go beastlike on a great defensive frontline?
Now to be fair, Duncan hasn't had as many chances since bigs in his era suck. But if I see you struggle to get off on the Wallace boys, then it puts doubt in my mind about you dominating a frontline like Ewing/Oakley/Mason. I mean honestly, do you think Horace Grant would stand a chance against Hakeem, Robinson or Shaq? Just be honest....
He struggled to score on the Wallace boys.
Horry is a good defender, but you couldn't rely on him to hold either Hakeem or Oneal. Both are too strong for him. We couldn't put him on Shaq in 95, and you guys couldn't put him on him when he was a Spur. Grant is too small for Shaq. Hakeem regularly got off against the 1st 3 peats Bulls and torched the Magic...and Grant was on both teams. Neither of those guys could check Hakeem or Shaq.
Of course he saw his production drop...he was squaring up against two 7 footers...both of whom were great defenders!!! And how did he struggle against the Wallaces? He avg 27 ppg on 63% against them in the 04 Finals.
Yao shot 45% in his rookie seasons, when he was going up against Shaq. He shot 44% against the Jazz, when he just came back off a foot injury. But did he not still shoot high %'s in all of those regular seasons? Isn't your point that defense is better...as to explain why Duncan has so many seasons of shooting under 50% for that season? So why are these other bigs shooting above 50%?
Again, you are claiming that %'s are down because defense is better. I personally think defense is worse today than it was in the 90's, but better than it was in the 80's. However, the %'s are down because dudes can't shoot...mainly wings. Bigs are still converting at a high %. If Hakeem or Shaq were in the league today they would still shoot a high % IMO.
His FG% is still high for the postseason. Again, isn't your point that the defense today is better so dudes shoot worse?
Where did I say Duncan wasn't an efficient scorer? I said he was as efficient as Hakeem or Shaq. , Hakeem wasn't as efficient as Shaq.
I rank them like this:
1 - Hakeem
He could score like Shaq (numbers wise, but not as efficient) in his prime and he was a better closer than the other two, and better at the line. He had more moves than the other two. He was clearly a better defender than the other two.
2 - Shaq
He was a more dominant scorer than the other two. His defense was worse than the others though. He couldn't close games but he was just so hard to stop. Yes, in this case I am clearly picking better offense over worse offense plus better defense.
3 - Duncan
The worst scorer of the three but a better defender than Shaq. A better passer than both. Again, in this case I am picking better offense over defense.
You can't really....you can only assume. I look at their skillsets and make comparisons with dudes today. For example, Yao is able to shoot a high % based on his low post moves. Does he have better moves than Hakeem did (no)? Amare is quick and athletic, with a jumper...and he shoots a high %. Was he quicker or more athletic than Robinson or Hakeem (no)? Do you think Gasol and Bynum are better scorers than Hakeem or Robinson (they both shoot at a high clip)? Brand? That's how I am coming to my conclusions.
You are describing things that Hakeem and Robinson dealt with for their entire careers. It's not as if they had more help than Duncan did. Do you not agree? That's why it's silly to base who is better off of les IMO, because neither Robinson or Hakeem were on teams where their teams could win if they didn't post big numbers.
Mutombo barely played in that series. Collins is a stout defender now? My point still remains...those Nets teams did not have strong defensive frontlines. Shaq and Duncan showed how weak they were in two consecutive Finals.
Why not? Based on your definition, Hakeem struggled to score against Vlade Divacs in 1990. This is not, and has never been, a one-on-one game. You have to look into their productivity based on the confines of the team offense, as well as the defense they face.
I probably wasn’t making this clear enough the last few times. Let me try again.
I am not saying that Hakeem saw his production drop in the playoffs as that is clearly not the case. What I am saying is that Hakeem’s increase in the playoffs when compared to his own regular season stats was not as profound as Duncan’s.
I am only going to count Hakeem’s numbers up until 1997, when his productivity started to clearly decline. I define significant as more than 10. When you compare the numbers, out of 12 playoffs, Hakeem saw his ppg drop in 4 (2 significant) and rise in 8 (4 significant, with one going up by 64%). His REB drops in 6 (2 significant), and rise in 6 (2 significant). His FG% drop in 5(2 significant), and rise in 7 (4 significant).
If you apply the same lines of logic to Tim Duncan’s 10 playoff seasons, you can see that his ppg declined in 2, and rises in 8 (2 significant), his REB declined in 3 (1 significant) and rises in 7 (5 significant), and his FG% declined in 6(1 significant) and rises in 4 (1 significant). In other words, Duncan steps up more in the playoffs than Hakeem did.
Yes I do, because I recalled Shaq was adequately defended by the likes or Malik Rose and Anthony Mason, Hakeem was held relatively in check by Mason. Why would Horace Grant not stand a chance? Certain players guard others better, and it’s not a simple defensive rating game. Pau Gasol provided a great example that a poor or average defender can sometimes do a good job on a great defensive player.
Duncan scored 20.6 ppg on 42% on the Wallaces and won finals MVP. The % wasn’t that great, but I wouldn’t call that struggling.
So you are strictly basing how good Duncan is vs. a select few defenders. I can say that Duncan regularly tore up Divac when they played each other.
Maybe struggling was too strong a word, but Shaq saw his production steadily drop in the 5 games they played. Once the Pistons defense figured out the Lakers offense, Shaq put up average numbers.
I thought we were discussing strictly playoff numbers. Duncan shot well during his regular season as well, and held his own during the playoffs. The point is, defenses were markedly better against bigmen, and specifically in the playoffs. Just so you wonder, Dwight Howard’s FG% dropped off quite a bit in the playoffs, when teams were able to crowd him and have a defense focused specifically on him.
The wings can’t shoot argument has been proven wrong. FT%, which is a great indicator of people’s ability to shoot, has remained consistent for pretty much the last 30 years. People can shoot as well as they could 10 years ago from 15ft with no one guarding them.
Certainly dropped. And certain players do shoot better % than others, doesn’t mean that they are better offensive players. Duncan plays a different game than Howard, with Howard playing his game much closer to the basket. Duncan has a more varied offensive skill set, and sometimes shoot jumpers to keep the defense honest and opens up the lanes for slashers. Robinson shoots a higher % than Hakeem and scores about the same amount of points, I am not going to say Robinson was a more efficient than Hakeem.
And I have been arguing that Duncan was not the worst scorer. He was in a system where points were less. If you want to compare apples and oranges, it’s your own standard, but it’s a simply and erroneous way of looking at the stats. Duncan scored and was responsible for his own team’s offense as much as, or sometimes more than the other two, while being a clearly better defender than Hakeem.
Even by your own standards, you picked Hakeem over Shaq because he had better defense and slightly worse offense, and yet you picked Shaq over Duncan because Shaq had better offense and worse defense. Besides, Hakeem did not score as much as Shaq did. Hakeem scored over 25ppg 3 times in his career, Shaq did it 10 times, Duncan did it once, and you continued to ignore the fact that teams were scoring much less nowadays because of better defense and slower pace.
Amare Stoudemire played in an offense that was one of the fastest in the last 20 years, and that’s why he scores a lot, he is a product of the system. Yao’s scoring has never approached that of Robinson, Hakeem and Shaq, or even Duncan. Gasol and Bynum are not even close to Hakeem or Robinson numbers wise, and their role in their respective teams’ offense are totally different.
I agree that it is silly to base a player’s ability based strictly on les, or even awards. But Duncan has shown the ability to win championships with totally different teams. 99, 03 and 05 teams were all very different from each other. Hakeem, on the other hand, has only won les in similar teams. Don’t even compare Robinson’s cast to Hakeem’s, Hakeem’s 3rd string point guard who got waived was the best point Robinson had in his career.
Mutombo and Collins were head and shoulders above Keith Van Horn and Todd MacCoulloch. Collins was a very good defender, he just had no offense. Mutombo was one of the best help defenders in the league, even when he was almost 40 years old. Fact that he still had a roster spot with the Rockets almost half a decade after the 2003 Finals despite never really having much of an offensive game speaks to that.
I won't rehash the things we are going in circles about and clearly won't agree on.
However:
Hakeem struggled against Divac in one postseason run. He did not struggle against him in his career.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...1&p2=divacvl01
How are you coming to this conclusion (the bolded part)? Only taking points, from 84/85 to 96/97, these are Hakeem's increase/decrease in playoff scoring (3%, 14%, 25%, 64%, 2%, -24%, 4%, -2%, 6%, 19%, -17%, 0%). Here are Duncan's for his career (-2%, 7%, 10%, 8%, 6%, -1%, 16%, 39%, 11%, 5%). So how are you concluding that Hakeem's increases were not as profound as Duncan's? Are we using different numbers?
Hakeem was held in check by Mason? He put up 27 a game on 50% against Ewing/Oakley/Mason in the 94 Finals. Why would Horace Grant not stand a chance? Because I watched him attempt to check Hakeem whenever we played Chicago in the first 3 peat (we won the majority of those games) and during the Orlando sweep. He didn't stand a chance in any of those instances. I watched Hakeem torch Karl Malone throughout the 90's. You are correct about the Gasol example, but these dudes I have noted had chances to check Hakeem and they got torched. So when I say they had no chance against him I'm not just talking out of my rear. Horry is on record as saying Hakeem was the best, and he played with all 3. Elie has said the same and he also played with Hakeem and Duncan. Lastly, none of these players are as good defensively as a in-prime David Robinson, and if he can't stop Hakeem then am I wrong to conclude that the other defenders (worse defenders by the way) couldn't either?
No, I'm not. I'm basing my complete analysis of their offensive games on what they scored, their %'s and how they looked against certain dudes. We are comparing across era's...what else do I have to go by? I am also comparing their skillsets. It isn't that far fetched for one to conclude that if a dude has never banged with a defender like Robinson and can't torch worse defenders...then maybe he couldn't torch Robinson, or vice versa. The playoff examples are just examples of Duncan struggling to be a dominant scorer in the postseason. Again, we aren't gonna agree on the differences between which era was harder to score against. You bring up good points though.
Duncan a better defender than Hakeem? Please explain your rationale for this.....
Similar teams? The 94 Rockets were a grind it out defensive team, with no one else but Hakeem to create shots. The 95 Rockets were a completely different team that outscored people, and they didn't have a true PF. The two teams were nothing alike. Hakeem got to the Finals in 86 with a completely different team as well. He didn't win but the 86 Celtics were better than say, arguably any team Duncan has ever played against. Both guys have shown that they can win if they have enough help...but I don't see how you can say Hakeem won with similar squads.
Avery Johnson was better than Rod Strickland? Sean Elliott wasn't better than most of Hakeem's teammates from like 87-91? Both centers have never had the type of help season to season that Duncan has had, or Shaq.
Dude, Mutombo barely played that series. Why are you still touting him? Collins is not a good defensive center. They are all scrubs.
No, that just shows you how weak the center position has become in the modern era.
And neither did Duncan struggle against Pau Gasol in his career.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...1&p2=gasolpa01
We are in fact talking about the same numbers. Duncan, over this course, had a higher % increase in his scoring output and rebounding
Hakeem was scoring about 27ppg during the regular season, how was maintaining his scoring average going beast? The same people who checked Hakeem kept him to about his average. If you are looking strictly at scoring differences between Duncan and Hakeem, Hakeem definitely scored more, but like I mentioned earlier, it was due to more complex defensive schemes of the later era.
No question Robinson was the best in the bunch, and he got torched in one series. However, throughout their career, Hakeem didn’t torch Robinson overall. In fact, Robinson kept Hakeem in check throughout.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...1&p2=olajuha01
Hakeem shot 44.1% vs. Robinson throughout their careers. He got hot in one series.
I cannot agree with this. You cherrypicked statistics when it sees fit. You noted Duncan struggling Gasol in one series and Hakeem going off on Robinson in one series, and yet you freely went with Hakeem’s career stats against Divac.
Hakeem scored 24.7 ppg on 47% vs. Mason up until 1997, and yet you went with 27ppg and 50% in one series instead.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...1&p2=olajuha01
Sorry, I meant Shaq.
95 team was better on offense in that they added a slasher in Drexler, but the basics is pretty much the same as 94. The defense was worse with Thorpe gone, but major pieces of the puzzles were still there. The two teams were very similar in their offensive and defensive philosophies.
Yes, Strickland was better than Avery, but he played only one season with the Spurs. I am glad you brought up Strickland, because back then, he was still a turnover prone, young player. He made key mistakes down the stretch of big games that essentially cost the Spurs the season. And I am glad you brought up Strickland, because with him, Robinson had his best playoffs, just to show the importance of a great teammate.
Elliott was as good as any of Hakeem’s teammates, the difference is that Hakeem didn’t make the playoffs once, and his team did worse, and Robinson did better. I am not prepared to go into another Robinson vs. Hakeem debate though.
Mutombo played a significant role on that team, and his job was to shut down Duncan. Collins was a scrub in the sense that he can’t score, but he could defend.
No question the center position has gotten worse in the modern era, as the game has shifted to a guard friendly game with all the new rules.
IF Bird was better, he wasn't WAY better. It's a subjective argument and you're just revealing your own bias and 80's nostalgia.
PG - Magic
SG - Jordan
SF - Bird
PF - Duncan
C - Dream
Robinson should be over the 'Dream". He had to play against the Lakers. The Dream's toughest test, besides Robinson, was a rookie Shaq with one scorer- Penny. I think Kobe should be on there one day, but not yet. Too many Lakers on there. Kareem or West need to exit and go to the 11-20 list.
Shaq wasn't good at defense? He couldn't close games? They went to Shaq in the fourth to finish games when the Lakers won the three Championships. Shaq was fat and could back players up without getting a foul call. He was also pretty damn good at defense. I hate Shaq but taking away his D takes your credibility away.
Duncan had the best shot!!! He could shoot from anywhere on the court and he would make it. Hakeem had a shot but not as dependable as Duncans. Plus he was alot lower than Duncan.
1.Bill Russell
2. MJ
3. Duncan when its all said and done!
Perfect, except Chamberlain as C. and Robinson to back him up.
Pg-Magic
Sg-MJ
Sf-Bird
Pf-Duncan
C-Russell
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