CBS SportsLine - Positional Rankings: Shooting Guards

[Guru of Nothing]

When I think of Vince Carter, I think of Damon Stoudemire (and Avery Johnson): No team with Vince Carter will ever win an NBA championship.

[strangeweather]

Sometimes it's the team, coaches, teammates, management and ownership that causes a player like Vince to show that at ude. Look at Rasheed Wallace in Portland and his last two years in Detroit. The environment and a winning team can do wonders for a player. Who's to say that if Manu played for Toronto he wouldn't get frustrated and exhibit similar at ude problems?

Part of my takeaway on Sheed is that he couldn't handle everyone expecting him to be the guy, when he just wanted to be one of the guys. Now that Carter is happily plugging away on a team led by Jason Kidd, it looks like that's going to be his ticket as well.

If a guy is the 4th option on a team that isn't built right, he may pull all sorts of stupid stuff and blame it on the franchise. If the team is built around him, however badly, he needs to suck it up and do whatever he can, or he's not a real franchise player. A lot of people around here have it in for Garnett, but I'm not one of them -- when his team collapsed around him, he did everything he could to put them on his shoulders anyway. That's a franchise guy.

Can Vince add a lot to a team as a 2nd or 3rd option? Sure. Jersey got a sweet deal when they traded scraps for him. But any GM who tries to fit him into the franchise mode again after this is bound to be disappointed with the result. And if you're looking for someone to slot in as a #2 guy, I think you'll get a guy who will do many more things to help you win with Manu.

Ray Allen was the focus of the Milwaukee Bucks team, not Glen Robinson or Sam Cassell. And, it's not fair to count the 03-04 Sonics season when Ray Allen only played in 56 games and played several of those injured. It would be fair to say Ray Allen could have made a difference in those 26 games he missed. And, by the same token, if you put Manu Ginobili on last year's Seattle Sonics team in place of Ray Allen, I don't think the Sonics do any better, and might do worse. The arguement is not whether Ray Allen is a franchise player or not (I happen to believe he is, but that's just my opnion). The argument is whether you would rather have Ray Allen or Manu Ginobili. It's fine if you pick Manu. It's just my opnion that I'd rather have Ray Allen.

There are lots of good things about Ray Allen over his career, and I don't want to sound like I'm discounting them all. I think Manu has passed him by now, but I think it's fair to agree that reasonable people can disagree on this -- I feel a lot more strongly about Carter.