Posted by nixluva:
OF all the teams in the East, the KNICKS are one of only two teams with a LEGIT bigman to fashion a team around. He doesn't have to be perfect. How much has Howard and all of his GREAT defense, blocks and rebounding helped the Magic? There's more to it than that. When it comes to building a team, you have to deal with your top players strengths and fill in the rest. That's what is happening here, but as usual FEW are really interested in allowing time for that to happen.
there are plenty of reasons not to consider curry a legit bigman to fashion a team around. his scoring is up, but his rebounds, blocks, and turnovers are worse from what they were last season when he was in worse shape. I'd consider Dwight Howard to be a franchise player despite his team sucking balls right now, although maybe not be a whole lot. record isn't always an indication of whether or not any one player is a franchise player or not. you've got a point about dealing with your top players strength and filling in the rest. problem is when your top player is all-star caliber at best, you won't get too far filling in the rest around him. unless you think philly can eventually win a title by building around dalembert. do you? because as far as overall effectiveness goes dalembert is just as good as curry.
Posted by nixluva:
I'm really getting tired of people saying we don't have Franchise players. That's really not the point. We have Curry and we have Lee. Those 2 are going to be a big part of this thing going forward. We have Steph right now and he's obviously STILL CAPABLE of getting it done. He JUST turned 30 and there are guards that are much older than him still able to make solid contributions to a team. Steph isn't going to have to carry the team when it's fully healthy. He can settle back into a role of being a facilitator and pick his spots. Down the line the younger players will improve and we'll add some additional help i'm sure. The way some of you talk, you'd think we won't get better in any way.
not having a franchise player almost always does matter. I theorize that the only reason why the pistons were able to defy the odds that one time is because their defense so much better than the average team's, plus its not exactly as though they didn't have very talented players as well, just no one superstar like kobe or shaq. in any case its obvious this team will never be great defensively so I wouldn't count on the knicks winning it all without a franchise player like the pistons did. I agree about steph though. by the time this team is finished growing, steph wont have to carry them to a possible first round exit like he does now, they should be able to do that by themselves with steph only making limited contributions. the knee pain thing worries me though. anyway after the young players improve and steph and francis have expired (because this team won't grow to the extent of being champonship caliber before they come off the books) and additional help has been added through small trades and low draft picks (Im not including the MLE because Isiah has hinted that he doesn't plan to use it anymore) do you really see this team being 20 games better than it is now? I don't.
Posted by nixluva:
We also have a lot of useful role players. I still think Frye will be better than he's shown this year. It could just be one of those Sophmore jinx type of things. You know he's gonna work hard in the off season. I really like Balkman and Collins off the bench. As they develop I can see them being very useful. I don't even think we've seen the best of Jared either. He's had some moments where you could see how he can be very helpful, but he hasn't been able to do that consistently. This is a decent team in the process of developing and I don't think we're any worse off than any other emerging young team.
I think frye will be definately better than he has shown this year too. but Im worried that it might be with another team because I'm not sure he and curry can both thrive together, signs from this season seem to suggest that they can't but theres still time for them to show otherwise. I really like balkman and collins too, I think mardy can be a defensive, facilitating PG and balkman can be a shutdown defender and a 9+ rebounds per game grabber. Also I dont think we've seen the best of jeffries either, I think he will be a good deal better from now on. I think the wrist injury set him back some. anyway by young emerging team do you mean like the magic? because they have the exact same average age as us. hopefully you weren't talking about like the raptors, bulls, or warriors, because those teams are younger than we are.
[Edited by - Slimpack on 03-18-2007 8:53 PM]
