Posted by Nalod:

Poor steph.

Is your brilliant deductive reasoning offered based on his poverty of bad coaches or his self proclamation of being the best point in the league?

IF he is to be made SG, how would his shooting drop and assist increase?

Question is not who is our bestpoint, but our best SG???

Posted by nixluva:

I've had this discussion on a different forum and i've had to break down Steph's career and the teams he's been on. Suffice it to say that when he's had a decent team he's made the playoffs. Yet still his best teams have been unfortunately teams with very young players just starting out and not yet ready to contend.

Steph's rookie yr, 1st yr with Minny - 1996-97 He had KG & Gugliotta.
their record 40-42 made playoffs for 1st time in team history, the year before Steph they were 26-56. They were Swept by the 57-25 Rockets, who went to the West Conf. Finals, in the 1st rd.

Steph's 2nd yr in Minny - they had the teams 1st winning season, went 45-37 lost again in the 1st rd. in 5 games to the 61-21 Sonics.

Was this somehow a bad showing by Steph? I would think that this was a great job by a very young Steph and young KG. This team was a few years from being ready to contend. No one could blame Steph for this team losing to more experienced superior teams.

NJ was an injury riddled disaster his whole time there. His 1st year with NJ, was the lockout shortened year and he came to the team on Mar. 11th and he played 31 games for NJ. So we can't count that year for much. The only player to play all 50 games was Kendal Gill. jayson Williams, Seikaly all missed 20 or more games.

His 2nd yr. 99-00 they went 31-51 under Coach Don Casey. Kittles only played 62 games. Steph went down with a Knee injury the 1st week in April. He played in only 74 games and the team was officially eliminated from playoff contention on Apr. 7th. Mind you there was no Kmart or RJ on that team. Really only KVH was there to help in a big way. Casey was fired and Byron Scott hired.

His 3rd year 00-01 he only played 67 games and Kittles, Van Horn & Feick, didn't start the season with the team. they went 26-56. KMart had a good rookie season. Still this team was also snake bit from the start with injuries.

His 1st yr in PHX 01-02 they went 36-46. Penny came back from playing only 4 games the yr before as did Gugliotta after major Knee reconstruction. Jake Voskuhl was the Center along with Marion. This was not a very good team. Scott Skiles resigned and Frank Johnson was named coach.

His 2nd yr 02-03 they went 46-36 and were the Eighth seed against the Spurs. They lost in 6 games. Amare had a great Rookie season and won ROY, but they weren't ready to beat the eventual champion Spurs.

So you guys tell me at which stop along the way was Steph supposed to be able to pull his team out of the depths and win? The last year with the Suns, Amare was injured after playing only 18 games with Steph and then Coach Johnson was fired and then they made the trade of Steph & Penny. Now this wasn't because Steph was a horrible PG, it was a financial restructuring. They were capped out with both Steph & Penny's contracts and had no way to improve. They knew they had a nice young nucleus to build around and they took a chance at FA's. Now they didn't know they would get Nash, so don't try to make it seem like they had it all planned out. They just got lucky, that Dallas didn't want to pay.

These are the kinds of things that were being said about STeph when he was with the Suns:

"Steph was huge," Suns coach Frank Johnson says afterward with requisite amazement. "He wouldn't allow us to lose."

"Most importantly, in his second season with the Suns, Marbury has pulled this preseason lottery lock into playoff contention with hard-nosed play and solid team leadership. Simply put, there's not a point guard in the game who's outplaying him. And Marbury's clutch-time performance--measured by the NBA as production in the last two minutes of games and in overtime--has been among the best in the business all season long."

www.findarticles.com/p/ar...i_99848989

So lets kill this noise about him not being a clutch player. Who the heck did he have on the Knicks that could help him out. Its so much easier for a team to stop one player when he's the only real threat. Ask Kobe about that or even Jordan, before his team was good enough. Now that we've finally started to put a team around him, I think we'll be just fine and over the next few years we'll really get to see what this team can do WITH STEPH.

Posted by McK1:

Stephon Marbury is not comparable to Amare or KG . Their impact 94 ft is 100 x's that of what Steph's is. Stephon was never better than Amare, neither was Marion. More experienced - yes, better - hell to the NO.

Amare put up 13.5 pts not getting the ball nearly enough. Kinda scary what would've happened if Steph had any BRAINS or Frank Johnson had any BALLS. Its understated how much giving D' Antoni the reigns, roping IT for Steph, and getting Nash in there (6 yrs 60 mill and Q got 6 yrs 44 mill which is 4 mill more than the 100 mill they owed Steph for you money was the cause Steph-activists) was huge not only for the Suns but for the league. The domiant big man for the next decade was brought forth. With all the troubles the guy who was set to be the face of the NBA was going thru in Colorado, what happened n Phoenix from Jan 04 thru last season was a gift from Heaven for Stern and the NBA logo.

1 to chew on:

if Steve Francis didn't spend the first 14 seconds of the shot clock showing off his handles damn near every possession, he would've made my list of guards ahead of Steph as well.

Posted by McK1:

KG
* in his first 2 full seasons with Steph his fga's were 1100 and 1293 for a total of 2393 fga's and 272 and 332 fta for a total of 605 fta.

* his first 2 full seasons with a real pg in Terrell Brandon he got off 1526 attempts in 99-00 and 1475 field goal attempts in 00-01 for a total of 3001. Also in 99- 00 he went to the line 404 tmes and 00-01 467 times for a total of 871.

2393 fgas to 3001 fgas and 605 ftas to 871 ftas. WOW!

Needless to say, he got the ball a very considerable amount of times more. And it wasn't that Terrell Brandon couldn't score (look at his no.s asa full-time starter in Cleveland and Milwaukee), he was just SMART enough to realize the team would do better the more scoring opportunities KG got.

Posted by oohah:

McK1, I thought you had originally made a couple of good points, but when you start in with "if Steph had any BRAINS" it becomes clear that you main point is that you dislike Marbury. Your argument does not seem objective.

Let me ask you this:

What if it turns out that Marbury's best position is not point guard. Does that make him the best-passing shooting guard ever? Does he then retroactively become an unselfish player?

oohah

quote:

Steph had any BRAINS

translation:

if Steph had a higher basketball IQ.

-----

does it make him the best passing shooting guard ever?

NO.

I never saw Oscar Robertson or Pete Maravich play but judging from the clips and recounts Steph isn't on the same planet. As far as 2's I have seen Michael Jordan, Allen I and Kobe rank ahead of Steph. The difference IMO is those 3 guys just made/make plays with the ball in their hands over the course of the game; Steph goes about his numbers with a pre-set deliberance. I'll pass the first half and shoot the 2nd is the trend for Steph.

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by McK1:

in 00-01 season you got garnett geting 22 ppg; Brandon getting 16 ppg; Wally Z getting 14 a game; billups getting 9.3; Anthony Peeler averageing 10. 5 ppg; Laphonso Ellis 9.4 ppg.

that is 7 players average 9 points or more for a full season not to mention the bit buckets guys like Nesterovic got. And KG still put up over 300 more shots than he did when it was him Googs and Steph doing the majority of the scoring.

Thats called ball distribution!

Please show me a Marbury team where the ball was spread around like that.

OK first of all You can't just pick a team out of thin air and say that this is proof that Steph leads to horrible ball distribution. Steph never played with those guys you bring up on the Twolves, only with KG can there be a direct comparison. Its like when people say that Kidd was so much better with the Nets, but they don't mention that Steph never Played with RJ or Collins and Kmart was fully healthy and more experienced when he played with Kidd. They also don't bring up the fact that the Nets had record games lost due to injury when Steph was there.

But OK i'll bite on your example.

00-01 Twolves KG -- 22.0 Brandon 16.0 Wally 14.0 Billups 9.3 Peeler 10.5 Ellis 9.4
02-03 Suns---Steph 22.3 Marion 21.2 Amare 13.5 J Johnson 9.8 Penny 10.6 The Suns didn't have anyone the equal of Ellis coming off the bench, still I think the scoring was spread as well as could be expected.

The 00-01 TWolves scored 97ppg and the 02-03 Suns scored 95ppg. Despite not having the same depth or veteran players as the TWolves I Think Steph did a good job with that Suns team. Its easy to throw the ball around when you have a deep team.

This is why I think the Knicks will do well this year and the years to come. This team has depth. I'd like another pure shooter to add to the mix tho.




[Edited by - NIXLUVA on 10-25-2005 12:16 AM]