It's really two. Toughness and leadership.

Steph is not a leader at the least bit. His idea of leadership is 20 and 10, He's a statistical leader, same goes for allan houston.

This teams mental, and physical toughness was expose immensly during the season, and flat out against the NETS in the playoffs. The addition of the junk yard may change that a little, but I truley don't see an emotional leader in sight. Someone who will step up and sacrifce for the team, A LJ, and oakly type player.

I'm prayig IT can really teach Steph a little toughness, because he's a staight wuss. As much as I love his game, is as much as I hate the fact that he has an allan houstons demeanor.

This team can not just put up points and think they'll win 75% of their games. this team has to develope some sort of a defensive system. Averaging a 100 pts ppg in todays league is not the recipe for a championship.

Leading the NBA in minutes played and not missing a game in 3 years (even when your ankles are killing you and you're waiting for offseason surgery) is more than you can ask of any leader. I guess until last season Kevin Garnett was nothing more than a stat leader since his teams never made it out of the first round.

And I could have sworn Houston helped lead the Knicks to the NBA finals

[Edited by - Bonn1997 on 08/09/2004 18:18:06]

[bknicks1248, who do you consider the leader for Detroit?
][/b]

The MVP, and Larry brown, they have a host of leaders on that team, and they have the chemistry of the lakers, detriot, bulls and celtics of the late 80's and early 90's. Most of there players play with a lot of emotion, and as a team they feed off of each other.

Not so for our beloved knicks, no one on this team plays with emotion, there for that one leader is so necesasry. You got to admit, that TT incident was embarassing, the knicks of old would have responded in some fashion.

I'm not even going to base my point on that particular incident, becuase they have been getting push around since EWING and LJ's departure. And the have been god awful on the defensive end.




KG is a solid leader, but being a solid leader alone doesn't produce championships. Having a solid team to lead, not just a few good players, and that has been KGs problem.

what t-wolf stood up to Anthony Peeler or did some retaliation scheme when AP forearmed KG?

Who in the NBA is really an enforcer anymore? Nachbar on the Rockets retaliated on Karl Malone in the playoffs, but that was it.

There are no tough guys in the NBA in my opinion anymore. Everyone is trying to look pretty. Who is really an enforcer? Before every team had a banger and an enforcer. Now, no teams have that.

Not to mention Peeler was KG's teammate the year before.