This is pretty common in NBA and other professional sports circles although the way Radja tells it is kinda funny. Ainge had this same face-to-face when Antoine approached him once he took over in Boston. The GM can only reiterate that the player is part of the teams future......he can't ever say, "Well, we're gonna see what's out there" or "everyone is tradable."
I’ll forever hate that man but he was good. Never missed any games and made his FTs.
The Lefthander absolutely deserves to be in there. 11th winning college coach of all time; first coach to win 100+ games with 4 different programs; invented Midnight Madness.
If he was on the Celtics instead of Parish, the Cs would have been just as good. He was, in his prime, every bit as good as Parish, IMO. Parish was better longer. His outside shooting would have opened up the floor for Bird and McHale as they posted up. And he was a great rebounder. And Cs fans would have loved to have had him on Boston. Kind of like Ainge in that regard.
This is absolute crazy talk. Bill Laimbeer's 20-footers were not going to promote better offense than Robert Parish. Those weren't 3-pointers; they were generally bad shots that he shot at a pretty low percentage.The FG% you posted in his absolute prime (before Detroit started winning championships; thanks Rodman!) were not very good for a big man in those days, when the leaguewide FG% was around 49%. He was a good rebounder, but not as good as Rodmna, whose emergence was the real key to the Pistons' run.
That's because he wasn't a post player - he shot more from the outside, and back in those days the midrange shot was just fine. Teams routinely shot fewer than 3-4 three pointers a game. He'd have fit in really nicely with Boston. He brought toughness, outstanding rebounding (he was a better rebounder than Parish in their respective primes), and a nice outside shot that would have complemented Bird, Maxwell, and McHale down low. Don't get me wrong - Parish was great for the Celtics. But Laimbeer would have been too.
I'm not really going to go to the wall on this - Parish is a HOFer and Laimbeer is not. But we can play the game you just played all day long. Parish's top 5 FGA seasons were: 15.4, 14.6, 14.4, 14.3, and 14.2. Despite having Bird, McHale, and Maxwell on his teams. Parish was clearly one of the go-to options.
One of those seasons he was playing with GSW; in another McHale was a rookie. But yes, he was generally the third option on that team. Chief would have been the #2 option on the Tripucka Pistons.
Yes, which is why what I said is perfectly logically consistent. Look at each of their stats with and without the other good rebounders on the floor. I don't "dog" Laimbeer for compiling rebounding numbers when Rodman wasn't there. It's simply the reality. His numbers were padded when there were no other rebounding options. When Rodman started playing significant minutes, Laimbeer's rebounds dipped. When Bird wasn't on the floor, Parish's increased.
With the exception of one season in which Laimbeer put up big rebounding numbers he had Dan Roundfield or Sidney Green starting at the 4 who each put up Top-10 RebRate numbers and they had Cureton as the backup 4 who was also a good rebounder.
Roundfield and Green were only on the Pistons for two of the five years OP was talking about as Laimbeer's prime, including the last, which was his worst rebounding year of the five. (There also wasn't much crossover in playing time. Green and Roundfield only played a combined ~3300 minutes to Laimbeer's ~5800 in the two seasons.) Laimbeer also wasn't playing perimeter defense; but Rodman often was.
It’s the basketball, not NBA hall of fame. Dude was very good in the NBA, but won two EuroLeague and Greek league titles each, and won two silver medals in the olympics. Why shouldn’t he be honored as a basketball great?
He also blazed the trail for DJ on the "allegedly bad attitude guys from Phoenix" trade wagon.
Minor nit, but Drazen was a few years older than those guys, and wasn't on those u19 teams, including the 1987 world champion team. They played together later on Yugoslav and Croatian teams, of course.
When you look at the list of Dukies that played in the NBA it's really depressing. Leaving aside the Chesty Morgan sized busts (Danny Ferry, Jahili Okafor, Bobby Hurley), even the ones that showed early promise (Elton Brand, Carlos Boozer, Luol Deng, Christian Laettner) fizzled due to mounting injuries, or were just frustrating almost weres (Junior Dunleavy, Cory Maggette). Hopefully this generation of Dukies turns out differently (especially for we Celtic fans).Mike Gminski isn't in?
I expect/hope Kyrie will be the 2nd one.
A trail made easier by the real Pho-Bos pioneer, Paul Silas.
The difference was that Williams could physically compete as an NBA 1 and would probably had a long career in the league although still much worse than his draft slot. Hurley was horrific in his early season games before the accident and while he was a rookie it was pretty clear that he couldn't physically compete defensively and was an awful perimeter shooter without 3-point range. Hurley was going to be a bust with or without the accident.
I really wish J-Will had an NBA career. I think he could have been pretty darn good. He ended his rookie year on a nice run - his last 7 games he averaged 14.7 PPG / 5.3 APG / 2.6 RPG in 26.3 MPG on 60.6% FG, 68.8% from 3, and 80% from FT. May have just been a SSS hot streak to end the year but it seemed like he was turning a corner.
He played all of 17 games and had 16 3 point attempts before his injury. In college, he shot over 40% from 3 in 652 attempts. I don't think you can say he'd have been an awful perimeter shooter had he not been injured.
Yes, Williams could physically compete with NBA players, but he wasn't pre-knee explosion D-Rose, which is what he would have needed to be to paper over that game. I agree that he could have carved out a niche as an above average NBA starter.
Yeah that's all I was saying about J-Will. Very little variance in what his career would have looked like for those reasons. A solid/good 10-year starter.
The problem was he couldn't get his shot off even when open against NBA close-outs as he had a slow windup release. Hurley shot 27% from 3 for his career for these reasons not became an accident that knocked him out for 7-months robbed him of the ability to ever shoot the ball against NBA length.
It robbed him of some of his ability and he was also the 7th pick in the draft. He may have lived up to it to the "hype" of a 7th pick. Jay Will was 1b in the draft and was much more hyped than Bobby Hurley.
Which injury robbed him of the ability to shoot? I didn't see any discernible difference in his athletic ability past that first recovery year much less affecting his shooting. He was really awful prior to the accident......you didn't even need 17 games to see he was in way over his head against starting units. His shooting then wasn't even close as he had to rush everything to even get any shot off.
