For sure. We only remember old Shaq since that's the last thing we saw but young Shaq was incredibly athletic and light on his feet. Underrated passer, too.
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Yeah, he was very skilled. I just hated the game he played, backing into players and muscling his way to the basket. It always seemed antithetical to what basketball was, should be and has now become. I blame the refs for letting him get away with it. If they hadn't, he'd still have been a great player. His skill set was formidable.
Almost an all-time boner by Denver. I can't believe the Jazz lost this with how much of a man Gobert was in the second half!
Yes but Gobert got the rebound with just over 4 seconds left, so to make that last cross-court pass to Mitchell may have been too late.
But it was some seriously hard fought basketball. These games are so good. Viva la Bubble!
That Nuggest last possession would have been an all time blunder if Conley's shot went down. What a hell of a game.
As one of the Jaylen fanboys, I can't quibble with much of it. His hoop IQ is still developing. He has way more ceiling there, which is awesome (since he's clearly growing each year). And a lot of that is on defense.
I think that he's being undersold a bit as a shot creator, although I agree that a team developed around him as THE shot creator would struggle.
Funny that he had one of his better defensive box store games today with 3 steals and 2 blocks, but the advanced metrics are right. He has a lot of development opportunity as a team defender still.
For some reason I found myself rooting for the Jazz in this game (I think because they were so far behind early, plus how can you not love Mitchell) but in the end I think Denver has a slightly better chance of bothering the Lakers Clippers at least a bit. Both were probably roadkill, tho...
Edit: d'oh, I mean Clippers. But the same comment probably applies.
Edit: d'oh, I mean Clippers. But the same comment probably applies.
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Wow, you forget how thin he was (relatively speaking).
This article says he gained around 70 lbs after moving to LA. Which I guess when you're 7'1" doesn't look as bad as compared to an average person gaining 70 lbs (300 -> 370ish)
https://fanbuzz.com/nba/shaq-weight/#:~:text=He hovered around the 300,really put on the pounds.
"Not as skilled as Giannis" ≠ unskilled. But what's the argument for Shaq being more skilled than Giannis?
Trying to compare across eras is sort of ridiculous. And trying to even compare skills is sort of too.. I think for one.. Shaq’s footwork is way better... especially in the post. I think GA is often out of control and his footwork is often sloppy.. but pretty great for how long he’s played the game. I think young Shaq is as quick or quicker than GA. He’s a far more physical player...impossible to move. Gianis’ game is totally different and centers in general are asked to do a lot more now. Shaqs shooting, dribbling and passing are being way undervalued here imo... he didn’t shoot threes, but his mid range was pretty good. GA is also asked to do a lot more on his team.
I dunno.. I need to look at some numbers..maybe I’m way off... and I guess it’s also a question of what skills we’re comparing.
Edit: just watched a video talking about this comparison.. one point that was made is that the lane was a lot more clogged in Shaqs era..and he dominated. GA is able to get to the hoop a lot easier because there’s usually one to three less defenders in the lane.
GA Is def a better dribbler obv.. his fast breaks are like a center playing guard and really exceptional at his height.
Edit2: one last thought.. there have been two players that I remember being truly dominating coming into the league...Shaq and LeBron. Both of them were so physically superior (bigger, stronger, faster) to everyone they were playing against. Just look at the clips above.. Shaq makes Parrish look tiny. I don’t get the same feeling with GA.. although I do get the feeling that he’s an extension of the changing trend at the center position and he’s the best example we’ve seen of it. Perhaps Shaq was physically dominant..GA is skillfully and athletically dominant. Shaq said when he was young he used to run the floor on breaks.. he stopped because they didn’t pass him the ball.. GA cuts out the middle man by dribbling it up himself.
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Not that it would have kept him from scoring, but it looks an awful lot like Plumlee was in the backcourt with him. Best case probably would have been an open look at a 3 (probably better than what Conley got though).
I'm comfortable saying that Giannis is this generation's version of Shaq. Not a threat from outside and weak at the line, but he's a freight train in the paint and is stronger and faster than anyone who matches up with him. He doesn't have Shaq's pure power (no one does, now or ever), but Shaq didn't have Giannis' go go gadget length (I've never seen anyone so consistently dunk the ball in traffic from what seems like an absurd distance from the basket, or get from the 3 point line to the rim in one dribble) nor his mobility on the perimeter.
The main points against Shaq (in favor of Giannis) are that Shaq's defense was always a bit disappointing (just 3 all defense teams for the biggest and fastest guy on the court for every single game he ever played?) and there was always a question of how much he really wanted to be the best. He was routinely out of shape for the second half of his career and seemed content to great, not the best.
Queue the Spida trade rumors because they are coming...
Denver feels like the other team in the playoffs besides Houston with the biggest range of potential outcomes. I don't expect them to beat LA but it also wouldn't be a total shock. They are just so inconsistent as a team and individually.
Denver feels like the other team in the playoffs besides Houston with the biggest range of potential outcomes. I don't expect them to beat LA but it also wouldn't be a total shock. They are just so inconsistent as a team and individually.
I don’t tend to look at all defense teams or all star teams or whatever as measures of actual skill. They seemingly tell you who was popular at the time more than anything. What do their stats look like? Age 24 Shaq blocked a lot more shots.
As my edit above says.. one reason Giannis can get to the hoop like he does is because of how defenses have changed.. defensive three seconds wasn’t a thing (right?) so there were a lot more players in the lane. GA can step around players because there’s fewer of them in the lane.
Giannis led the league in defensive BPM the last two years, and led the league in defensive win shares this year. Shaq never led the league in the former and he led the league in the latter just once, in 99/00 (aka the one year in which he tried from start to finish). I'm not caring too much about Shaq's extra blocks because as you noted, he was allowed to essentially camp in the lane on defense. Giannis is asked to do more, is far more versatile, and effort counts for a ton on defense. He won the DPOY this year and finished 2nd last year. He's been a defensive monster for the last couple of years. As best I can tell Shaq finished 2nd in 99/00 (we'll call that the one year Shaq was a force defensively), the only time he finished higher than 8th. You can write it off as popularity, but if you think the conventional wisdom that Shaq was not a particularly great defender (certainly not better than Giannis) is wrong, you'll need more.
Well your argument is certainly more convincing.
Edit. And that’s not intended as sarcasm.. lot of good points there and I’m admittedly working mostly off memory.
Flagrant 2? If we’re talking Theis they make up a new Flagrant 3 just for him.
If the argument is who is the better player, Shaq or Giannis, then the answer is clearly Shaq, imo. Giannis one day might go down to be better than Shaq, but it will take a lot of postseason heroics from Giannis to reach that level.
If the (stupid) argument is who is more skilled I would go with Giannis. Then again, you could argue that Derrick Coleman was more skilled than Tim Duncan too.
If the (stupid) argument is who is more skilled I would go with Giannis. Then again, you could argue that Derrick Coleman was more skilled than Tim Duncan too.
I thought he was talking about the all defense teams, and some of those selections are right up there with Derek Jeter’s Gold Glove in terms of being laughable. Mr. Bean was making NBA All Defense long after he’d stopped playing any.
Agreed on all of it. I think Giannis is a better defender now than Shaq ever was, but overall he's got a long way to go. He is just 25, after all.
Certainly they aren't everything, but they aren't nothing either. When I say Giannis is better defensively than Shaq I'm going off of what I remember seeing, the advanced stats, and what the general wisdom of the time was, best reflected in award voting and all defense teams. Shaq was a lazy defender for most of his career, and Giannis is one of the most locked in stars (night in and night out) of any superstar in recent history, including on defense. That alone pretty much ends the discussion for me.
JB got beat backdoor in Q4 last night when Grant fouled. Brown literally gets lost on defense a few times every game and like Jake said above he's an average help defender.
Jaylen's nowhere complete as a player and he leaps every offseason. But there were folks (not you) that had JB pegged to be better than JT this season/forward, which was downright silly.
Not taking anything away from JB, since Tatum will be in MVP conversations in the years to come.
He wasn’t. Plumlee was standing 3-feet from Mitchell when Gobert rebounded the ball. He faded back toward the paint after the ball got to Conley. In that clip above you can kinda see him rotate back away from Mitchell.
Edit: Missed the post where Euclis addresses this.
Yeah that play was on him, but I'm not sure why that's any worse than overhelping and giving up the corner three (which we did more of last night).
Jaylen has top 10/15 potential and the work ethic to get there, God willing. Tatum has top 1 potential.
Younger Shaq was a force and a tremendous athlete (for a guy his size).
The quality of this video isn't good, but I remember this dunk like it was yesterday - Shaq handling the ball on a fast break for a huge dunk during the McDonald's High School All-American game.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riV3hvW8M64
But older Shaq was an absolute physical beast. A lot less athleticism, but much more raw, brute size and power. Young Shaq probably weighed about 270. Older Shaq was probably up around 325 and as strong as a bear.
Yeah you're right.
https://www.stack.com/a/remember-when-shaq-was-ripped-and-super-athletic-heres-how-he-put-on-so-much-weight
"But by the time the Lakers had won their first NBA championship with Shaq at the end of the 1999-2000 season, Shaq barely resembled the trim, supremely athletic center he was once. By 2002, he weighed 341 pounds. By the 2003-2004 NBA season, Shaq had expanded outward like a helium balloon, with his weight at one point reaching a whopping 370 pounds."
Good lord.
I'm a Jaylen fan and I agree with all of this. I don't think any of his boosters on here projected him as a top ten player (or that he would be better than Tatum, for that matter). Jaylen was a fringe All Star this season who showed growth as a ballhandler and passer (see below). I think his upside is to be the second best player on a championship team, and I don't see him as needing to take giant steps forward to achieve that, he just needs to tighten up certain aspects of his game.
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1300917879496478720
Just want to point out that the backdoor play was immediately after he banged knees and was immediately followed by a sub. Looked to me that JB was trying to figure out how hurt he was.
there were plenty of Sons of Bae here ( you can literally go back to the projection thread to see the JB > JT fervor)
that's fair. Not sure if our guys are going to survive this physical series.
After the whistle-thon in the first half of Game 1, the refs have given in.
Toronto/Lowry have a license to keep their hands on the Celtic hips all game long.
Didn't we actually have a poll?
Edit: found it. We were collectively mostly right / sane:
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/jaylen-or-tatum.23075/