“My feeling with Hardaway is that he was a really terrific for a few years, but then he got hurt. And the accumulation of stats mostly came via a playing for a long time more than actual performance.”
Yeah, there’s some truth to that, I think. I was mostly making the comparison in relation to your assertion that Mullin’s case for the HoF was not that great. Based on what I remember, Hardaway has a better argument for getting in, I think.
edit: OK, I checked this. Hardaway had seven years where he was top ten in 3 pointers, eight years where he was top ten in assists and assists per game. I don’t think that stats are nearly the whole picture with a point guard, though. Obviously he was a great ball handler and ran a very good fast break. Defense would be a mark against him, as I recall.
@Bobby
I think the Big East just might be tougher now than it was in Mullin’s day. (You remember Walter Berr?)
@Matt
Well, Tim Hardaway became one of my favorite players after Isiah, so I wouldn’t be begrudge him getting in.
Any word on the season? I am reluctant to buy tickets due to a possible strike
I don’t know. I haven’t been following Big East ball closely in recent years. But I find it hard to believe that it could be better than the glory days of the 80s. Don’t remember Berr.
@Den
Don’t know what’s going on right now.
@Bobby
Berry. He was a left-handed post player—one of those lefties with an ugly shot. He had such an awkward style, but I liked him. Along with Mark Jackson, they had another utitlity player (Shelton?).
I remember the Big East games in the 80s. The Big East in the past two years have been tougher than the 80s, I think. (Louisville, Marquette, West Virginia and Norte Dame have all be added—and these were some of the better teams. Pittsburgh was the top team for much of the season if I recall correctly. Add to that, Nova, UConn, Syracuse, G-Town. I think St. John’s did better, too.)
The Big East in the 80s were great—mostly because you had all those East Coast point guards. (Well, that’s why I liked it. :)
The ACC, with James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Michael Jordan at Carolina, Len Bias at Maryland, the NC State team that upset Houston in the final, Coach K’s team started becoming perennial contenders by the mid-80s, Mark Price at Gerogia Tech, was pretty good back then, too.
Yeah, but I think the ACC really turned the corner in the beginning of the 90s. One of my favorites was always Randolph Childress of Wake Forest.
The ACC was tough in the 80s and 90s, I thought. The Big Ten and SEC weren’t shabby, either. (Mark Price had a really sweet J. His transition to the one was surprising—especially how well he made the transition. I think he is a bit underrated as an NBA player.)
Childress was that Karl Malone type of player, right? They had another player like that, too, I recall.
My favorite college players were mostly guards.
No, Childress was one of the smoothest backcourt payers ever. He and Lawrence Moten were probably two of my favorites of all-time.
“but I think the ACC really turned the corner in the beginning of the 90s.”
Duke did, obviously, and Wake had Rodney Rogers, Childress, and Tim Duncan in the 90s, Maryland had Joe Smith, and Carolina had George Lynch and Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse—talent-wise, none of those guys were at the same level as the best ACC players of the ’80s, though.
Rogers was the mini-Karl Malone player, I think.
@Bobby
I think I remember Childress, now. Yeah, solid guard. I didn’t care for Moten’s game so much (a lot of set shots, right?).
@Matt
I tend to think ACC talent between the 80s and 90s is a bit closer than you’re saying. Jordan, Worthy, Johnny Dawkins, (Is Hurley, Grant Hill and Laettner, 80s or 90s?) I’d put Duncan up there.
“Is Hurley, Grant Hill and Laettner, 80s or 90s?”
90s.
“I tend to think ACC talent between the 80s and 90s is a bit closer than you’re saying. "
The talent at Duke and at Wake Forest was better. Although they never had anyone like Bias again, overall the talent at Maryland was better, Clemson was probably roughly the same—Horace Grant was probably the best player they had during the 80s . . . same for Georgia Tech. Virginia was definitely better in the 80s—Sampson who was one of the greatest college players of all time, Rick Carlisle at point, Jeff Lamp. North Carolina was definitely better in the 80s. NC State was definitely better in the ’80s.
. . . but if you’re picking a starting five from the ACC during the ‘80s and ’90s, I’d take Price at PG, Jordan at SG, Bias and Worthy as the forwards, and Sampson at center.
Well, I should defer to you.
Virginia had some teams I liked in the 90s. I liked Harold Dean, for example and they actually played well under the coach (Jeff something—was it Lamp?) When did Chris Corchiani and Rodney Monroe play together at State? Was that late 80s? I can’t remember now.
As for your all-ACC team, not to quibble, but Price wasn’t a one. Plus, even if he was, are you really going to take him over Hurley. (Then again, of course you are. What Carolina fan would? :) I might also take that lefty from G-Tech (dang, his name escapes me now and it’s annoying me. He was part of the Lethal Weapon 3) over Price.
Jordan was also more of three in college, if I remember correctly. If I had to take someone else, it might be Dawkins. Donald Williams had a few great years. How was that other Duke 2 that got shut down in the finals against UConn? (That might have been in the 2000s, though.)
Corchiani was there until ’91.
Price was a point guard. Bruce Dalrymple was the shooting guard in that back court. Hurley was a classic offensive point guard, but wasn’t a particularly good shooter, and wasn’t much of a defender, either. He also turned the ball over quite a bit. You know, now that I’m thinking about it, I’ll take Kenny Smith, though—most efficient, well-rounded game of any of the aforementioned.
I said, Well, I should defer to you.
Let me amend that: I should defer to you—except when we’re evaluating Duke players. ;)
I wasn’t a huge fan of Hurley, but I think he might be one of the best point guards to play. The guy was a gamer—especially in the post-season. In the NCAA, the one is a crucial position. (Look at UNC teams—no matter what talent they had at the other positions, if they didn’t have a good one, they really didn’t do well—especially in the post-season. You remember the Lebo-Rice, right?)
“I wasn’t a huge fan of Hurley, but I think he might be one of the best point guards to play.”
No you’re right. I will say that he was the perfect PG for that system. Johnny Dawkins was pretty great, too.
Hurley: 7.7 assists/game, 12.4 points/game, 1.5 steals/game, 3.8 turnovers/game, career fg pct. .410
Smith: 6.0 assists/game, 12.9 point/game, 1.5 steals/game, 2.9 turnovers/game, career fg pct .512
It’s not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison because there was no three point line until Smith’s senior year, and the respective teams played at very different paces, but Smith was a far better shooter (he got a little better later, but Hurley was a terrible shooter his first two years at Duke)
The thing is, I don’t remember Smith being such a big time player as Hurley—as in making big shots or big plays. Kenny had wheels, though. (Was he a great shooter in college? I remember he developed a nice three point game in the pros—but mostly when he went to Houston.)
Btw, my favorite point guard (and maybe my favorite college player) was Sherman Douglas. The guy was the perfect point guard to me. He could run the offense, make the big shots and he could D up.
(Kenny Anderson is the point guard I was thinking of from G-Tech.)
If there had been a three-point shot for Smith’s whole career, he would have been deadly—He was quick, he could shoot, he was a leaper.
Douglas was great. Anderson was very talented, but didn’t stick around the college game long enough for me to think of him as great.
I agree with all those things about Smith—although in the half-court I don’t know how good of a scorer/penetrator he was.
Yeah, that was not the strongest aspect of his game as I remember it. Although, they were running the offense through Brad Daugherty at that time, so defenders would sag back off the ball a lot, so he took a lot of open jump shots from the edges of the lane.
Makes sense. Speaking of Brad Daugherty, there’s a guy that’s a bit overlooked. Well, given the level of competition around him, what can you do? But if he was playing in the NBA today, he’d look like Kareem (I exaggerate, but you get my drift).
(Hey, I forgot this was an NBA thread for a while there. :)
Yeah, he wasn’t able to stay healthy in the NBA, but he was very good while he was healthy.
The problem was the other centers he’d have to face (Olajuwon, Shaq, Kareem, etc.) There’s no way he’d be able to go against them. But he would dominate if he were playing now!
Now or Never Bron! 66 Game sprint. Get this shit started already!
Apparently Chris Paul has asked to be traded to the Knicks. How ’bout a “big three” of Paul-Anthony-Stoudemire in NY?
It could work if the other players play defense and rebound. I’m not holding my breath with D’Antoni there.
they would win a lot of games and score a lot of points, but kinda like how you were saying, unless melo and amare decide to play defense (cp3’s a good defender), and they get some rebounding help, they won’t go very far in the playoffs. trading wilson chandler was tough for them i think, he was their best perimeter defender. landry fields will need to improve too.
Yeah, D’Antoni’s never going to be Tom Thibodeau, so I think defense is limited not just by apathy on the part of the players, but by the system he runs.
What I don’t understand is why his offense (and others like it—e.g., Don Nelson or Paul Westphal with the Suns) seems to be incompatbile with tough, half-court defense. On the surface, I see no reason why you can’t play a wide-open three-point shooting offense and have a tough, half-court defense. In a way, Rick Pitino’s teams are sort of like this—although, perhaps bigs that can play on the perimeter tend to be soft or ineffective defenders in the paint.
The only other theory I have has to do with a clash of mindsets. D’Antoni’s offense is one where you have to be loose and not very physical. It’s about being quick, penetrating and shooting jumpers. That might clash with the type of attitude you need for a tough, half-court defense. (You might be able to play a good match-up zone, though.) Also, rebounding is all about grit and a hard-nosed attitude. I’m not completely buying this, but that’s the best I can come up with.
A better explanation might be tempo. D’Antoni wants free-flowing and uptempo types of game. He probably wants his team to get more attempts.
Then again, maybe the answer is simple: his mind is more on the offense than the defense (which, if true, dooms the whatever team he coaches).
Bobby Wise
I grew up watching Run TMC in Oakland. Fond memories. I even remember Mullin at St Johns. Back in the days when the Big East of bball was like the SEC for football nowadays.