by beauduvall on Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:01 pm
Taking the dallas mavericks of the last 5 years along with the lakers of 2 years ago, it has been seen over and over again that more talant does not mean more wins. more talant means more players from different teams developing their talants and becoming the go-to guys of their team, ala Antoine, shaq, wade of the heat...Ala nash, novitski, etc of the mavericks, ala shaq, payton, bryant, malone of the lakers. When you have all these "all stars" meshed onto the same team, it's going to be expected to cause chemistry problems (especially when a person like walker is in the picture). All these players are all used to having a set role on a prior team, and that set role usually involves having the ball a lot of having a lot of minutes on the court. When you had the lakers of 2 years ago with 4 hall of famers on the same team, you saw hatred, disatasfaction, and eventual failure. You may say that getting to the Finals is successful, but I see a loss as a loss. Payton was upset about the offensive sets and his lack of touches, bryant and shaq had there problems, and Malone tried to keep things patched up.
When you look at a dynasty team, you think of the Bird era celtics, or the jordan era bulls. they had 1, 2 players tops that had extreme talant. jordan and pippen. Bird and McHale/Parish. the rest were role players. Rodman a role player at rebounding. Kerr a role player at passing.
This is why the supersonics were so successful last season dispite having so many people going into free- agency. They had 2 star players in allan and lewis, and then they had role players. They had Radmonovic to spread the court and bring PF's into out of the key. They had forson to bang and rebound, they had ridnour to drive and pass, etc., etc.
On a side note, this is why i believe the kings have not gone anywhere either. They had so much talant in bibby, miller, webber, and peja, that when split up, all 4 of those players could be now or in the near future leaders of serparate teams.
Moral of the story. 2 stars, rest role players will win a ring. Any more nad you got yourself inside competition for stardom.
Beau