| Don't Believe The Hype: It Is Oden Or Durant Or Death Authored by Elrod Enchilada - May 18, 2007 - 12:37 am
For most of the past four months Celtics fans have basked in the thought of Greg Oden or Kevin Durant wearing the green and white and leading the Cs back to the promised land. Sure, even with the second-worst record in the league the Cs had a better than 60 percent chance to end up with pick 3-5, but it has just been too tempting, too enjoyable, to consider Oden or Durant on the Cs to deal with the gloomy reality that the odds work against us. The very thought of Durant or Oden teamed up with Big Al, Pierce, Rondo, West, Perk and Tony Allen is enough to get any self-respecting Cs fan to start sobbing like a school girl at a Beatles concert in 1965.
As May 22 draws nearer, the darker reality is becoming more clear. Already Danny Ainge has gone public with his claim that the lottery is no big deal and the team is just happy to get a top 5 pick. We will still have a shot at an all-star if we pick from 3-5, says Ainge.
And Ainge is right, sort of. Sure Brandan Wright or Al Horford or Yi Jianlian may become fine NBA players, even guys who make all-star teams. But this is mostly a pile of manure from Ainge. These guys will probably not be anywhere near as good as Oden or Durant.
And that's the rub. Oden and Durant each look to be the sort of player who will go first or second team all-NBA for the next 12-15 years. They could win multiple MVP awards. The difference between that sort of player and the sort of solid guy who makes an occasional all-star team is the difference between Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins or LeBron James and Kirk Hinrich or Tim Duncan and Keith Van Horn or Magic Johnson and Bill Cartwright.
In other words, the difference between getting Oden or Durant and getting anyone else is all the difference in the world.
The empirical evidence makes this clear. Last year nbadraft.net ran a long series by some dude named McChesney that demonstrated that the teams the win NBA titles are almost always teams that have hall-of-fame legend type superstars leading them. http://www.nbadraft.net/mcchesney001.asp; http://www.nbadraft.net/mcchesney002.asp. Championship teams are almost never teams that have a bunch of very good players who play well together but lack a first team all-NBA hall-of-fame superstar. Those teams almost always lose to the teams led by superstars. The NBA is not a democracy. Superstars rule there, more than any other sport.
Here is shorthand evidence for those who don't want to click to the nbadraft.net series:
Magic, Bird, Jordan, Olajuwon, Duncan, O'Neal. Those six guys rank among the top 15-20 players in NBA history. And guess what, they were the best player (or, in a few cases, tied with someone named Abdul-Jabbar or Bryant or Wade as the best player) on 23 of the past 27 NBA championship teams. Re-read that sentence several times and think about it. It is all the evidence you need.
(Best player on the other four? Moses Malone or Dr J; Isiah Thomas; and Ben Wallace or Chauncey Billups. No slouches there, either.)
The hard cold truth in the NBA is that except in very rare instances, maybe once per decade on average, NBA titles are the private preserve of teams that have dominant superstar players. It is that simple. If you get one of those guys you are a contender; it doesn't mean you win a title, but having one of these guys in pretty much the indispensable foundation to building a champion. If you don't have one of these superstars the best you can do is win 55 games and look pretty until some team led by a stud superstar comes along and ends your playoff run.
So that is what stake on May 22. As absurd as it is, this lottery will go a long way toward determining the future of the franchise. It is pretty much a game of Russian Roulette. And I am sweating bullets already.
Let's face it, Paul Pierce is an excellent player, an all-star, but he is not good enough to be the best player on a championship team. He has to be the second guy if you win a title. Can Big Al become a year-in, year-out first team all-NBA guy, the sort of guy who can lead a team to a title? Possibly, but unlikely. He looks to be the ideal no. 2 guy, too. Indeed, the Cs are building a very nice team to put around a superstar like Oden or Durant.
What we need is our next Russell, Cowens or Bird. And we find out our fate on May 22. The guys atop this draft are the sort of player who only come along a few times every decade. And we have a pretty good chance of getting one of them.
Red, can you pull some strings from up there for us? Maybe DJ can give you a hand. |
