Lord of Turnovers
New Member
Elite point guards = no rings.
Look at 4 greatest PGs currently in the league - Nash, Kidd, CP3, Deron. 0 championships. Look at the teams who actually won anything in the last decade, all of them had either an OK (Billups, Parker, Rondo-08) or below average point guard (Fisher, Williams). And it goes way back - how many rings does Stockton have? Payton? Kevin Johnson? What great points were on the Bulls or Rockets rosters?
Great PGs simply soak up too much of cap space and do not produce enough: their teams are always well-run and consistently good, but never great. What about the favorite Jazz thing, pairing a great PG with a great PF? We tried it with Stockton and Malone, Deron and Boozer, the Mavs - with Nash and Dirk, the Suns - with Nash and Amare. Yeah, several MVPs came out of it, but again - no rings.
Now, what player brings rings? A great SG does, all three best ones have it - Kobe, Wade, MJ. A great center does too - Duncan, Shaq, Hakim.. Howard was pretty close, Yao was just derailed by injuries. The collection of inexpensive, but solid veteran players works too (although very rarely) - see the Detroit team. I deliberately left out the way to the championship via getting several superstars on the same team by trades - Utah is not L.A. or Boston.
The bottom line - if we keep trying building around Deron, we are doomed to being good, but not great. We need to trade him for a superstar SG or center - or for the first draft pick to draft such a player. Or the Jazz should try to assemble something like the Detroit team of 5 years ago.
Look at 4 greatest PGs currently in the league - Nash, Kidd, CP3, Deron. 0 championships. Look at the teams who actually won anything in the last decade, all of them had either an OK (Billups, Parker, Rondo-08) or below average point guard (Fisher, Williams). And it goes way back - how many rings does Stockton have? Payton? Kevin Johnson? What great points were on the Bulls or Rockets rosters?
Great PGs simply soak up too much of cap space and do not produce enough: their teams are always well-run and consistently good, but never great. What about the favorite Jazz thing, pairing a great PG with a great PF? We tried it with Stockton and Malone, Deron and Boozer, the Mavs - with Nash and Dirk, the Suns - with Nash and Amare. Yeah, several MVPs came out of it, but again - no rings.
Now, what player brings rings? A great SG does, all three best ones have it - Kobe, Wade, MJ. A great center does too - Duncan, Shaq, Hakim.. Howard was pretty close, Yao was just derailed by injuries. The collection of inexpensive, but solid veteran players works too (although very rarely) - see the Detroit team. I deliberately left out the way to the championship via getting several superstars on the same team by trades - Utah is not L.A. or Boston.
The bottom line - if we keep trying building around Deron, we are doomed to being good, but not great. We need to trade him for a superstar SG or center - or for the first draft pick to draft such a player. Or the Jazz should try to assemble something like the Detroit team of 5 years ago.