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Originally Posted by pgardn
Who did Jordan have for a center? Bill Cartwright, Luke Longley, Will Perdue... they were pitiful. Name a modern team that has won an NBA championship with Bigmen worse than these. Yes he had Pippen and Grant, but Im sorry that was not a super talented team. Jordan took advantage of Paxon and Kerr's abilities. He was able to use Rodman when he was already off the deep end. (No Chuck Daley to control Rodman). Those Chicago teams were Jordan with a dash of Pippen and they played TEAM ball.
Kobe will never be ever to develop the individual talents of mediocre players like Jordan did, unless he starts to understand what a leader really is. He has not a clue at this point. And there are many ways to lead. Duncan leads by letting Popovich chew him out in front of his teammates so the team as a whole buys into what they must do to win because the Spurs are just not that talented. There are many ways to make your team better as the best player.
When the Lakers get a real point guard (and Kobe lets the PG run things if he can contain himself; Jordan let BJ Armstrong, not close to a superstar) then we will know for sure. Until then, we will look at an extraordinarily talented player go nowhere. The real telling thing is Kobe and Shaq were both dissatisfied when things went wrong. How does that happen? It would not have happened with a guy like Jordan talking to Shaq.
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Centers are not important in the triangle offense except as rebounders and post defenders which all of the aforementioned centers were. Kwame Brown would not have played one minute for those teams. He does nothing well. Terrible player.
B.J. Armstrong was a much better point man than Smush. Why I am I even debating this? It is absurd. The Lakers have a barely functioning team and if you replaced Kobe with an average NBA player at his position they would win maybe 20 games.
By the way the Lakers would not be much better off with Shaq because he is finished as a dominant player.
Kobe is a self absorbed ego maniac. That is a given. But the problems that the Lakers are having are the cause of management getting trapped with bad contracts and weak players. They are the west coast version of the Knicks except they have a true star.