Sammy3469
Footballguy
and there are 14 above him in PER http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics/_/position/pf Out of those 14, 4 are foreign, 2 or 3 backed out, and 2 of those guys were on the team. You're arguing over whether he's a better choice then Terrance Jones, Brandon Wright, Jordan Hill, and David Lee. The entire thing just seems silly.1. Any US player could have been MVP. Just a question of usage. Irving won it because he shot well and because they used Rose sparingly. That doesn't change the fact that there were two point guards who outplayed Irving by quite a bit last season and wanted to play for the team.Rightly or wrongly, Irving was the MVP of the tourney and please list the "dozens" of American big guys.Sorry that this wasn't clear- by "NBA leadership" I mostly meant the superstar players' renewed willingness to play and to convince their peers to join them. You talk about who deserves credit and how it's ridiculous to credit Colangelo and not K- which I'll give you. But isn't it more ridiculous to credit either/both of them and not credit the players who actually make the decision to forfeit their vacations and risk their health?To try and give credit to Colangelo and not Coach K when they have been working jointly for so long is pretty pathetic. It would be like if a Duke fan said all Colangelo did was hire Coach K and K did the rest and try to take all the credit.
Come on, do you really believe that Colangelo himself and not a combo of Colangelo and Coach K sold these players to spend their summers on a new Team USA vision? Chris Paul is already quoted as saying he was prepared to be done another coach was heading the team in terms of the 2016 Olympics. Seems every player talks great about him but hey, why not give credit to anyone but the coach.
And why does NBA leadership get credit over him, aren't they many of the same people crying they aren't reaping the money coming from these international tournaments? Wasn't David Stern someone who proposed there should be an age limit of 23 which players like Kobe Bryant said were stupid? You want to give them more credit than Coach K? I'd say this group is more likely 2004 happened because the pressure they put on is not to go out there and play when it doesn't benefit the NBA and not the kind that got the players to play in the Olympics.
at NBA Leadership getting credit, that's worse than the worst of the worst trade ideas that get thrown around in this thread.
It was a team effort to reclaim the world basketball throne, no question. Credit to the players first and foremost, Colangelo, Coach K (yes, you're right, I'm sure he played a role in "recruiting" the top guys back into the fold), and to some extent the GMs who agreed to let their players go, reluctantly I'm sure. That said, one person seems to be taking the lion's share of the credit while his staff catalogs every photo and tweet and making otherwise questionable at best decisions (Plumlee over literally dozens of guys, to some extent Irving over Lillard and Wall) that show a clear self-serving intent. Remember when he wore all the players' medals after they won the Gold in 2012? Most other coaches would absolutely refuse to take focus from their players like that; K soaked it up to the point where you have to crazy to think he didn't orchestrate it.
Yeah, granted, I'm the wrong person to come to that conclusion because I'm a UNC fan. But I'm not sure why Woj is the wrong person to come to that conclusion.
2. Well, I'd start with the 31 players here and the 42 here that had rebound rates better than Plumlee's last season (scoring wasn't an issue). From there you'd have to subtract the other guys who did make the team, the international guys, the guys who weren't willing to play, and the guys who are terrible interior defenders because of the potential Spain matchup. That probably leaves 15-20? So maybe not dozens, but certainly more than one dozen, and even more certainly a decision made only because he coached Plumlee at Duke. I assume even Duke fans would admit that.
And apparently Irving was the best available PG as he ended up being the starter in the Gold medal game in which he was lights out. If that's your argument, you probably need a new one.
