alanschu

They do have the right to work where they want. They'll just have to choose a different profession if it's that important to them. Period. Jordan really wanted to be drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers. He didn't have his agent say that playing in Chicago would be an impossibility when that didn't happen. If Kobe doesn't like the rules of the league, he's more than welcome to play basketball in some other league. Heck, even Edmonton has some amateur leagues. Read the CBA; you'll find you'll finally get a better understanding for them. That you want something to be different doesn't make it so And yes, it does hurt his legacy. It's why it's still something that gets brought up (like it was during Oden's draft year), and it's why Lebron will always have to live with the fact that people will question his decision to make "The Decision" such an event. It's just one of the things that will always be brought up when discussing those players.

It's too bad his back crapped out on him. Would've been interesting to have a healthy Bird and Magic still part of the league into the early and mid 90s.

I have no qualms saying that Lebron is easily the best player since Jordan. Kobe has some legacy issues as well, such as basically saying he'll only play for LA and whatnot (despite being an 18 year old at the draft). That never really sat well with me (nor does a lot of the "I want out from my team... but only to LA or NYC!" that a lot of players go through). And yeah, props to Mullin. The Crew cut was pretty identifiable too haha. I find the Bird comparisons very apt (although I think Bird had better court awareness... but few people could match Bird for that).

Eh, that poster has an MO and is pretty adversarial in general. I'd encourage not feeding him further

We've already established that neither of us watch the games, so what you or I have to say about it is mostly inconsequential!

Because yearly income means different things depending on where you are. Make $50k a year in Canada and you make a comfortable amount. Make $50k a year in Sudan, and you're absurdly rich.

The prices may not be higher, but the incomes are also not as high. So while 100 Euros may get you more in Eastern Europe, it's more difficult to make 100 Euros as well.

It's actually not that simple. If you adjust for currency exchange rates, the costs still won't line up.

Remember the good old days when you had to manually configure your sound cards for games like Doom? Ah, good times....

His (Mullin) is an interesting story too, as he actually battled with alcohol problems early in his career. He cleaned himself up, however, and the next 5 seasons he was one of the best forwards in the league. Unfortunately, injuries started to break him down later in his career as well. @Meshugger: There's a great 20th anniversary video out for the Dream Team. Look that one up if you haven't already.

It's also important to recognize that, in my experience, the negative user experience is typically the loudest.

Is there any requirement that The Division will require you to play with other people?

I was surprised at how high Price rated in both PER and WS as well, and I'll agree that he struggled with the eyeball test as well. Though for myself, I missed out on the run TMC days for Hardaway, so I was only typically exposed to Timbug's post achilles play (which, while still impressive, lacked the explosiveness I saw in highlights of the "killer crossover") I was a big fan of Chris Mullin though. Another Dream Team member that many incorrectly assume was on the team simply to make sure it had more white guys... XD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7mQ9jHSGAE

It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. People buy consoles because that's where the games are. Developers make for consoles because that's where the players are. If, overnight, suddenly all games were available for all platforms, I don't think we'd see consoles suddenly selling a whole lot less. I feel, for many gamers however, that the console is their preferred platform, even if they also own a gaming capable PC.

Hmmm, I don't know if I would say "absurd" as most of the top point getters in league history are still able to put up really high numbers at 34 (I don't consider 34 to really be all that old - that could be the 32 year old in me talking though). Karl Malone Bernard King (!!! haha) Michael Jordan Some players were super close too, such as Dominique Wilkins (26 ppg) and Olajuwon's scoring dropped IMO mostly because Barkley joined his team (went from 26.9 ppg to 23.2 ppg over a season seems a bit steep of a drop). That being said, scoring 27.3 ppg at any age is no small feat, but Kobe is a scorer that doesn't rely on pure athleticism anymore, and is a very smart offensive player. Still, he's chugging along at a pretty consistent rate. Most impressive was doing the same as the previous year, averaging 2.5 less shots per game. But yeah, he is in a pretty unique club of still scoring that high at his age. I may have missed some others, but then, not a whole lot of people have been consistently huge scorers like he has. Wasn't sure if I'd be able to find any videos of Mr. King! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN046jzbThE

No, but they would have sold a lot less. Why do you say that? As a PC gamer myself, I'd still expect the consoles to make up a larger part of the pie even if all games made are made for PC as well.

Ah Manute.... He was such a gangly guy. I swear 2/3s of his height was his legs! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSfBRAIT4eg

Yeah watching that Price footage reminded me a lot of Stephen Curry. If you buy into the Advanced stats, Price is right there with players like Stockton for PER, exceeds players like Isiah (by a pretty comfortable margin), and even flirts with some players like Kobe (although Kobe has stand out seasons far beyond this). Stockton crushes in Win Shares though. Though I wouldn't pick Tim Hardaway over Price. Or even Gary Payton, if we exclusively consider the seasons that Price and Payton were in the league. By the time Jason Kidd came around, however, Price was already on his way out of the league unfortunately. The problem with Price was injuries (never played full seasons) and lack of team success, however. Even things like Win Shares Price comes out on top over Isiah. Isiah just has that mystique that comes with the high profile performances he put up, whereas Price was always quiet and, of course, didn't have the team success (in large part because of Isiah's Pistons). Although I'm a bit of the mind that Isiah is a little bit overrated (although should still be rated highly). Mostly because I hear people talking about how Isiah should have been a shoo-in for the Dream Team over someone like Stockton. But I couldn't disagree more, Stockton was already regularly outperforming Isiah on the court by that time, and it was even reflected in his appearances in the All NBA team listings by that time as well. I think Stockton suffered somewhat by being so low key. He was very, very little flash. Just dogged determination and efficiency. I personally think Stockton is probably only behind The Big O and Magic as top PG of all time, and depending on the circumstances of the team, I think compelling arguments could be made for why he would be considered above them. Since he came up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myMvojT6zIc I love how efficient Stockton is. No real flash to his game. I don't even think he attempted to dribble between his legs in his career Just plain ol' crossovers with great first step and fantastic anticipation. Such a smart player! Only Nash came close to that type of package, and not with nearly the long term consistency. EDIT: Love the stutter step at 1:55!

I think library is overstated, personally. I don't buy new computer hardware to play my already existing library unless my old computer literally stops working.

Are you under the impression that the consoles wouldn't be successful had it not been for exclusive games? In other words, people would just play on their PC instead?

Haha, Dikembe was a good guy, but there were some people that seemed to think he was some superb all-star player year in and year out haha. Still, he was an excellent player as long as he wasn't the "goto guy" haha. (i.e. I think he'd fit in nicely in place of a Luc Longley or a Bill Cartwright on Chicago's teams, but was not on the same level as the elite centers of his time... and man would that be kinda scary actually as Mount Mutombo was scary on the glass and defensively). Although I think Mutombo would be a more highly regarded center today, as centers have kind of fallen from grace. And yes, his video game was balls out hilarious haha. You know you can't take yourself too seriously if you're a part of that, and I like it when guys don't take themselves too seriously SPeaking of a "tier below" type of players that were still very, very good: Mark Price! (The pass a 3:00 was fantastic!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sua9u318wGo A very similar game to Stockton IMO, just not quite on Stockton's ridiculously elite level in terms of vision and awareness. Was probably a slightly better shooter though. It was too bad he ended up mired with injuries (and didn't get paired up with an all world power forward... hahaha)

Given that I'm gaming on an AMD Phenom II X4 965 and have no real issues CPU wise (my graphics card, however, is getting older, and some more memory would be useful), I am not too worried about the consoles in terms of their CPU performance for gaming.

Since Mr. Robinson was mentioned http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqaIWpDRQvk Super athletic both in terms of strength and speed. And stupendously classy to boot! Exploded into the league as well, being named to the Dream Team after only being in the league for a few seasons (although to be fair, a player like Olajuwon wasn't eligible).

Kobe is a fantastic player, and he really helped cement his legacy by leading his team to the two extra titles in 09 and 10. To me, he's the player that I feel is most "victim" to trying to be like Mike in a variety of his mannerisms, and even how he plays the game in a lot of ways. He'll put up some fantastic stats because of his early career start too, but falls victim to a variety of detriments, such as when he stubbornly just stopped shooting to prove a point as he team got blown out in back to back games. Kobe still has the ability to be a better player when properly pushed, which Nash successfully did for a streak where he said Kobe is a better passer, and under utilizes his passing ability.

Eh, don't forget Elgin Baylor (who was replaced by Gail Goodrich when the Lakers finally did win), and *only* Jerry West undersells Jerry quite a bit IMO. I don't know if I'd say that Shaq is any more physically imposing than Wilt (though you could argue that no one shut down Wilt, either), and it's not like Russell had all of those players his entire career (Only one other player has double digit rings. Sam Jones has 10, but 4 of them were as a player coming off the bench), and I wouldn't have actually included a player like Don Nelson (Chamberlain certainly had no shortage of teammates that could contribute with Nelson's capability on his teams: Paul Arizin in particular was also a Hall of Famer. Although his SFW days were not particularly strong). Wilt has the unfortunate legacy of some utterly bizarre decisions. He took only one shot in the second half of the the 1968 ECF Game 7 against the Celtics (after being up 3-1 too), and scored a mere 14 points with 4 FGM. For a guy that averaged 22 FGA a game, either Boston did a magnificent job of shutting down one of the most dominant players in the game (which undermines his dominance, IMO), As for "Robinson has Russell's defensive abilities," the problem with that is always trying to compare against different eras. I think people have a tendency to overstate the influence of sport evolution (which, I feel, has a greater influence on the lower tier players than the superstars), and wouldn't be surprised if players like Bill and Wilt could still excel in the modern game (doubly so if they grew up in the era, and weren't just suddenly transplanted into it). On some level, I can concede that there's some superstar evolution, in that the superstars of a day often inspire the superstars of tomorrow. I admit, however, that I probably understate Robinson and Ewing somewhat, in part because of their lack of success (at least while being top dog, in Robinson's case). To Robinson's credit, however, he did show a very Russell like tendency in that he saw Duncan was magnificent, and basically let the Spurs become Duncan's team. A lot like Bill, David didn't seem to have any sort of ego to get in the way of team success, though it didn't hinder David's abilities. Another great one (that I didn't really get to see, sadly). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgPpTvX86n8 Larry's awareness is Greztky-like haha. I love his hustle too. He also once scored 47 points using only his left hand XD