You keep referring to scoring in the paint as if somebody is listening to you. I've been continually belittling you on the irrelevance of this point. So have various others. And yet you walk right back into it. When was your lobotomy? I'm really sorry to hear that things went so horribly wrong.
It's just another item on the list. Love can't score in the paint, has no midrange game, can't create his own shot, can't play man defense at all and doesn't rotate very well to help either. He's also not a great athlete. Most of those things (except potentially midrange game, though I don't see him improving more than about 5% or so) are never going to change. So as much as you want to look at PPG and RPG and say his "scoring and rebounding" makes him the next Dwight Howard, he's not going to transform the Wolves into a contender. That's why they're not paying him.
Shocking that he's averaging more points and rebounds than your hero Griffin by sucking so bad. Do you want to know why Griffin will get a max deal? Jersey sales. That doesn't change the fact that Love is outperforming him this year.
KB, Love just doesn't rebound like a 4 should. He can't create his own rebound the same way Griffin can. That's just plainly obvious, and you should know that.
To be fair, Griffin isn't a good defender either, can't hit a FT to save his life to the point where he may be coming off the court at the end of games just so he doesn't get fouled, has no mid-range game, he is very limited in the post as far as his moves are concerned, he is just a better athlete than 99% of the guys trying to guard him. Again, if Griffin can develop all these things, then so can Love to an extent, he will obvioulsy never be that type of athlete but he can develop a 15 foot shot and a few post moves.
I doubt either would generate significantly more wins than the other, and neither is winning anything without a mega-star in the lineup with them. My guess, though, is that most NBA GMs would rather have Griffin on the merchandise revenue and asses-in-the-seats factors alone. People want to see a brotha sky. And I'd guess that most 7 to 11 year old kids are more likely to buy a Griffin jersey than a Love jersey.
From Simmons (via: Who should have really made the NBA All-Star team? - Grantland) WEST STARTERS: Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, Marc Gasol The first three are no-brainers, even if Kobe has been as selfish as ever and you can actually hear him counting his career points in his head. Anyone who voted for Griffin over Love needs to start watching League Pass instead of SportsCenter highlights; Love has been the best power forward in either conference, and by the way, haven't we all wanted to step on Luis Scola's face at least once?
For reasons that aren't terribly relevant to this discussion, I've been watching the Bucks on almost a nightly basis for a few weeks. Either I'm really missing something or Brandon Jennings is a candidate.
I think that's an excellent candidate. Occasionally, he looks like a star, and most of the time, he doesn't.
Considering that his jersey is getting outsold by John Wall's and Rajon Rondo's, that's almost certainly not it. Griffin will get that deal because on potential, he can be the PF version of Dwight Howard. Dunking may be what gets him on SportsCenter, but it's not Howard's ability to dunk on a 12-foot goal or put a sticker on top of the backboard that makes him a great/rich/winning player; it's the fact that he possesses that kind of athleticism and then uses it to dominate on both ends of the court. Griffin is still a work in progress, but GMs typically don't pass on a chance to get players like that locked up for the long term.
Griffin's present contract is 4 yrs for 42mill. Loves is 4 years for 60 mill. Unless you can point out a flaw in these numbers, what argument are you advancing? Are you going with the always airtight circular argument of "Blake is better because he will be paid more in the future" when you really don't know if that will be the case, right? So what point are you trying to make about salaries that actually relates back to the discussion of which player is better? Because your logic has been exceedingly difficult to follow at times.
Relative to other superstars, he often has trouble. It's a common criticism of Durant. Durant’s limits are his own « HoopSpeak.com This is more about how he moves without the ball, but it's a good film study: The Real Reasons Why Kevin Durant Didn’t Get The Ball Late | NBA Playbook
Griffin's contract is his rookie contract plus a couple team options the Clippers have picked up. It's not hard to read between the lines when Minnesota is politely declining to pay Love like a franchise player while the Clippers immediately said they were committed to making Griffin a Clipper for life. It doesn't necessarily mean Griffin is better right now, but he's more likely than Love to lead a team to playoff victories because Love will always be a liability on defense.
I disagree with Mr. Strauss. I'm watching OKC right now, and I've seen the guy create his own shot about 8 different ways.
Not really. A lot of his points were off catch-and-shoots or just blowing by an off-balance big man. When OKC wanted to get Durant some isolation plays at the end of regulation, they ended with Harrington first forcing him out near halfcourt where he couldn't even get the ball, followed by a weak drive leading to a spinning contested hook shot.
Do I have to pull clips? Survey the members of the 8th maxim? Jesus [breast]-[uck fay]ing Christ. The fadeaway jumper at the top of the key: shot created. The contested pullback jumper while moving left: shot created. Multiple drives to the hoops -- around defenders -- and then finishing in traffic: shots created.
Some of the drives (such as the one past Birdman at the end of regulation) were created by screens, but others weren't and the fadeaway was really nice. Still, I didn't really come away from the game feeling that the criticisms I often hear regarding Durant are unfounded, especially considering that it was probably the best game he's played in his life. There were more than a few instances where he would stand outside the arc, catch it pretty well-guarded because he wasn't moving around a whole lot, and simply drain a shot that most people wouldn't even take.
