[dalakhani]

Originally Posted by pgardn

I could win on this team.
I could score on this team.
The Olympic games are not the right situation to use the "put good players around him". What the hell was Iverson and Camby supposed to do for Denver?

You really call that a supporting cast that will contend? You talk about defense and you bring up Iverson who at this age is more of a liability on defense than anything else. And then you bring up Camby who is a face the basket center, devoid of post game that cant bang in the middle. That is the supporting cast he is supposed to win with? In the west?


My problem with him is he is bad, really bad, defensively. And he is very easily frustrated. He is super talented. He really showed his stripes in the playoffs against L.A. They totally frustrated him on offense, he has no answer but to bull rush to the basket, and then his defense which is already bad, gets worse.

And again, what was he to do? Im not saying he is as good as Kobe or Lebron (who is?) but at the same time he didnt have keving garnett or ray allen to take the pressure off of him. He was getting HAWKED by kobe and all of the help side and Denver didnt have the shooting to keep them honest around the rack. Of course he was frustrated.

Is he bad defensively? He certainly isnt good...so he joins that distinction with the other 90% of the NBA.
He obviously gets along well with the other players on this team though and works hard or he would not be on the team.

This current Olympic team does not even need an offense. They are putting so much pressure on D its leading to open court situations so often. We totally excel in the open court. We are athletically superior to all these teams at EVERY position. We run have run very few offensive sets, no need.

Now the really impressive thing that I was not counting on is we are getting on the boards big time offensively. The 3 point shot... or lack thereof, that we displayed early really is not hurting us at all when we play this type of D. If we had to run 5 on 5 offensive sets the entire game we could lose.
The defense is setting up everything and it is beautiful. We are not only playing superior man to man, we are helping surprisingly well.

My abbreviatedtake.

Carmello is a quality player.