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>but the idea that there's not even a debate to be had
>whatsoever is something i can't agree with. it's actually
>absurd to me, quite frankly.
>
>what isn't debatable is that anthony davis is _statistically_
>the best player in the league by a large margin. when lebron
>initially became the 'statistical' best, we just called him
>the best, period, no qualifiers. and that was before he even
>had pelts. pelts that guys like kobe, to name one, already had
>at the time.
>
pelts ain't chips, it just means actually having completed a season or two being statistically among or above the very best with some relative team success mixed in.
Brow has yet to play more than 65 games in a season, his team has yet to sniff the playoffs while not going to again this year and he's averaging basically less points/boards than KLove or Blake has at different points in their career while obviously being more of a force on the defensive end.
It's really not enough to make it remotely debatable for me so far.
And I say that as someone who picked Davis on our old podcast last preseason to be the guy that does eventually overtake Bron for that crown.
If Kobe was ever the best player in the league in......I don't know, maybe '06 if ever, Bron wasn't considered the best player in the league by anybody until at least '07 (when I personally felt he took it) or in many people's opinion not until at least '09 when he had been to a Finals and won an MVP already.
>the playoff thing's a fair point, but bron isn't dragging that
>mo williams / eric snow / donyell marshall / big z bunch to
>the postseason in the 2012-2014 western conf either, and no
>one's convincing me otherwise. esp not w/ 4 of their top 6
>missing significant time like what happened in NO last
>season.
>
I'm talking about this season teetering around .500 so far......with a team that has more talent than Lebron ever had, even if I tried to tell those talking up the Pelican backers on here last year that they were poorly assembled.
And Bron wasn't just eeking into the playoffs by '08/09 when most people finally were calling him best in the game, he was leading a team of nobodies to 66 wins, which is a total that makes conference irrelevant.
>on a sidenote, here's an interesting thought exercise: at what
>point do we just concede that a guy needs better mates? i
>mean, if a player -- forget about anthony davis for a minute,
>let's just say imaginary player x -- averaged say 50 ppg and
>25 rpg (just to throw some intentionally ludicrous numbers out
>there) and his team still missed the playoffs, would we say
>hey, there's 14 other guys on the team, maybe they need to
>step it up, or would we _still_ demand that player x do even
>more, even tho he's already doing more than anyone else in the
>entire league? and is that fair?
To win something of significance Anthony Davis needs better mates now, Iverson needed better mates for basically his entire prime, Lebron needed better mates his full first tenure in Cleveland, Kobe needs better mates but also to be his younger/better self and a better teammate.
I'm not a guy who takes hard-lined stances on such things.......but best believe many of these 'First Take' types would still try to do so.
My one caveat which I usually do say in regards to individual/team-fused accomplishment in the NBA is that a true superstar can carry any steaming pile of garbage he's saddled with to the playoffs by his third full season in the league as a general rule.
Basketball is a sport where one guy if he's truly Hall of Fame/franchise/superstar levels of talent should be able to impact the bottom line by at least that much.
I think Brow does that this year to keep up with the big dawgs in that regard but it's gonna be a lot closer than I thought it's gonna be (particularly since so far OKC ain't in but they will be).
Kyrie missed that mark for me last season but I might be willing to give him a historical mulligan for it, we shall see.
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