NBA Playoffs 2011: 5 Biggest Questions Yet To Be Answered
With the Conference Finals going on now, its time to ask ourselves a few questions.
Can Rose pull a LeBron?
With this being the year of the young players, can the Dallas Mavericks still win?
If Dirk Nowitzki doesn't win a NBA Championship, does that diminish his legacy as a player?
Did LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade make the right decision?
Will these be the last playoffs we get to see for the next few years?
These questions will be discussed in the following slides.
Can Derrick Rose Pull a LeBron?
1 of 5
In 2007, LeBron James single handily took his team to the NBA finals. There, he got swept by the San Antonio Spurs. That being said, it was still an amazing feat which even the best players in basketball history have ever done.
Michael Jordon didn’t win until he got Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson coaching him. Kobe and Shaq didn’t win in L.A. until Phil Jackson showed up.
Shaq only succeeded if success is determined in a season by making to the finals, unless he had Penny Hardaway, Kobe Bryant or Dwayne Wade by his side. He didn’t win the championship unless he had a Hall of Fame coach on his sidelines.
For Kobe, after Shaq left, he didn’t return to the finals until Memphis gave him Pau Gasol. And no, going to the Western Conference semifinals three years after said trade does not make the trade legitimate, especially after the Lakers just went to three straight NBA Finals.
Needless to say, you can’t win in this league by yourself. You need at least two stars. Only the 2004 Pistons and the 1979 Sonics are the only teams to win without stars on their team.
LeBron won Game 5 against the Detroit Pistons in 2007 at The Palace of Auburn Hills by himself scoring 25 of the Cavaliers' last 29 points.
Yes, Derrick Rose has a much better team than LeBron did in the 2007 playoffs, but it still takes stars to win in this league.
With This Year Being the Year of Young Teams, Can the Mav's Still Win It All?
2 of 5
In round one of the 2011 playoffs, the No. 8 seed Memphis Grizzlies upset the Veteran San Antonio Spurs, a team that included a four time championship coach and a four time championship star player that also is the best power forward of all-time.
The Lakers and the Celtics, two preseason favorites to make it to the NBA finals, were knocked out in the second round. The Lakers got swept by the Mavericks, and the Celtics were beat by a younger and more athletic Miami Heat.
The Bulls are led by Derrick Rose, and he is only in his third season. The Thunder’s Kevin Durant has only been in the league only one year longer.
The Heat players have been around since 2003 but still relatively young. James came straight from high school. Bosh was at Georgia Tech for one year. And Dwyane Wade, the eldest of the three, stayed in school for three years.
The Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki drafted in 1998, are the oldest team left in the playoffs. Are they doomed for failure? They are playing a much younger Oklahoma City team led by Kevin Durant, who was the number two recruit coming out of high school the last time Dirk and the Mavericks were playing in the NBA finals.
If the trend of this year’s playoffs continues, the Mavericks should be worried. Experience, apparently, is irrelevant this year. How can the San Antonio Spurs lose to a team that earlier in the season had a fight on a plane over a card game?
Will Winning a Title Change Dirk's Place in History?
3 of 5
Currently, Dirk is on the level of Karl Malone and Charles Barkley. None of these great power forwards ever won a title.
But should that diminish our perception of them as a player?
It shouldn’t, but it does.
When we talk about the best quarterbacks of all-time, Dan Marino is always considered but never given the title of best ever quarterback because he never won a Super Bowl.
Charles Barkley and Karl Malone never won because they played against Michael Jordan. Yet they are thought of as less of a player than Tim Duncan and Dr. J because they have won a title and Barkley and Malone never did.
If you consider Hakeem Olajuwon not an international player because he played college ball at Huston, Dirk is considered the best international player ever. With this status, it still won’t make up for the fact that he never won an NBA championship.
Every year after he retires, Dirk will join what Charles Barkley referred to on the B.S. Report as the S*** List. Every year, the graphic will come up of the best players to never win a championship. Charles Barkley hates seeing it ever year, and so will Dirk.
Did LeBron, Bosh and Wade All Make the Right Decision?
4 of 5
Last summer was the best summer ever for the NBA. So many players becoming free agents, the NBA would have no choice but change the way it looked. Teams were trading for bad players expiring contracts and subsequently taking losses in the regular season, all so the team could have enough cap room to sign LeBron James.
But LeBron wasn’t the only free agent in the league that year. That’s what made it exciting. Not only was best or second best, depending on who you talked to, available but also several other great players in the league. Amar’e Stoudemire, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson and Dwyane Wade were all available to join any team they choose.
James, Bosh and Wade all chose to play together in Miami.
Experts from around the nation bashed the decision to play together. Said it was a bad choice because of chemistry issues and personal issues all the way to LeBron made it too easy for him to win a championship.
The critics that said LeBron’s best fit would be in Chicago playing with Derrick Rose and Carlos Boozer. The other side of saying it would be too easy, and Michael would never have teamed up with Magic Johnson in order to win a title quickly disappeared after the Heat started off the season getting killed by Boston.
But now the Heat are playing the team that was supposed to be a better fit for LeBron. Will they triumph and bring back the old critics of saying this is too easy, or will everyone just talk about how good of a team this Miami Heat team has become?
If the Heat loses to Chicago, LeBron should have gone there. If the Heat wins, then we will have to see if it was too easy for this heat team to win a championship.
Will There Be a Playoffs Next Year?
5 of 5
This is the most important question. This past NBA season has been the best NBA season in over a decade.
Will the NBA ruin its momentum? The NBA main competitor is the NFL. The NFL is currently in a lock out as well. This could be the only chance the NBA has to overtake the NFL in becoming the most popular sport in America. However, if the NFL plays games and the NBA doesn’t, then the NBA has lost a huge opportunity to grow its fanbase.
The NFL is closer, however, than the NBA is to solving their issues. The NFL is fighting over billions in dollars in revenue. The NBA is fighting over the how to start making revenue.
Every football expert or insider is sure that the NFL season will play games in September. No NBA expert or insider is saying that about the NBA.
I hope that this won’t be a repeat of the 1999 season and playoffs were the players came back out of shape and not playing at the highest level of basketball we are used to seeing. But I would gladly take that, over not having any playoff basketball at all.
