what or who really made the difference ?

[paintitgreen]

Okay, inside scoring - you are probably right. I could say more on this, but that's all you claimed and I'd have to agree with you. Sorry.

But I completely disagree on the rebounding issue, as I said. Al competed with undersized or non-rebounding forwards (Ryan Gomes, Craig Smith, Antoine Walker, Corey Brewer) and small guards who are poor rebounders (McCants, Telfair, Foye, Jaric) for boards. Obviously his rebounding numbers will look higher than KG's, who competed with a true center (Perk or PJ or Pollard), one of the better rebounding small forwards in the league (Pierce), and guards who are quality rebounders (Rondo and Ray) for boards. Two years ago in Minnesota, when he was competing with nobody, KG averaged almost 13 boards a game, more than Al did this past season. KG is one of the best rebounders of the past decade. AL is a good rebounder, but nowhere near KG's class yet.

And Pierce was our number one option on offense, but KG was the guy people looked to take out of the game.

I like your general analysis, Tim, but there's no way Al Jefferson is a better rebounder than Kevin Garnett.

As for the comments about people saying we would have won with Al instead of KG, I don't mean to point it at you, maybe you never actually said that, but a couple of people gave posts making that exact claim. If those are not your feelings, I apologize for lumping you in with that.

[Big Ticket]

Bball Tim, your love of Al is admirable, but you're overstating his present ability. He is NOT a better rebounder or scorer than KG, at least not yet. It is absolutely ridiculous that people continue not to recognize that big stats only matter on a good team. When your team is crap, you can get a lot more shots/looks/etc., whether the other team is focused on you or not and your stats get inflated. But even so, Hollinger's PER stat, a measure which looks at offense and rebounds (supposedly where Al is superior), but not defense (where KG is the best in the league and Al is way way way below average), lists Kevin Garnett higher than Al. So how is Al is better at offense and rebounding?

You act like people were throwing the kitchen sink at Al to stop him but let KG do whatever he wanted. For the entire regular season, KG was the number one guy on the Celtics opposing defenses tried to stop. And while the same is true for Al, teams actually tried against the Celtics - you see Minnesota on your schedule, and you think "easy win, we don't even have to try." Al's shooting percentage wouldn't have been much higher, and if he took as many shots as he did in Minny he would've interfered with our team philosophy.

I like Al a lot, I will not badmouth him and I agree that there are All Star appearances in his future. He is an outstanding scorer and rebounder. Me saying that KG is better than Al at scoring and rebounding is not an insult to Al - KG is one of the best players in NBA history. He is 25th in NBA history in rebounds, and 31st in points. He's incredible. Al is just not there yet, but it's no fault to Al that he's not yet an all-time great.

I understand the argument that we'd have been better off keeping Al, since our chance to win multiple titles down the road with Al, Rondo and a few high draft picks may be higher than our chance to win multiple titles now with a core in its 30s. I don't agree, but I can see that argument. But to say that we could have won the title this year with Al Jefferson instead of Kevin Garnett is the single most asinine thing I can remember seeing on this website. I'm not trying to be insulting, I have a lot of respect for all the posters (especially Bball Tim) who have expressed this notion but I'm shocked this even was written.

  I didn't say the team would be better with Al than KG, I didn't say that we'd be better off (or worse off) long term with Al than KG, and I didn't even say that he was a better scorer than KG. What I said was that Al is a better rebounder than KG and a better inside scorer than KG. Both of these statements are true.

  You're right that you can't compare Al on Minny to KG on Boston because the disparity of the 2 teams is too great. So a more apples to apples comparison would be the 2006-2007 season when they were both on crappy teams. KG had a rebounding rate of 34.6 and Al had a rebounding rate of 34.9. Obviously the difference was wider this year so I'll modify my statement to "slightly better".

  As far as inside scoring goes, for the 06-07 season KG made 56% of his close shots and 91% of his dunk attempts. Al made 58% of his inside shots and 97% of his dunks. Al took 59% of his shots from the inside while KG took 23% of his shots from the inside.

  I'd also say that Paul Pierce was our number 1 option on offense this season. And PER takes more into account than scoring and rebounding.

I could be wrong.... okay, not really... but I seem to remember KG leading the league in rebounding 4 straight years while playing with the same type of rebounding/defensive riff-raff that is at Al's side now.  And this wasn't ages ago, this was 4 straight, ending last year.  The only reason Al was a "better" rebounder this year was because he had no rebounders around him (nobody as good as Perk, Powe, Baby, Brown, or even Pierce), and because KG was noticeably conserving himself on the boards all season.  I have no doubt that he could've snared 12 a game this year if that was his goal, but he wouldn't have had his legs by the finals, and I think he knew that and adjusted accordingly.