Chris Paul is absolutely the best PG in the league. The "best-of" list includes Tony Parker, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, Deron WIlliams, healthy Derrick Rose There are some young guns coming up like Kyrie Irving, Jrue Holiday, Mike Conley, Ricky Rubio, Damian Lillard and John Wall.
Rondo is somewhere in the Top 10. Chris Paul is undeniably a superior player...
Problem is, point guards don't really win titles in this league. The last team to win a championship with a point guard as their best player would be the 80s Pistons and isiah Thomas. It's a big man and scorer's league.
So upgrading to Chris Paul would be nice, but it wouldn't be enough.
Yes, top five is definitely in the top ten. Tony Parker, Chauncey Billups, Jason Kidd, and even 2008 Rajon Rondo are all very, very good point guards who have won titles recently. You may say that point guards don't win titles on their own, but it sure is helpful to have a good one.
By the way, how do you not count Magic's Lakers as a team whose best player was their point guard?
One of these teams with an elite point guard is due to win a title in the near future. Here's hoping Danny can put the right pieces together over the course of the next few years so that team can end up being Rondo's Celtics.
I can't tell if you just ignored what I wrote or didn't understand it.
Billups wasn't the best player on his team despite the nonsense Finals MVP award. The Wallace brothers were that team... Rip Hamilton was the allstar scorer.
You are crediting Jason Kidd for Dirk Nowitski's championship? K?
You're crediting role-player Rondo for the title won by Kevin Garnett and his sidekick allstar hall-of-famers Pierce and Ray ALlen?
Comeonn...
Again... the last team to win a title with a point guard as the best player was the 1980s Pistons with Isiah Thomas. That happened AFTER 6'9 Magic Johnson won his.
Nothing I said was inaccurate.
Yes, it's nice to have a good point guard. SUre, I'd love to have Chris Paul. I'm just sayin, you'd need more. Rondo sure as heck isn't winning a title as the best player... Chris Paul is proving unlikely to do that as well... despite being vastly superior to Rondo.
I can't argue with anything LarBrd is saying here. He's 100% correct. Isiah was the last PG led team to win a title...23 years ago.
The problem here is not upgrading Rondo to Paul because that nets you so much less than if you find/sign/trade for or draft/grow a player better than Rajon Rondo to play with Rondo. Or you trade Rondo and other assets for a superduperstar that isn't a PG, if one becomes available.
That's what you do with Rondo now, especially since the low ball offers Danny will get because of the injury uncertainty means it makes the most sense to make Rondo show that he is Rondo and if next year isn't looking magical but it looks like Rondo is back, maybe you move him at the trade deadline and max out his value.
I think you guys are way to hung up on the whole "who the best player is" thing. Plenty of recent titleists have had more than one player that could lay claim to the title of The Best Player on the Team. On a good team, certainly the kind of team I want to see my Celtics continue to be, there can be multiple "best players." That's o.k. by me, as it means that you have a good team, and not just a really, really good player with a bunch of guys around to support him.
This whole other notion that good point guards don't win titles is silly to me, as well. Of course, good point guards win titles. Tony Parker, Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, Magic Johnson, Isaiah Thomas, Rajon Rondo, Gary Payton, Dennis Johnson, Mo Cheeks are the names of some of the better ones who have been crucial members of championships since I've been watching the game.
I say, so what, if you want to argue that those guys weren't the best guys on their respective teams. Does that mean that Dennis Rodman was useless for the Bulls or that Kevin McHale was useless for the Celtics? Was Clyde Drexler nothing but a scrub for the Houston Rockets? How much did Moses Malone suck for the Sixers championship team in the early eighties? What about the aging Kareem Abdul Jabbar on Magic Johnson's Lakers? Pau Gasol on the Lakers? Dwayne Wade on the Heat? Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili for the Spurs? None of the above mentioned guys was their team's "best player." Most, if not all of them are, however, hall of famers or future hall of famers. They were very important members of championship teams.
This whole line of thinking of; "let's get rid of our best player, because he's not good enough," basically means that following that logic, pretty much every team other than possibly the Miami Heat should be looking to get rid of their best players at all times to "upgrade" because he's not good enough to be the best player on a championship team. It's such an absurdly high bar when only one player currently in the league fits into that category.
Not to worry, though, the NEXT ONE is surely out there in high school or middle school somewhere. All we have to do is be really bad for a really long time, and we are bound to get our guy.