Is Your Best Player Good Enough To Win A Title? (And Other Basketball Articles)

By Aidan McLennan

This collection of articles is all about the stars of the NBA and the most important questions about them:

• Are they good enough to win a championship as the best player?
• And if not, can they fit next to the best player?
• And how do you compare stars from previous generations to the ones of this generation?

Past, present, and future collide as I attempt to lay down ground rules on scouting talent and on how to go about 'talk show' topics.

Chapters include:

• Basketball – An Individual Sport Inside of a Team Sport
• Is Your Best Player Good Enough to Win a Title? (And If Not, Can They Fit Next to Someone Better?)
• Scarcity Increases Perceived Value: The Stars of Yesterday vs The Stars of Today
• Why nostalgia makes people think the old NBA was better (and how nostalgia impacts the way we remember the past)
• Why the best of all time is a relative discussion (and how to compare generations)
• Why every player today is better than every player 20 years ago (and why that's a misleading title but a true fact)
• Today's Stars: Good Enough or Not? A List
• And more!

Happy reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 5 AM Publishing
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781738094431

Book preview

FREE GIFT

CLAIM YOUR COPY

Or visit the following link: https://5ampublishing.com/free-gift/

4 Authors, 4 Books, All Free!

Looking for new reads? Don’t want to spend money? We’ve got you covered.

Get acquainted with each of our authors in bite-sized, delicious short works.

I hope you enjoy the story.

image1.png

Prologue

This collection of articles is all about the stars of the NBA and the most important questions about them:

•  Are they good enough to win a championship as the best player?

•  And if not, can they fit next to the best player?

•  And how do you compare stars from previous generations to the ones of this generation?

Past, present, and future collide as I attempt to lay down ground rules on scouting talent and on how to go about ‘talk show’ topics.

I hope you enjoy.

image1.pngLine

Basketball – An Individual Sport Inside of a Team Sport

––––––––

One of the most important questions every team must ask themselves is this – is my best player good enough?

Because while basketball is a team sport, at its heart it is an individual sport wrapped up in a team sport.

There’s no other team sport where having one singular dominant player matters so much. LeBron was a finals ticket all on his own for a decade. Aberrational excellence aside, there’s no comparison for other sports.

You could argue Jordan in his prime and Magic and Bird in theirs - as well as other all time greats - were all players who all but guaranteed their team a title shot every year.

Messi could never have that impact in soccer/football, no matter if he is the greatest player of all time or not.

Tom Brady can only do so much with a subpar supporting cast and without perhaps the greatest American football coach to ever live. He won a title in Tampa Bay, yes. And then the next two years? Ehhh...

And that’s the quarterback, the ‘most important position in sports’. Think of Aaron Donald, Tyreek Hill, and other dominant skill or positional players. They can’t have nearly the same impact.

Crosby & Gretzky were great, but they can only be on the ice so long, often between one third and one half of the total game. Patrick Roy was amazing, but he can’t skate, score, and defend the net.

Baseball? Forget about it.

The greatest in every sport elevate their teammates. But teammates and supporting staff are still integral to the mission, as are less tangible and controllable elements like luck and strength of competition.

Was LeBron good enough to beat all-time, complete teams by himself? No. But he was good enough to drag Timofey Mozgov and post-Knicks JR Smith and Matthew Dellavedova and Tristan Thompson to the biggest of stages and elevate them to a place where they could focus on a minimized role and contribute. 

That’s not a knock on other sport’s stars. They’re just not set up to matter like that, based on the structure of their sport. There’s no offense/defense split in basketball. There’s no separate teams on the same team. It’s all one.

LeBron - and other players - have played almost all or all of the entirety of the game before. The ball is in their hands the entire time. Luka Doncic can basically do everything all game. Sometimes they lose, sometimes they win. But if he has an off game, they definitely lose.

In baseball, you are one of nine hitters and one of nine defenders. Statistically, you are responsible for 11% of your team’s total output, even less when you consider the outsized role pitchers play on defense.

In American football, you are one of eleven players. In 2022 the highest average time of possession in the NFL was 33:05 (by the Commanders, who had a, er, less than great offense). That means that even the best and most durable player is on the field about 50% of the time, responsible for 4.5% of their team’s total output. The other 50%? 

Well, there’s three teams in football. Defense, offense, and special teams. Typically, you’d have little to no impact on how well the other two play, and even less impact on how they play (i.e. their strategy). And, unless you’re the quarterback, you’re a cog in a machine of ten other equally important parts.

Soccer? There’s eleven players, the average time spent in the attacking zone is 43% of play time. Now, here’s where it’s important to note that the ball may only be in play for 50-60 minutes per game. All of