Burning questions: Dominance or depth?
ESPN.com
Wow, how fast things change. The showdown in the Western Conference finals continues tonight with Game 3 between the Blazers and Lakers, with the site shifting to the Rose Garden in Portland.
After watching the teams split very different blowouts in Los Angeles, we return to our Q&A series with ESPN's NBA experts. And today's question deals with how these teams were essentially built, with one having big stars and the other being deep.
Would you rather have a team like the Lakers, with two or three stars doing all the scoring, or a team like the Blazers, with interchangeable parts and incredible depth?
Ramsay |
NBA analyst Dr. Jack Ramsay
There's an old saying that you need three star players to win a championship, and that pretty much stands up. If you go back over the championship teams, each one has at least three stars. There's an occasional exception to that rule. Houston won its first year when only Hakeem Olajuwon was the star, and the others all played around him. But for the most part, you need three stars -- and the Lakers have that in Shaq, Kobe and Glen Rice. Even among their starters, Ron Harper and A.C. Green are very solid, experienced players. And L.A. also has a good bench of role players. While they don't score, the reserves are very good defenders. If you are drawing up a championship team, that's the formula to follow. The Blazers have done an amazing job just to keep everybody focused. Dunleavy has been able to get all his players to play within his player rotation system. But I think you can have too many good players on a team, and it can be disastrous. |
Carter |
NBA analyst Fred Carter
I like the Lakers' way of doing things. Their strategy is the same and very consistent. The ball is focused in a certain area, and everyone revolves around that. The Blazers have several great players, but they don't get enough touches offensively. For instance, sometimes Steve Smith or Rasheed Wallace or Scottie Pippen can go four or five minutes without a shot. You never get into a rhythm. The basketball becomes community property because they share it. |
Aldridge |
NBA reporter David Aldridge
That's a tough question. If my two stars are Shaq and Kobe, I would take those two. They are two of the five best players in the league and are very difficult to stop. They create tremendous matchup problems at both ends of the court. It's a lot easier to build around two superstars than it is to find six or seven really good players who can be interchangeable. |
Jackson |
NBA 2Night's Jason Jackson
I like some kind of hierarchy. I want a big star, followed by a two man, a three man and on down the line. That way, everyone in the building knows the roles. Even if I draw up the wrong play, they know better because it's clear who the No. 1 option is. It's too difficult to feed too many beasts at one time. Mike Dunleavy has done a
wonderful job in a tough situation. The Blazers have seven All-Stars, and he's trying to get them all equal time. The game is only 48 minutes long. A coach can't get everybody equal time. To his credit, Dunleavy has stayed with a seven- and eight-man rotation in the playoffs, which I thought he wouldn't be able to do. |
Bucher |
ESPN The Magazine's Ric Bucher
I like to have some form of both. That might be avoiding the question, but I think you need to have a clear-cut, one or two top players around which your team revolves. The Lakers' problem is their depth falls off dramatically after that. The Blazers' problem is that it's not clear who their top two players are, who the go-to players are in crunch situations. For now, it's Rasheed Wallace and Scottie Pippen, but they haven't done that all season. The Blazers have been trying to discover their go-to guys along
the way, and that means they probably aren't as well-rehearsed come playoff time as they otherwise could be.
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