RE: Pick a player

["Odegaard, Greg M." <GMOdegaa@rmc.com>]

I think you are misunderstanding the basic premise of my argument; I am
stating clearly that Kobe is the star of the Fakers, one of The stars of
League, like it or not, and is going to potentially win more games this year
and after for the Fakers than Shaq might ever.  As Warwick nicely stated,
Shaq could eventually be one of the biggest busts this league has ever seen.
Sure he has all the skills God could ever give to a guy, and he certainly
has a decent level of desire, but he is not a winner.  Never has been, and
hopefully of course never will be.  He doesn't have the killer instinct and
he absolutely doesn't have the poise to put the final pieces together when
it is do or die time, and make his teammates better in the process.

Now having said all that, to answer your question here, if given the choice
for this team or any other, I would take Shaq 100% of the time over Kobe.
The reason is very simple, very good players like Kobe are in much more of
an abundance, and centers even of Shaq's ilk are very few and far between.
If we could have him and RP could handle the challenge, I would expect Shaq
to perform somewhat more like Bill Russell did; being a defensive force and
not playing over his or his teammates heads, leaving himself with some
semblance of a game at the end of the game.  His teams losses in the last 2
Sundays were directly due to his being burned out, trying to do to much
early in the game, therefore proving his lack of smarts for a complete game.
BTW where is Fox for this team, and could Travy play any worse for the boys
in Gold.  Good riddance, El Senor Banana Boy.

Thanks for the vine and four days to go.  Joe, Mr. Claudia/Blazerfan is
probably keeping to himself these days, since the Oregonian and now the
vaunted Sports Illustrated have picked up the new "chump" label for this
Blazer team.  They signed a guy by the name of Long who has a rap sheet that
would make even JR or Uncle Cliffy jealous.  The paper has written numerous
sports and editorial pieces regarding this slide back down the greasy trail,
and SI thought so much of the event that they handed their Apocalypse award
this week to the new version of the "JailBlazers".  Their superficial
attempt at cleaning up their act, blew out of town, like a bandwagon fan,
after a double OT loss to one of the worse teams in the league.  These
Blazers can't hold a lead against even the 2nd string Globetrotters team.
Joe I have my stopwatch ready to time Claudia/Blazerfan in responding in the
juvenile and petty method for which he has become accustomed. Fresh meat
tastes best in the morning.

Out,
Ode

-----Original Message-----
From: R. Bentz Kirby [mailto:bocelts@usit.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 14, 1999 7:10 PM
To: Boston Celtics
Subject: Pick a player


Greg:

If you had the current Celtic team and could pick either Kobe or Shaq,
who would you pick?  Now, I don't want either one, but I would take
Shaq, any day.  Would you really pick Kobe?  Now you can't make any
trades and you got to play the one you pick.  There may be some teams
that could use Kobe, maybe San Antonio or Houston, but most teams need
Shaq.
-- 
Bentz
bocelts@usit.net

http://www.scsn.net/users/sclaw