When asked why he took so many 3s, Walker told a reporter “because there are no 4s”

Talent attrition. Completely serious. Those years between Jordan’s second retirement and the 2003 draft is kind of a lost period in star power.

Ok now this one actually fits the OPs question.

I knew Antoine Walker would make this conversation, even though he was a star in Boston. Him and Paul Pierce were a dangerous duo in the early 2000s.

There’s no 4pt shot

In my book, he was a beast in Beantown

As an old person, it’s very funny to me that anyone would view Toine as anything but selfish, but you’re probably right

He was an all-time chucker. Just never saw a peek at the rim he didn’t think he could score on.

Went bankrupt too

Damn, this is a good answer. This is the answer.

Whiteside is the perfect encapsulation of the broad range of value of a block, from the classic Russell ‘blocking the shot and directing it gently to a teammate for a fastbreak’, to the Whiteside ‘hunting for opportunities to viciously spike the ball as far into the stands as possible, giving possession back to the opponent’.

Meh, idk. He was a selfish player, but he was legitimately impactful defensively during his best Heat years and he definitely felt pressure to score as a max player on those very mediocre teams. He prob belongs here for everything else, but there were ²⁄₃ years there where he was that guy.

Oh shit that’s a name I forgot about

Reminds me of Andray Blatche’s near tripple double: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lDzRvZcFn48

Ricky Davis thought that LeBron James was supposed to be a complementary piece to him.

I saw a “documentary” of him, the guy was somewhat the victim of insanely inconsistent coaching. He’d get a coach that’d tell him he’s a superstar and then a coach that’d tell him he’s a role player, back and forth back and forth so the dude really didn’t know what his role was.

Infamous triple double*

forgotten

Davis

He was fine, had one moment, which we all have always asked what would happen, props to Ricky Davis.

Iowa legend!!!

Was it the “brain type specialist” Boston used back in the day who declared Ricky Davis had the same “brain type” as Michael Jordan? I seem to recall Kevin McHale knowing this “fact” about Davis.

Bob McAdoo maybe, but Davis is the first guy I thought of.

Because of those empty stats I was optimistic when he joined the Mavs and then when he’s actually on your team you go “Ahh, now I see why he was available.”

I remember when he went to the Lakers and the fans there got all excited because they thought surely LeBron would make a difference on Christian. And then they got the full Christian Wood experience.

Man i still remember when my parents would take me to the Starbury stores to pick up shoes since we couldn’t afford the latest Jordan models. Guys like him helped out so many families back then.

Yeah but he also (reasonably) said “I don’t wanna play in the coldest city in the league in my prime” so he’s still a ‘bad guy’ in our eyes.

think this is mostly talking about basketball selfishness (their playstyle)

why was he eating vaseline though?

People are complicated. The shoe thing is great. He had a very “look at me” playstyle. He donated to causes heavily. Stephon Xavier Marbury also named his kids Xaviera, Stephon II, and Stephanie, which also seems like a “me” kinda move

Haven’t read Simmons book. Maybe selfish was meant in a strictly basketball sense.

Olajuwon also had a inexpensive shoe , hoping to combat some of the fighting and stealing around the Jordan shoes.

I may still have those shiny blue and yellow joints in storage somewhere lol

Doesn’t change the fact that he was a selfish ball player.

I had no idea about the reason, but I remember buying some red, white and blue Starbury shoes many years ago for basketball and I LOVED them. I noticed they were really cheap, but had no idea why.

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You look back at that one season where he only had like 9 3PA and wonder “what if?”.

Josh Smith is responsible for one of my top 3 Rockets moments. I will forever love him.

Profoundly unwise, at any rate. Man that guy had, and really has, his head on wrong.

My exact thought, and I loved watching Gil

Nobody forgot that. If anything his podcast is a constant reminder of what kind of player he was.

not for us.

He has it all

Crazy that the Warriors offered the bucks their choice of Monte or Steph for Bogut..

Take that back, lil bro

My fave Warrior til he said those ridiculous takes.

You can tell someone bandwagoned after the Warriors were already a dynasty because they misspell the name for the team’s central star immediately before Steph Curry.

Iso zo was a staple of the fizdale era. What a fucking clown show we were

Eddie Robinson was scripted in NBA2k2 to become an all star level player and nothing remotely close to that ever happened.

poor advanced stats relative to his counting stats

What poor advanced stats did he have? I have seen tons of knowledgeable people say this about him, but I’ve never seen any on/off or RAPM data (which would have to be done manually watching old film).

He was arguably the most efficient volume scorer ever, and his advanced box score metrics (o-BPM, PER, Win Shares) are excellent.

I don’t doubt he was selfish, I just haven’t seen any data showing it.

Pistons traded him and through addition by subtraction won back to back titles without him

He was washed when the Pistons traded him. He was already past his peak when they acquired him. But the Pistons still took the Showtime Lakers to 7 games in the finals with Dantley averaging 35+ MPG. And their offense didn’t get better after trading him.

They beat the Lakers the next year, but that was with Magic injured and Kareem another year older at 41.

I think people famously said that when he gets the ball his teammates start running back to their basket because he was definitely going to shoot it

They should have had one with dantley but got robbed

Pistons Dantley was way past his prime. He just had issues fitting in because his playstyle was that of an on ball player, but he had no idea how to play team basketball. It’s no different than Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins, Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady, and countless other score first players who needed the ball in their hands but couldn’t win as the best player nor could fit in or want to fit in as a role player. He’s just in the same mold as all of them but he just gets remembered more because of the Pistons when he was past his prime.

His best years were with the Jazz when he led some terrible Jazz teams to the WCSF, and had pretty much the same lack of success with what guys like Dominique, Carmelo, and TMac had in the playoffs when they were the best players on their teams. Aside from Carmelo, they just aren’t as disliked as much as Dantley.

Dantley should probably be #1 on this list.

He was the scoring champ twice, but he wasn’t a winning basketball player. He played no defense and even his offensive stats were super misleading. His “high efficiency” was a result of holding the ball for long stretches and try to get close shots, and when he couldn’t, he’d pass the ball off at the last second so one of his teammates would have to take a low % shot.

He mostly played on losing teams and you’re spot on about the Pistons winning right after they got rid of him. He was holding them back.

Today, people look at his stats and wonder, “why didn’t he get more attention?” Because everyone who knew ball back then knew he put up garbage stats and hurt his teams. Even his advanced stats get inflated, because he would deliberately get rid of the ball once he knew scoring was low probability - which means his teammates take the bulk of the damage on the advanced stats for low efficiency.

Dantley was just like any top tier star in the 80s early 90s, an era where it was all iso by your star and 4 people stand around due to zone defense being illegal

Your comment is mostly bullshit , he was also not a net negative and advanced stats liked him, he was just an awful defender but his offensive advanced stats were truly elite

He just did not have a great team and by the time he joined the Pistons he was clearly declining

I agree and the dude that’s crying in the comments already got blocked by me the first time this topic came around. Dantley is a shitty human and a bad player for a winning squad.

A ton of inflated stats now and anyone can put up 20 a game while being a complete non factor

Leading scorers on a team actively trying to lose impresses nobody and hasn’t for a while. Plenty of guys in the 2020s like that. Cam Thomas is like the patron saint of that for this era.

Probably Tony Parker because he fucked Brent Barry’s wife.

That’s where the selfish part comes in.

Stephen Jackson watched basketball: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/4wxlds/exspur_stephen_jackson_calls_tony_parker_selfish/

Tony Parker’s teammates thought he was selfish

Lol and I’m also sure you are a wise one who claims Westbrook couldn’t possibly be a ball hog because he had all those triple doubles.

A Robert Swift reference!!! I went to high school with him. Guarded him once. I feel a bit bad for the guy, the dad was an asshole that put too much pressure on him to bring the family money. They were dirt poor.

Unfortunately I can never dislike Ceballos cause he went to school in my hometown and some of my family knew him and said he was an awesome guy.

I was going to say Cam Thomas. Jordan Poole is another one. They’re the same player. Soon to be sitting home or playing overseas in their prime years.

Man, Ricky!! What a throwback. Was Jamal Crawford type of player just not as good.

Ceballos straight up ghosted the lakers when his minutes dipped

Is that when he went to Lake havenoexcuse?

he’s on the Mount Rushmore of chuckers

All volume scorers are. If Kobe never won a chip people would say the same thing about him.

Bad Porn is the greatest nickname of all time.

Had to scroll too far for Corey Maggettee, truly forgotten. Gave you the most empty and winless 20ppg.

this was also the first name that came to my mind

I don’t really think it’s forgotten with Melo unless I’m showing my age since I saw his whole career. But maybe it is getting forgotten because watching him as an analyst he says all the right shit and clearly knows team ball. It’s like bro… If you applied any of that to your own actual game you would be top 10 all time instead of empty calories. Maybe he learned with age idk.

He’s like the answer everyone uses these days so I don’t think he’ll ever be forgotten. It’s too bad people think this since we knew he could be a role player if he accepted it like at the Olympics. He just never got that into his mindset for the league.

this is such a dumb claim when Carmelo came in and instantly turned the 17-win Nuggets into perennial playoff team for the next 8 years

Knicks had the #3 offense in the league with Melo playing how he wanted to and it got fucked up because Phil Jackson came in and wanted to run Triangle Offense in the 2010’s lol

Not forgotten but absolutely correct take.

Yeah that’s basically the story for a lot of “big fish, small pond” type players who are essentially the only reliable offensive threat on otherwise mediocre teams. Obviously there are selfish players on good teams, but “empty stats” usually applies to teams that didn’t win many games so it’s a bit loaded

Exactly. There’s this stat I saw recently on Twitter, some of that weird advanced mumbo jumbo, but the data came to a conclusion that I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with. The idea is, a star player averaging a lot of turnovers can sometimes be a good thing. If the number of turnovers that a star produced on high usage is lower than the number of turnovers his team would make without him on the field, his turnovers are actually a “good thing.” Without him, his team would create more turnovers.

And /r/nba takes make a lot more sense if you’ve been around long enough to remember when Bill Simmons’ word was gospel here.

The prime candidate of Simmons negative effect is what he did to Patrick Ewing’s legacy.

Yeah T-Mac was many things but selfish?? Empty stats? He was an unselfish player on the court who was forced to be a 1st option because Grant Hill could never stay healthy and Duncan never arrived to Orlando.

Steve Smith is out there having fun and doesn’t take things too seriously. I think he understands he’s an entertainer first.

I think your general perspective here is correct and the comparison is actually fair.

Because, he does dabble in this kind of demeaning narration of great players. And it does appeal to some listeners.

BUT, not in a worse way than Stephen A or Skip.

I get that it’s kind of worse if he can infect more educated fans, but at the same time, it’s the casual in those fans who gravitate to that form of discourse.

At least Bill has a bit more depth and seriousness for the rest of us.

And it’s kind of the thing I really like about Bill that, he retains some of that perspective of a normal fan. He shoots from the hip sometimes. And trusts his audience to follow that.

I wouldn’t want his content to turn academic just because some dumplings take that too seriously. I’d prefer they just stuck to Stephen A etc.

frat boys who think they are too smart for Screamin Stephen

• The Book of Basketball was written in 2009. This isn’t a recent Bill Simmons take

• Even if it was, that take wasn’t remotely controversial in the 2000s

• It was his book and it was an entertaining read. It was not intended to be an objective history of basketball.

Real talk

Hed pass up so many good looks to hold the ball

The worst answer in this thread.

I was hoping you’d be wrong, but shit half these replies are exactly that. or at least trying to push existing false narratives

and more not clarifying on vs off court selfishness. but at least that one’s kinda understandable, the post itself doesn’t really specify

Yeah noted forgotten NBA player Kobe Bryant

Literally the textbook ball hog.

Empty stats. He has rings. That’s what you play for. LMFAO

Regular season, maybe. Multiple playoffs with 5 rings? No.

nah if anything, Kobe gets overcriticized for being selfish when yall act like he was supposed to pass to bums like Smush Parker and Luke Walton lol

Jason Williams was not a turnover machine at all, he actually has an elite AST/TO ratio, he got that label because he was flashy, his handle was truly elite

He had one season in SAC with 3.7 turnovers but his career 2.1 turnovers to 5.9 assists, a 2.8 AST/TO ratio, pretty good and he had elite seasons with 8.3 assists per game and only 2.2 turnovers, those are CP3 numbers

It wasn’t his passing that was the problem, it was the pull up jumpers in transition.

Always know him as the player who sparked the 3-1 comeback

I only know this from Bob Ryan’s scathing words, but Elvin Hayes maybe fits the bill.

But if you want a historical hot take - let’s light this motherfucker on fire - wilt chamberlain.

Certainly that’s how his critics described him at the time.

I don’t think that’s fair to Stackhouse. He converted well to a role player in older age. He just was a first option SG while the pace was abysmal and there was still hand checking. Being where the buck stops at the end of the shot clock was kind of the whole job