No offense but Barbosa is almost certainly not the fastest guy in the NBA. He has speed but I am sure some of the shorter players are faster if we actually timed them in a 40 yard dash. In fact i would bet GOOD MONEY that Nate Robinson is quite a bit faster. As a track star in HS as well as an highly touted WR and CB I don't see any way Barbosa could hang with him in any kind of race.
There is some kind of upper limit to speed - a kind of as fast as you type of all fast twitch body. There isn't much difference from a Rondo to a Barbosa to a Speedy Claxton..in speed, IMHO - except for that fact Barbosa is a bit too tall to have top flight speed. Taller guys are just a bit awkward compared to shorter people and top have the same kind of initial acceleration.
The world's fastest man Maurice Greene was 5'9".
But beyond all that Barbosa is something of a selfish ball hog on O. Of course so is Robinson so we should be thankful we got Rondo whose issue is his scared to shoot problem not a ball hogging problem.
Pete
Players, coaches and commentators have stated that Barbosa is the fastest in the league. No offense to you, or anyone else here, but on something as 'baseline' as pure speed/quicks, I'll go with those people in the absence of raw data.
Having said that, I want to thank you for challenging my assertion. It made me do some checking on the topic. I hadn't cared enough about this to try finding anything new on this in a couple of years and, in searching to see what I could find, I discovered a Sports Illustrated poll of NBA players that was done in 2007 about the fasted players in the NBA:
In a poll conducted by SI.com, 25% of the 271 NBA players polled, listed Raptors guard T.J. Ford as the fastest player in the league. The Nuggets' Allen Iverson was a distant second with 18% of the vote. The Suns' Brazilian Blur, Leandro Barbosa came in third with 9%.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/players/02/20/poll.0220/index.html
Topic: Rondo might turn out be at best a leandro barbosa type (Read 15422 times)