Always makes me laugh seeing the 'Melo is a selfish chucker with no D'.
Name one player that Melo has had that comes close to KG and Rondo?
He had Amare for 4 months before he lost a leg.
He's had a 32 year old Billups as his best PG and the only decent pass first pg he's had other than Felton.
Give the guy a break, Amare going down crushed any chance of that Knicks plan working out.
Do people remember he carried that crap denver team to the WCF ?
What help has he had?
that's complete BS. until 2008. pierce would have killed to have the players that melo played with.
marcus camby, Kenyon martin, andre miller. pierce never had anyone on those 3 guys level...maybe Kenny Anderson could be the equivalent of miller, maybe.
if pierce had those 3 guys early in his career like melo. they would've made the finals back the. At least twice.
Melo took the nuggets to the WCF and had to play against the Lakers who crushed the Magic 4-1 in the NBA finals.
The nuggets finished first in the west in that year and the next but failed to capitalize on hca in the 08-09 wcf series and lost 2-4 to the Lakers.
I seriously doubt that pierce would have beaten Kobe and Gasol with his best help being an aging Billups and nene hillario with Dantahy Jones and JR Smith as his scoring help.
Keep dreaming.
id take my chances with pierce and anybody melo's played with while in Denver vs the western conference during melo's yrs there.
but what I was saying was if pierce had camby, martin, and miller at any point in his career(before the big 3 of course) then id like our chances of at least getting to finals.
"...because the Eastern Conference was disgustingly terrible and the talent disparity between the two conferences was massive."
Is what you should've put at the end of that last sentence.
true but I still say id take my chances with pierce on Denver with camby, martin and miller to at least make the western conference finals.
in my biased id definitely say they beat the lakers back then.
Sorry that 'keep dreaming' part read out quite rude-no offense intended.
As D.o.s says, the two conferences were worlds apart. I love Pierce but I dont see him carrying a team like that past the Lakers. He couldn't carry us past the Magic in 2008-2009 without KG and he had Ray and Rondo and Perkins to help.
I think the main argument is that all these current stars have had help from other top 20 players in winning a championship. Melo really hasn't been given that opportunity yet. He's never had any help to carry the scoring load and play making load in a tough 7 game series.
He's the 2nd best scorer in the NBA and he's still getting better. His defense has come around a lot and his passing-particularly out of the post has been very good.
You just can't find scorers like Melo and Durant and Lebron who will put the team on their back at will.
Lebron has wade and bosh. Pierce had kg and ray and rondo. Duncan has Parker, kobe had shaq or Gasol.-theyve all had top 20 player help to win their ship' and Melo hasn't had that help.
Dirk did it without help but their payroll was designed around dirk. Melos help was taken away by Amare's 20 million dollar knee operation.
Just imagine Melo with Rondo and a top 5 or 10 defensive big and a few three point shooters.
Or imagine the knicks team now with Rondo and Green instead of Amare and Felton-thats how much salary amare is wasting.