Stacked Teams That Didn't Do Much

[iDunk]

2012 Miami Heat.

THIS.

[ImmortalNemesis]

This is not a thread to harp on teams who made an ECF or an WCF but had championship potential, this is a thread for teams who had a ton of talent and didn't do nearly as well as they could have.

Read the f*cking thread and stop acting like 12 year olds.

[AlphaWolf24]

Shaq and Z = Done
Mo Williams = Bench player
Jamson = destoyed by KG

Best record in the NBA,
Mo Williams allstar
Big Z still a good 7' with a mid range J
Shaq still top 5 C in the league


and that team won 63 games = Great

[guy]

You could replace Tracy McGrady with Vince Carter on that team. The Rockets planned on trading Tmac for VC near the trade deadline but Tmac ended up getting season ending injury without telling anyone in Houston so the trade never went through.

That team wouldn't even have done well with Tmac. Tmac was a cancerous player for them by then. They were like 20-15 when he played that season but they were 33-14 without him.

Tmac was and still is an immature player that doesn't care or know a thing about winning or teamwork.

When T-Mac did play that year he was also playing hurt. And not just hurt like he always is, but really hurt. His numbers were down across the board. I believe this was the season where he completely blew a layup cause he just couldn't get up that high. Had they had the T-Mac of even the previous year, they would've been much better.

[guy]

The Hakeem/Drexler/Barkley Rockets from 97-98 and the Hakeem/Barkley/Pippen Rockets in 99. They made the WCF in 97, but alot of people were expecting more. The three HOFers were still great, but just nowhere near what they used to be. They also had Kevin Willis and Eddie Johnson too who were once really good players.

[Owl]

Yao didn't fall off substantially that year. He was still the 2nd best center in the league behind Dwight. McGrady though not as good as in Orlando days was still an all star caliber player in 08. (He fell of dramatically in 09. Had a few surgeries after the 08 season including knee surgery and never really recuperated.) Mutumbo was old but still a great center to have off the bench. He was beasting defensively in the first round against Portland before the injury. Hayes didn't have an off year, that was one of his best seasons as a Rocket. Numbers will never tell you what Hayes contributes to the team. Yao, Battier, Brooks, Hayes, and Landry were still in their prime. Artest wasn't. But that team was stacked.

Yao still the 2nd best center yes but there was a huge gap between the elite and the rest at that point.
Despite more minutes he:
Scored Less (more than 5 points less per 36 minutes)
Shot less accurately
Got to the line less

I really like McGrady but in '03 he might have been the MVP, but by that year he shot 42% from the field 29% from 3 and 69% from the free throw line (for a .487 TS%) and injuries meant even if he was giving full effort on D he wasn't as athletic or agile as he had been. The only way he could be considered an all-star was if you were Chinese.

Mutombo was a good defensive center to have off the bench.

Hayes primary impact was defensive. But that year and the next he was too timid on offense which in part was because they had a lot of options, but if you shoot as rarely as he did, then teams don't feel obliged to guard you. It would be fine if he was taking better shots but his shooting percentages (fg,ft,efg and ts) all collapsed too. So it was probably "one of his best seasons as Rocket" only in the sense that it was one of his top 5 seasons as a Rocket (he had 6 years there).

Yao was not playing at his prime level (maybe he would have been if he hadn't been injured but he was).
Battier wasn't at his numerical peak but a lot of that is a reduced role from Memphis so I'll go along with that.
Brooks broke out the next year (and was only ever particularly good for that 1 year).
Landry was remarkable in his limited role.

There's a reason they weren't favourites or even close. It was stacked as I said in the sense of having a lot of rotation worthy pieces (even guys who could be starters elsewhere - especially Landry) but nobody playing at an exceptional level.

(edited to correct typo)

[Xiao Yao You]

Kobe (all-star) dont be fooled by the all-star selection, Kobe was a good 6th man but not even close to what he become.

Made it a year before he actually deserved it based on hype.

[NumberSix]

2004 Lakers

[TheBluest]

2003-04 Dallas Mavericks, who got bounced in the first round:

Dirk Nowitzki
Michael Finley
Steve Nash
Antawn Jamison
Antoine Walker
Tony Delk
Josh Howard
Marquis Daniels
Danny Fortson

Wasn't Van Excel on that team too?

[PickernRoller]

2004 Lakers

Too many things wrong with the Lakers that year...but yeah they were stacked. Such a missed opportunity...

[Bigsmoke]

Wasn't Van Excel on that team too?

they traded him to bring in Jamison

[ihatetimthomas]

Too many things wrong with the Lakers that year...but yeah they were stacked. Such a missed opportunity...

Not in the finals. Karl Malone, while old and not what he was, was the Lakers glue guy. He defended well, was a great passer, and played within the team. When he went down, the Lakers had Slava Medvedenko replace him and that left them with Kobe, Shaq and a old Payton. I think there is this misconception about how stacked that team was, and people really forget Malone's impact on the team and the fact he was out in the finals.

[Kblaze8855]

Offensively stacked on paper? Absolutely. Stacked overall? Absolutely not.

A team starting 4 all star level players with one off the bench is stacked. It just is. You often explain why it didnt work and pretend people didnt see them play but really...barring some kinda injury that keeps the players in question from playing...5 all stars makes a team stacked. Not like it was 5 BJ Armstrong ass all stars. It was 5 people in or near their primes 4 a year or two removed from peak production.

Stacked doesnt mean a team wins or should win. More than one stacked team can exist at a time(there were at least 3 in 04 and 2 met in the finals). They cant all win. Many will be flawed.

But you cant say that team isnt stacked without changing what you know people mean when they use the word.

If Tony Parker, younger Rip Hamilton, Josh Smith, Kevin Love, and Joe Johnson were on one team...its stacked. No matter what else happens those 5 in alineup for one side makes that side stacked.

They may fail. With Mike Dantoni I suspect they would. But they are still stacked.

There are teams that arent even good that are stacked.

Sometimes it just doesnt work out.

But im thinking a fair cutoff is like...4. 4 guys you can expect to make or compete for an all star spot....team is stacked.

You could call the Bulls stacked and their second best player has never been better than the 4th or 5th best player on those Mavs was at the time(not in numbers that season...5 all stars hurts everyones numbers....im talking ability).

They were never gonna win. I remember joking with some Mavs fans at the time about howmany times they might score 130 and give up 140....but I can respect the effort. I think I get what they were going for. Cuban went into straight "**** it..." mode. We need more owners winning to do that and challenge the staff to make it work. They had 3 guys who were seen as franchise players right before or after that season and the most hated on one was a key piece on a title team a couple years later.

The right coach could have made that work I think.

[Shade8780]

2007 Suns
61-21

C: Amar'e Stoudemire / Pat Burke
PF: Boris Diaw / Kurt Thomas
SF: Shawn Marion / James Jones / Eric Piatkowski
SG: Raja Bell / Leandro Barbosa / Jalen Rose
PG: Steve Nash / Marcus Banks

Should've beaten the old Spurs team in the 2nd round but didn't. Maybe if Amar'e and Diaw hadn't been suspended for Game 5, they would've won.


2007 Mavericks
67-15

C: Erick Dampier / DeSagana Diop / D.J. Mbenga
PF: Dirk Nowitzki / Pops Mensah-Bonsu / Kevin Willis
SF: Josh Howard / Devean George / Austin Croshere
SG: Jason Terry / Jerry Stackhouse / Maurice Ager
PG: Devin Harris / Greg Buckner / J.J. Barea

Went 67-15 in the regular season and got knocked out in the first round by the 42-40 Warriors. That is one of the biggest upsets in NBA history. This team steamrolled through the regular season with league MVP, Dirk Nowitzki. Better and smarter than their 2006 Finals team counterpart but couldn't perform in the postseason. If the team had beaten the Warriors, they would have easily got to the finals and would've likely, sweeped the Cavs.

[DMAVS41]

A team starting 4 all star level players with one off the bench is stacked. It just is. You often explain why it didnt work and pretend people didnt see them play but really...barring some kinda injury that keeps the players in question from playing...5 all stars makes a team stacked. Not like it was 5 BJ Armstrong ass all stars. It was 5 people in or near their primes 4 a year or two removed from peak production.

Stacked doesnt mean a team wins or should win. More than one stacked team can exist at a time(there were at least 3 in 04 and 2 met in the finals). They cant all win. Many will be flawed.

But you cant say that team isnt stacked without changing what you know people mean when they use the word.

If Tony Parker, younger Rip Hamilton, Josh Smith, Kevin Love, and Joe Johnson were on one team...its stacked. No matter what else happens those 5 in alineup for one side makes that side stacked.

They may fail. With Mike Dantoni I suspect they would. But they are still stacked.

There are teams that arent even good that are stacked.

Sometimes it just doesnt work out.

But im thinking a fair cutoff is like...4. 4 guys you can expect to make or compete for an all star spot....team is stacked.

You could call the Bulls stacked and their second best player has never been better than the 4th or 5th best player on those Mavs was at the time(not in numbers that season...5 all stars hurts everyones numbers....im talking ability).

They were never gonna win. I remember joking with some Mavs fans at the time about howmany times they might score 130 and give up 140....but I can respect the effort. I think I get what they were going for. Cuban went into straight "**** it..." mode. We need more owners winning to do that and challenge the staff to make it work. They had 3 guys who were seen as franchise players right before or after that season and the most hated on one was a key piece on a title team a couple years later.

The right coach could have made that work I think.

But the players in question didn't perform at the level you claim.

In fact, Nash was just that....hurt. Granted he's a tough son of a bitch and played through it, but he was hurt. Just a fact. He played very poorly in the playoffs. Shooting 39% from the field....nearly 9% off his career average in the playoffs.

And of course I could go on.

We have different definitions of "stacked" clearly. That Mavericks team was offensively stacked....even though everyone but Dirk played like ass...they were still offensively stacked.

Does that make them a stacked team overall? To me...absolutely not. Because they just weren't. They played literally no defense...4th worst in the league...and didn't have a center.

That just is not a stacked team. It just...isn't. But you might have a different definition.

And no, no coach is going to make that work. Improve the results? Maybe...although again...it was a performance issue. Nash just couldn't perform well enough really for that team to do anything in the playoffs due to injuries. At best, if healthy, it's a team that does what some of the Suns teams did. Make the 2nd round or WCF and lose.

Stacked to me is a team like the 11 Heat. A team with 2 top 5 players and another top 20 or so player all healthy. That is stacked. Or the 08 Celtics. That is stacked.

04 Mavs? You have to create a distinction between offensively stacked and stacked overall in my opinion.