Low post scoring to me is back to the basket scoring. Fine, take Yao, even though in the regular season he is not spectacular. If he wasn't 7'5", believe you me he would not be talked about. Your whole point is "if they feed Yao all the time" Do you not think there is a reason? Are you the only smart one and the whole coaching staff is idiots? Maybe he gets tired. Maybe there is a reason he can't sustain it for long periods of time. Maybe because he's ****ing huge and he can't be expected to labor up and down on every possesion and still be pushed around. If I was 10 feet tall I'd be MVP. You can't assume. You assume that Stoudamire would be "up there" if he develops a post game. He won't. Why? Because he's been in the leauge forever, and he's a *****. He is an athletic freak of nature that shoots jumpers. He's a finesse power forward. So is Aldridge. Hes, he has ability, but not back you down stuff it in your face ability. Will he? Maybe, but than again maybe I'll sprout wings. This is ridicilous. You can assume anything. You have two (really, 1 - Howard) dominant centers. How many great guards you have in the leauge?
How many great guards have won championships without great big men? In the last 20 years, just one. Now, the NBA has evolved a lot in the last 20 years, but the point is that there have always been great guards in the game. There's not always great big men, and for the last 20 years, we're lucky if there's more than two in the league at the same time.
I disagree with your assessments above. Firstly, regarding Amare Stoudemire, my comment was not that he'd be a great post player if he "developed" a post game. He already has one, but he prefers to play like a guard. What I said was if he would commit to being a post player, he'd be a dominant big man instead of just another tall guy with athleticism. Whether he does that or not remains to be seen, but your personal opinion of him is obviously more important than whether or not the guy can score with his back to the basket.
Aldridge has the skill and the size to score on anyone with his back to the basket. I don't know whether he understands it, but I know that he can catch the ball in the mid to low post and use any of two or three moves in order to get a high percentage shot against anyone in the NBA. He's only in his third year, so maybe that's why he hasn't shown that dominance consistently, but I watched him post up against the Rockets on Tuesday night and saw flashbacks of Rasheed Wallace shooting that same turnaround jumper in 2000. If he doesn't shy away from the post game and turn into a perimeter player like Sheed did, then he'll be a dominant back to the basket scorer.
And back to Yao -- who's assuming anything? And who cares how tall he is? Chris Paul isn't a post player because he's only six feet tall. Shaq wouldn't have been in the NBA if he wasn't a seven footer because he doesn't have the skill set that he'd need to play another other position, and for years got by on his ability to bully anyone in the league into submission. Same thing with Patrick Ewing; he wasn't talented, he was big. Had a penchant for blocking shots since Georgetown, but he wasn't in the league because he was a good basketball player, he was in the league because he was bigger than anyone else. If "if" was a fifth, we'd all be drunk. Yao
is 7'5", so there's no need for speculation.
I'm sure his big self does get tired, which is well-documented over the course of his career. He gets little nagging injuries that mount up by the end of the season and slow him down in the playoffs. That said (and I'm not trying to show anyone up, much less Rick Adelman), part of the reason that Yao doesn't get the ball in the post in scoring position, especially in these playoffs so far, is that the Rockets put him at the elbow, they try to run pick and roll, they put him in the high post, etc., and the Blazers front him, double team him, push him out towards the three point line, and when does catch the ball, he's not in prime scoring position.
What they did a couple of times last game is they put him low on the left block, where it's hard to front or double, and where he can turn over his left shoulder, away from the double team and shoot his patented, unblockable turnaround jumpshot, and that's exactly what he did. If the double comes before the pass, then you swing the ball around and get either a jumper or an open lane to drive, and now the defense is scrambling. You can't run this every time down, but you can run it for stretches at a time, once or twice per quarter, and get Yao his touches.
