Once Again It's Talent

[orange2win]

And besides plating hurt 1/2 the season, Raf played out of position a lot at 2g which allowed JB to play his 5 best. Go look at Raf's career accomplishments I posted. I love James, but he's not gonna touch Raf's. Was he 1st team BE as a junior? Was he 2nd ream as a soph? Will he be this year? Will he ever be on the SU all century team? Did he lead the team in scoring for 3 years? This is a silly argument. David Robinson wasn't Raf's fault.

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As a fan of Raf, I won't dispute anything you say, but that 85-86 team finished the year on a ultra sour note. It may be SU's worst loss ever. I vividly recall all the excuses. You reference but a few here. By far the loudest was that all the blame lay on the doorstep of JB and he should be fired. That may have been the peak of the fire JB episode, my memory is fuzzy there.

Yes, Robinson was good, but he was not even a Sr. To make matters MUCH worse, that NCAA 2nd round game was played in the Dome. The pain still resonantes. Then Jay Bilis and crew blew them away like they were nothing, adding salt to the wound. Raf was the co-star on that team. It seriously hurt his legacy.

For a modern comparison, I would say Raf would be closer to Wes Johnson and nobody is comparing Wes to James. The only point I would argue is that the Raf and JS senior year stats are quite comparable and that is to James considerable credit.

 

[RF2044]

As a fan of Raf, I won't dispute anything you say, but that 85-86 team finished the year on a ultra sour note. It may be SU's worst loss ever. I vividly recall all the excuses. You reference but a few here. By far the loudest was that all the blame lay on the doorstep of JB and he should be fired. That may have been the peak of the fire JB episode, my memory is fuzzy there.

Yes, Robinson was good, but he was not even a Sr. To make matters MUCH worse, that NCAA 2nd round game was played in the Dome. The pain still resonantes. Then Jay Bilis and crew blew them away like they were nothing, adding salt to the wound. Raf was the co-star on that team. It seriously hurt his legacy.

For a modern comparison, I would say Raf would be closer to Wes Johnson and nobody is comparing Wes to James. The only point I would argue is that the Raf and JS senior year stats are quite comparable and that is to James considerable credit.

Robinson was a senior.

 

[orange2win]

Robinson was a senior.

No sir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Robinson_(basketball)

 

[SWC75]

We disagree. No one can compare stats based on probability. Well if James played as many minutes as Raf he would of done this.THAT'S BULLSHEET. James wasn't good enough to get on the court, Raf did it. No one has any idea what James would of done with more time, but JB felt he didn't deserve the additional time. This nonsense premise of probability would have DC2 be Dennis Rodman and Rak being David Robinson. My god what a great rebounder and shotblocker they would have been. What BS. These players weren't on the court for a reason. They didn't deserve it. Raf earned his time. To compare the rebounding per minute of DC2 and DC is a joke and it's exactly what SWC is doing with James and Raf. APPLES and ORANGES. TOTAL MINUTES SAYS IT ALL. How many points will James score in his career compared to Raf? Per minute DC2 is a great rebounder but unfortunately he only played 6 minutes a game but he averaged more boards per minute than Bill Smith. PROBABILITY STATS SUCK, they don't bring the fact that DC2 was rebounding against the walkons of the other team. Get Real.

If you look past the profanity, you make a strong point. One cannot assume that a player who is not playing starter's minutes would maintain the same rate of production if they did, especially as they would have faced stronger opposition. Reserves also tend to play longer when they are playing well whereas starters tend to play the same minutes whether they are having a good game or not. But per game stats also "suck". They suck even worse. A guy who is playing a fraction of somebody's minutes is obviously not going to put up comparable numbers. James averaged 3.2 points per game as a freshman, 4.9 as a sophomore and 6.8 as a junior. Those numbers don't reflect his real offensive capabilities as well as the per minute numbers, so it's useful to look at it both ways.

A fact that needs to be considered in playing time is who else we had on the roster. Addison played behind Leo Rautins and Tony Bruin as a freshman but them became the starter as a soph. Our other forwards were Sean Kerins and Raf's classmate Wendell Alexis, who was more of a power forward. The next two years Raf's main competition at small forward was Howie Triche and he was a class behind Raf. James has Played behind Wes Johnson, Kris Joseph and CJ Fair. He wasn't on the bench because he couldn't play.

I agree with Bees that Raf was hurt and playing out of position as a senior and that hurt his production. I also think he was a much better defensive player than Southerland, which is something the numbers don't reflect.