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Message: [QUOTE="Knicks411, post: 160961, member: 767"] Pretty crazy, right? I just looked it up and was pretty amazed. My point on Duncan was just that Duncan is one of the greatest players in the history of the game. We can talk about systems all we want, but in hoops, more often than not, if one team has one of the best players ever, and the other team doesn't, the first team is going to win. If the Suns played a more conventional system, the Spurs would still beat them, but no one would say they can't win because of their system, they'd say they can't win because the Spurs are better. N o one says, I don't know, the Hawks to pick a team can't win cause of their system. They can't win because they aren't good enough. I think anything that is different gets singled out, and people look to discredit it if it doesn't hold to conventional wisdom. (And a lot of times conventional wisdom is just that for a reason; it could be right). And I think you can throw the Knicks out; for a few reasons. 1) they don't have the players to run his preferred system, and 2) they aren't really running it anyway. I don't know about his system as a whole, but i am pretty sure you won't win a title playing a D'Antoni system if you're PG is Toney Douglas. (Inf act I'm pretty sure you won't win a championship in any system if your PG is Toney Douglas, which is kind of the point). Do I think a team can win a title playing at the fastest pace in the league? I'm sure they can; I'm pretty sure it's happened before, and weren't the Russell celtics known for that? (Not sure if they played the fastest pace in the league, but I bet it was pretty close, and if you want some crazy possession #'s, look at those stats). I sometimes think when people say teams can't win playing the D'Antoni system, that is more of a shorthand for winning with a bad defense, which is a different story. They ranked int he 16, 17 range defensively in their heyday, which is both not as bad as one might think, but still not very good. I would say it is pretty hard to win a title if your defense is middle of the pack at best. [/QUOTE]

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