Magic Man vs God 23

Da Realist:

my two favorite players of all time. i've been thinking about this for a minute and i wanted to see what you think about it.

like i said, i don't really get into who's the 'best'. the question is, if i was starting a team who would i choose first?

i think magic can do more with a team that has a lot of talent. michael can do more with a team of average players.

in other words, magic's talents come out when he has all-stars to play with that understand the game and know how to position themselves to compliment magic's unbelievable court vision. he's good at "sharing the wealth" and making weapons out of everyone on the floor. conversely, he can make average players (terry teagle, elden campbell, etc) very good, just not as great as michael could have.

michael's talent is that he can do all things well. offense, rebounding, defense and he also has good court vision. he can take the average-to-good player and make them good enough to challenge for championships, but some of his talents would be under-utilized if he was playing with all-stars. if he had james worthy and kareem, why would mike post up? he wouldn't have needed to rebound or score as much.

you put mike on those laker teams, they are still good, just not as good. nobody had the court vision magic johnson had so it would have been difficult for mike to help those guys get the ball where they needed it *every time*. plus some of mike's talents, like post-ups and rebounding may have been under-utilized.

now put magic on those early 90's bulls teams. who becomes the go-to scorer? who helps scottie defensively on the perimeter? paxson and byron scott are both spot-up shooters, but byron was way more athletic and actually took the ball to the basket more. magic's court vision would be under-utilized a bit because of the limits on his (chicago) teammates.