Don't recall levelling the charge that you don't watch the games, Neil. Is this how we advance a perspective, by labelling Wilt's ultra-pivot-playmaking strategy that resulted in 130 reg-season Ws in two years, including rings for the team & a 7th-game conference finals loss (neither of which the 127-win Cavs've managed in '09 & '010), somehow selfish?

Do they still nail peach baskets to the wall and have a ladder to get the ball out of the basket every time someone scores where you live?

Shaq isn't "too old"? Don't be ridiculous. I just KNEW you would levy the tired and false "stats people don't watch the games" charge Neil against with your last post, but like I said before it seems the only people that are using them are the ones who aren't really watching the games themselves.

That's LeBron's career in a microcosm: Try to be a good teammate and set other guys up, and the media complains he doesn't have a "killer instinct" & isn't ballsy enough to take the final shot... Try to score more, and the media complains he's too hell-bent on going 1-on-5 and "isn't making his teammates better". Either way, he can't win. And for you to suggest that an oft-injured, broken-down 37-year-old Shaq in 2010 is as good as the 2000 version that was one of the most dominant players in NBA history? That's patently absurd. Don't like Win Shares or PER? Fine. By whatever production metric you want, points per game, rebounds per game, whatever, Shaq of the past 3-4 years has been a mere shell of what he used to be.

The type of TEAM game that Russ & Wilt exemplified by their Rebounding and Playmaking lies in direct conflict with the do-it-all McGinnis-styled LeBron-a-thon. When the goal is to impress the Hollingers and do Triple-Doubles, Shaq's contributions get squeezed and the overall team effort suffers. It's no coincidence O'Neal's marksmanship went from a career high last year to a a career low in '010 CleveLand.

Thanks.

Check the trendlines -- he's been in decline for years.

Meanwhile, Kobe, KG and Dwight Howard all jumped from HS to the pros, so that argument doesn't quite work, does it?

Finally, Lebron has developed some bad habits, but that is do to BAD COACHING. Comparisons to Magic are silly, when Magic went to an LA team with Kareem in his prime, plus Jamaal Wilkes and Norm Nixon. If you don't think the Lakers would breeze to the title with Bron instead of the sexual predator, you are smoking crack. It's a TEAM game

Neil, see http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/onealsh01.html and you will find that the '09 Shaq hit his career high in shooting surety & approached his MVP-era career lows in Errors, not to mention markedly decreasing his PFs while raising his production-per-minute. He hardly has the profile of a player "in decline" until hitting CleveLand & the LeBron-a-thon that would put any co-star to sleep on the floor.

Had Kobe tried to similarly monopolize the ball on a team with Shaq he'd've never earned that "little brother" monicker that O'Neal would've liked to dub King James with as well. Some players just have to be The Man on any team, anywhere. We saw the same thing happen when Michael Jordan "came back" to upset the rhythms of Rip Hamilton and Jerry StackHouse (after demanding that Rip be traded). Jordan got away with it because he didn't have Phil Jackson to set him straight on the Wizards; Doug Collins was hardly the coach to stand up to Mike. LeBron has been in a similar situation with the ex-Pacer assistant coaching CleveLand. LBJ has simply been counseled to be the New #23 for marketing purposes rather than the New Magic for *winning* purposes.

It's the age-old question: Who would you rather be -- Kwame Brown with a $50 million contract or Robert Horry with 7 rings? For the first seven years of his career, LeBron chose to be a ball-monopolizer instead of getting everybody involved a la his natural role model Magic. If James thinks that taking the same tack over and over will result in a championship, he should be reminded that a little fellow named Julius Erving is the only one-man-team World's Pro Champion so far to come down the pike.