No, of course not. But if you are looking just at a player’s scoring ability, which is what we have been discussing here, then yes, scoring volume and ts% are most of what matter.

I don’t know who Sly Williams was, before my time, but if his ts% was 10% below Lee’s, I think it’s safe to say the two don’t have much in common.

But also re scoring, I tend to think that a players impact on possession, i.e. the net of his turnovers, steals, and rebounds, is just as important as his scoring, if not more so.

I don’t recall saying Lee was better than Jordan or KG. I think Jordan was the best player of the modern era, except for possibly Magic, and that KG has been the best player of this millenium so far. I didn’t say Lee was better than Pippen. I said I thought he might be capable of being the second banana on a championship team in a few years, though not the second banana on the best team of all time. However, I would certainly take Lee’s career to date over Pippen’s. And I said he was better last year than Horace Grant ever was. No backpedaling on that one.

As a Knicks fan, we don’t have a lot to look forward to for the next 2.5 years. But if we can get Lee and Balkman signed to reasonable contracts, then acquire a genuine superstar in 2010, things might improve rapidly. That’s my hope. Lee is part of the story, not the whole story.

David West has a varied repertoire of offensive moves, both in the post and facing the basket, that put pressure on the defense, opening opportunities for other guys. David Lee gets all his points on put backs and quick interior passes. Rarely does he make a solid back to the basket move or hit an open shot.

Simply put, David West can create offense, whereas David Lee takes what he’s given. Until David Lee develops a viable offensive game, they shouldn’t even be in the same category of player.

There are a lot of guys in the NBA who get their points mostly through putbacks, transition buckets, and garbabe opportunities. Lee is the best of the bunch.

I agree with Thomas. We have the role players on the Knicks, we need a superstar to go with them.

I think its great that David West hits 42% of his jumpers. But the bottom line is that his ts% at 52.8%, is just about league average. It’s probably helpful in the context of the New Orleans offense that he can score, but the stars of that team are Chandler and Paul.