There is no way any NBA player is as selfish as Kome Bryant.

Okay, maybe one or two, but is Wally really one of them. Maybe Mebury. But Wally? I need to watch more Minnesota games.

The Wolves could be good this year -- Look for Rookie Rashaad McCants to become a strong option at the 2 position.

Sorry to get all stat-nerd on you, but observe:

(Usg. Rate is a measure of how many possessions a player uses per minute--whether by shot, turnover, etc.)

Career Usage Rate
Kobe Bryant: 27.8 (30.0 in '04-'05 season)
Wally Szczerbiak: 18.9 (19.9 in '04-'05)

Looks like your man Wally is not up to Kobeian levels of ball hogging. But no beats Allen Iverson (32.7 last season).

No fair dragging AI into this. The man took a team to the NBA finals with Dikembe at center, a defender at SG, and three guys who couldn't four out of ten open shots.

Until Kome does that, he shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Iverson. Besides, did you see the Sixers last year. Who, besides the other AI on the team, was going to regularly handle the ball?

Yeah, I'm an unabashed Iverson fan. Sue me. ;-)

From a ball-hogging stats point of view he's not up to par with Kobe, mostly because he doesn't get the ball nearly as often. But make no mistake about it, he's thinking shoot first, shoot second...

I wonder if the above kobe-haters would similarly condemn Michael Jordan - one of the greatest ball-hogs in NBA history.

Looks like your man Wally is not up to Kobeian levels of ball hogging.

Wally was the 4th option on that team (after Garnett, Cassell, and Sprewell), so naturally he's going to have to defer to them or the couching staff was going to put him on the bench. If Wally was the first or second option on the team, I'd expect his numbers to look like Kobe's or Iverson's (but not as high, because Wally's not the ball-handler that either of those two are).

Not another person comparing Kome to MJ. I can't even dignify that comparison anymore by commenting, except to say Kome will never be marginally worthy of that comparison until he wins a title (or at least advances to a title game) without playing alongside the most dominant player of the last decade.

"Selfish." Do you really think that describes what's going on out there? I'm not saying this is the case for everyone saying that, but I think it's easy for people to consume lines from the media and feel like they know what they're talking about. That's the common phrase from people who don't watch basketball; "I don't like Kobe. He's selfish." And I'd like to ask, "Have you ever watched a game?"

I watch a lot of basketball, particularly the T'Wolves and teams like the Lakers who are shown on national TV. And yeah, I think it is selfishness. Kobe may argue (and he may be correct, to a point) that the less he has the ball, the more his team loses. But Kobe not having the ball hurts Kobe way more than the team...it hurts his endorsements, his reputation, his future earning power, his ego, etc. Jordan was extremely selfish for those same reasons, but he could back it up to a ridiculous degree and finally realized that he could trust the offense, his coach, and his teammates to be right there with him, even if none of them were as good as he was. And even if it's not a conscious thing -- if the only reason Wally keeps the ball so much is because he gets excited and wants to win so bad -- it's still selfish and something that needs to be addressed at some point for the team to be successful.

All this reminds me how glad I am to be a Suns fan, even without Amare.

That's valid, jkottke. I don't agree, but that's cool.

I'd really like to see Garnett with a ring, so I hope Wally does well. I'm glad Flip landed right side up.

There's a lot of Suns fans out there now for sure.

Wally can't create his own shot. Ever seen him try to dribble-drive past a defender? Truly pathetic. He has the best player in the league (Garnett), plus two other legitimate scoring threats on the floor with him, so his defender is likely to forget about him and double-team from time to time, leaving him open for a spot-up jumper, the only way he can score. It's like Bill Wennington in the old Bulls glory days. At least three or four times a game, he'd be wide open on the baseline because Pip and MJ were drawing doubles and triples. They'd dump the ball to him and that 8-foot, wide open jumper was money :)

Yet the Bulls never set out to make Bill "the man". Yet he's still in the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame! :)