Uncontested Shots: The Latest on the GM Survey, The Best Players of the Decade & More

The NBA preseason is just about a week old which means were one fewer week away from opening night. Preseason performances are just a notch above summer league performances when it comes to impressing me. I’m not saying it isn’t nice to see a rookie or an undrafted free agent playing well in the preseason. What I’m saying is that it has no bearing on whether or not that player will be effective when the games start counting—it just means they’ll have the opportunity to try and prove it.

So before I waste any more of your time, I bring you my latest edition of Uncontested Shots, or should I say, things I was thinking about while wondering if we’ve hopefully seen the last of Stephen A. Smith.

Poll Positions

NBA.com came out with it’s annual GM Survey. While there were a bunch of results that weren’t the least bit surprising, there were a few that came as a bit of a shock.

For example, 25 percent of the league’s GMs thought Vince Carter was the free agent acquisition who will make the biggest impact while Ron Artest, Richard Jefferson, Rasheed Wallace, and Shaquille O’Neal all tied for second with 14.3 percent of the vote.

The other big shocker was that Kobe Bryant finished second to Chauncey Billups when it came to which player was the league’s best leader—ahead of Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, and Chris Paul.

It’s definitely worth checking out all of the results.

Casey The Whistle Blower

Casey Jacobsen, the former Stanford stand-out who never really made a name for himself in the NBA, is now playing pro ball in Germany and is writing a blog for Slam.

In his latest post, Jacobsen writes about AAU basketball and the affects it had on some of his contemporaries. He writes about the shopping sprees, cars, and money that were given to many of the nation’s best prep guys and how it corrupted them.

While Jacobsen hated the writers who kept him off of the top-25 lists that seem to pop up everywhere, he credits his name being omitted from those lists as the reason for why he’s succeeded while many of those who were praised fizzled

Jacobsen brings up Schea Cotton as an example of a kid who was labeled a can’t-miss prospect and the next Michael Jordan but never panned out. I’m only a few years older than Jacobsen so I remember the hype surrounding Cotton—especially because he was supposed to attend UCLA but couldn’t qualify academically.

Jacobsen blames a lot of the corruption on Nike and adidas and wonders how much worse it is these days for prep stars.

I hated Jacobsen while he was at Stanford—mainly because he went undefeated in his four years at Pauley Pavilion against UCLA.

But the more I read from him the more I started to like him. He seems like a really bright and articulate guy who genuinely cares about the future of prep basketball and allowing kids to be kids for as long as they can.

I recommend the piece to anybody and I look forward to reading more of his posts.

Another Top-10 List

Yahoo!‘s Kelly Dwyer decided to write his top-10 list of the decade’s best players and, as you can tell by the number of comments (almost 2,000), there are a lot of people who disagree.

For starters, Dwyer has Allen Iverson ranked 10th, below Tracy McGrady (No. 9) and Dwyane Wade (No. 8). He also ranks Kevin Garnett randed 2nd, ahead of Kobe Bryant (No. 3) and Shaquille O’Neal (No. 6). As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s got Dirk Nowitzki ranked ahead of Shaq and LeBron James (No. 4).

While I agree with the 10 players that Dwyer chose to list, I don’t think my list would compare to his at all—with the exception of Tim Duncan at the top of the list.

Here’s my list:

1. Tim Duncan
2. Shaquille O’Neal
3. Kobe Bryant
4. Kevin Garnett
5. Allen Iverson
6. Jason Kidd
7. Dirk Nowitzki
8. LeBron James
9. Dwyane Wade
10. Tracy McGrady

Why do I have James and Wade so low, you ask? Because those two guys came into the league in 2003. In my opinion, what Iverson, Kidd, and Nowitzki were able to accomplish in those seasons where James and Wade weren’t in the league was enough to put them ahead of those two guys. Had they entered the league in 2001 I’d more than likely put them ahead of at least Iverson.

But my biggest issue with Dwyer’s list was in putting KG ahead of both Shaq and Kobe and here’s why: Garnett is entering his 15th NBA season and his team’s have made it past the first round of the playoffs only three times and one of those three happened last season while Garnett was in street clothes.

In the two other seasons in which his teams advanced past the first round, he needed the help of two other superstars to do so. In fact, he was practically a non-factor in the majority of the Celtics against the Lakers in the 2008 NBA Finals.

I get that KG was on some pretty bad teams in Minnesota. But I’m talking about him not being second best player of the decade—I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be in the top-five. I know he led the league in rebounding a number of times. But it’s easy to lead the league in rebounding when you’re fighting with Marc Jackson, Dean Garrett, Gary Trent, Ervin Johnson, Mark Madsen, and Rasho Nesterovic for boards.

If you wanna put Nowitzki ahead of Kidd that’s fine with me. I also have no problem taking out McGrady and putting Paul Pierce in the top-10.

2K10 or NBA Live?

The latest editions of both of the NBA’s most popular video game titles were released on Tuesday. After much debate I opted for 2K10 with Kobe on the cover over EA Sports NBA Live 2010 with Dwight Howard on the cover. I was just too afraid the one with Dwight Howard would disappear in June.

Uncontested Shots will debut every Tuesday and Friday from now until at least the start of the season. For up to the minute updates on all free agent happenings and random brilliant thoughts and observations follow Andrew Ungvari on Twitter.