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I heard that Magic Johnson and Skip Bayless have been trading tweets about who would win a game with teams made up of the best of the Lakers and Celtics vs. the rest of the NBA. I have a friend who is a Lakers fan and says he would put the Lakers retired #s against anyone, and I'd say the Celtics are the only team that could even be in that argument. So what would a matchup look like between the best of LA/Bos and everyone else who has ever played the game? This would be my starting lineups and bench:

LA/Bos
Starters:
PG - Magic
SG - Kobe
SF- Bird
PF - Russell
C - Wilt
Bench:
Cousey
West
Worthy
McHale
Kareem
Havlicek
Baylor
What's scary are the bigs that didn't make it: Shaq, Mikan, and Parrish. Shaq is a tough call b/c he was with LA longer than any other team, but has still spent less than half his career with LA/Bos

NBA
Starters:
PG - LeBron (Skip's suggestion to neutralize Magic's size)
SG - Jordan
SF - Dr. J
PF - Duncan
C - Olajuwan
Bench:
Isaiah
Oscar R.
Pippen
K. Malone
Barkley
Pettit
M. Malone
Just missed: Stockton, Drexler, and D. Robinson. It's harder to pick this side since you're dealing with every other team. I'm sure someone older than myself would think my NBA selections are too focused on guys who played in the 80's and 90's.

I think you'd have to go with the LA/Bos team, but man this would be fun to see. I think Magic tweeted he had no doubt they would win.

I think I'd put Iverson in over some of the bench guys on the NBA team... but I honestly don't know which team I think would win. I lean NBA though.

The all-time team would beat the Lakers/Celts hybrid. LeBron's nuts would be on Magic's head so often he'd miss them when they were gone. Get Dr. J's whack ass off that list and put Pip in there, Scottie's the best man defender of all time. He'd lock Bird down as well as anyone can. Jordan would destroy Kobe because he cannot tolerate pretenders to his throne, Russell v Duncan would be an awesome, awesome matchup but I'd give Duncan's offensive game the edge and Wilt disappears when it's an important game and someone of equal size guards him.

scott skiles

thrill wrote:Get Dr. J's whack ass off that list

That's seriously the first thing that came to mind.

Dr. J was pretty [expletive] good, but I'd personally go Oscar at the point and move LeBron to SF. Shaq is one of the 10 best players ever...he has to be in the game on one side or the other. What's scary is that the current Celtics have 3 or 4 Hall of Famers and you wouldn't need any of them. I'd replace McHale with Garnett, but it's not a bad pick. I would lean towards the Celkers winning because a lot of those guys were used to playing on loaded teams and played unselfishly. The NBA team is good but it's a lot of guys used to being The Man all the time.

That NBA crew needs a couple more guys can shoot the rock from outside I think so they can spread the LA/BOS half-court defense out and create some space for the big guys underneath to post up and score the ball. Unless, I guess, they plan to run run run all night long and work in lines like a hockey team.

I'd go:
SG - Jordan
PG - Stockton (I get Skip's point. But you need a ballhandler/distributer. Every truly great team has one)
SF - Lebron
PF - David Robinson
C - Shaq (if he does not count, sub in Hakeem, put Moses in the last bench slot)
BN - Duncan
BN - Wade
BN - Barkley
BN - Isiah
BN - Iceman Gervin
BN - Mailman
BN - Nowitzki
BN - The Big O
BN - Olajuwon