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Message: [QUOTE="Cuango, post: 4837525, member: 3834"] They certainly would be in any normal year. However this year she is up against someone who has been able to embed herself in the public‘s mind (rightfully so) as the best player in basketball for two years while Paige disappeared. Additionally, she (Clark) is playing better than ever [B]this[/B] season! She is putting up numbers that are really unheard of in recent history. 31.5 ppg, 7 rbds, and 7.4 assists! ( Just yesterday she hit a 30 foot buzzer beater to win their last game!) All this while shooting 49% overall and 40% from three! She is almost certainly going to shatter Kelsey Plum’s scoring record and has held the virtually unquestioned position of either best or co-best women’s player (with Boston) ever since Paige’s first injury two and a half years ago. She’s been able to do all this mostly because she is a [B]very [/B]good player but also because she plays on a team where she is the unquestioned engine that drives her team. It’s unusual for her to shoot less than 20 shots per game. (Her buzzer beater came in a game where she put the ball up 34 times, a full 20 of which were threes!) She is encouraged, no, required to put up those kinds of numbers because her team could not win without them. Paige, on the other hand, plays a completely different game, imo, a far more beautiful game and true to the intent and the very soul of the game. She, rather than hoisting up shot after shot, instead makes sure that everyone on her team is working together like a well oiled machine, drawing the best out of each teammate while using her own otherworldly shooting ability “as needed”. Paige scored 24 points in her last game while shooting 12 times. She has only had one game this season where she shot the ball 20 times. Her average number of shots is 12.7 pg and she is averaging 19.6 ppg! I would concede that if Paige suddenly started shooting 23 shots every game, her % would likely drop. How much? That’s hard to say but I [B]am [/B]sure that with an extra 11 shots per game, she would be scoring [B]at least [/B]the same 31.5 as Clark and very likely more if she shot the equivalent number of threes as Clark. (Paige is currently shooting 54.7 overall and 52.5 on threes) Paige shoots a tad over 4 threes per game while Clark shoots almost 13! My point here is not to diminish the truly remarkable accomplishments of Clark, a transcendental player whose like we are not likely to see for some time. It is rather, to point out that there are different roads that lead to the same place. There is the Interstate and there is the “scenic route“. After all this, I’m guessing the cat‘s out of the bag on which of these two truly generational players I believe is the best. However, I don’t believe there’s [B]any [/B]chance that the person holding up the NPOY trophy at the end of the season will be anyone but Clark. She simply has too many visual, numerical, and media attention driven advantages! Advantages that she has rightfully earned by the way. Even so, however, I choose the scenic route over the Interstate every time! [/QUOTE]

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