I keep hearing the same thing come up when talking about the MVP so far in the NBA. Jason Kidd is the MVP so far, but if the Wizards continue to do well then Michael Jordan should win the MVP. Yes, Michael Jordan is the best player of all time, and yes he is the best player on the team, and yes he's the leader, etc etc. BUT has anybody noticed that the Wizards have won 14 games in a row that Rip has played in. I'm not saying that he should be the MVP by any stretch of the imagination, and i'm not even saying he is as important to the team as Jordan, but the truth is without Richard Hamilton the Wizards are probably a below .500 team and yet he gets to recognition because of Jordan.
That's pretty typical when one is playing with the greatest player of all-time. For many years, the Bulls were known as “Michael and the Jordanaires” by many critics. Heck, even when they were winning championships, they really only had one or two other very good players on their team other than Jordan. During the first three-peat, they were Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant (a case could be made for B.J. Armstrong) and during the second three-peat, they were Pippen and Dennis Rodman.
I agree with you that Richard Hamilton should be getting more recognition, but right now he's got the most famous basketball player in the world as his teammate. That's not a position that's easy to accept if one wants recognition-- as Scottie Pippen bitched about to no end.
Hamilton's got a great future ahead of him, though. All he has to do is keep his feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars, and in a few years he might be the next great Wizards player.
“I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.”