You're right about Dunleavy-- it's easy to forget about his 99/00 season, to be fair, ha.

I'd argue that James was not a guy you want to primarily guard the perimeter. He had the ability to cover the wing on switches, but he wasn't spending entire games guarding perimeter guys, obviously.

You may be right, just because not many teams have a J-Will who could carry the team... but I think people see the names of Dunleavy and Boozer and assume they were 2002 level good in 2001. Like, they were ~12-13 PPG guys in 2001, not even all-conference type players. The team would be very reliant on J-Will.

This is why I hypothesize that the 2002 team without J-Will would theoretically be better: a more experienced Duhon, Ewing, Dahntay Jones for wing athleticism/defense/third scoring option, and Dunleavy and Boozer, both of whom were All-American in 2002. Bench would still be dire, but at least Sanders and Horvath would have one more year experience than in 2001 (they each started a game in 2002!). You don't have a single player as good as 2001 J-Will, no doubt... but you have more roster balance than 2001 with Battier, you still have two All-Americans on the floor (and an ACC All-Defense player in Jones), and one could probably argue that the defense would improve without J-Will.

I think the difference in those two scenarios is probably negligible on the whole-- I just look for obvious roster holes in hypotheticals like this, and I don't think that 2001 squad without Battier can deal with any athletic wing player defensively.