[ClutchFans] Keep an eye on Deron Williams, because the Rockets sure will

He is responsible for this team being a .500 team. If Dragic and Flynn were playing and Lowry was gone we would be 3-11. You act like he is just "getting his". The guy is contributing in a lot more ways than just scoring. Come on you know this.

 

That's a good way to look at it. If you had to trade everyone then I think we would suck unless we got Howard. But I wouldn't mind sucking because I trust Morey to find role players and I know that stars are hard to get. Plus we would at least have a shot at Howard, which we currently don't have. I also think if Deron were on this team as currently constructed then we would definately be in the playoffs, but I realize it would take more than Lowry to get him.

But you need elite talent to win in this league. Everything, even rebuilding, should revolve around obtaining that type of talent. Lowry is not that type of talent.

 

When did I say he wasn't contributing? He's the main contributor to us being a mediocore, on the outside of the playoffs looking in basketball club. It's no surprise that we are in our current position because teams that don't have stars are usually in our position. I do think our supporting cast is good enough to be a playoff team if we had a star player. From reading the boards over the past season or two it seemed like everyone else thought the same thing but suddenly don't in this thread.

 

I think that is a strange and unfair comparison Clutch.

The Clippers didn't have a player that was arguably BETTER than Chris Paul.

 

Would you spend 3x more on a car with similar specs but with an exotic look that makes you stand out and more attractive to the lady of your dreams? Another way of looking at it

 

Are you then arguing Lowry is arguably better than Williams? I don't think that argument can be made yet, but maybe you've got some numbers that back it up?

 

You have to trade talent to get talent. It doesnt matter how amazing we think lowry is. He is the rockets biggest trade asset but its not that high. Might as well use him to get the team to move in a different direction.
Scola, martin dragic and pick was barely enough to get 31 year old gasol and most hated it. Clutchfans has issues when it comes to evaluating talent. Deron might be sucking now but thats actually a good thing. If he was playing like we know he is capable of, then it would be near impoosible to trade for him. If his contract was as good as lowry's then it would be near impossible tp trade for him. Sometimes you have to take a risk to move forward.

 

I'm pretty sure every number backs it up at the moment.

Contract and age numbers included.

 

What are you talking about? Pre-Deron trade the Nets were on pace to get another top 5 pick in the lottery. By this time they'd be fielding a lineup of Devin Harris, Derrick favors, that top 5 pick and that center they have (forgot his name). Next year? They can add Anthony Davis to that mix.

By doing this trade they gave all of that stuff up, and face the prospect of DWill leaving for nothing. Even if they manage to trade D-Will and get Lowry and Scola, is Klow and Scola worth Derrick Favors, Devin Harris, that top 5 pick and next year's pick?


As far as Clutch's post, Houston and the Clips are different because in the Clips' case their franchise player is Blake Griffin. In our case our franchise player is for all intents and purposes Klowry so its not the same thing at all. Also in the Clips case CP3 already said he'll agree to an extension before the Clips signed him. In our case it will be a mid-season rental before D-Will leaves us to join DH and Dirk in Dallas.

 

If you base it on stats alone the numbers back it up. They post similar points and assists but Klow has 6 rebs compared to D-Will's 3. Not only that Klow is younger and 3x cheaper. Factor in Houston having a better record and a stronger schedule then everything points to Lowry being better.

 

@ Icehouse: First, stop saying we are 'struggling to make the playoffs' after only 14 games. It's dumb. Wait at LEAST another 25 games to say such a thing, because at this point in time, it is ridiculous.

Second, it's clear that you have simultaneously both an inappropriate hate for Lowry, as well as an inappropriate love for Williams. This is causing your arguments to be illogical. The idea that you are just giving a complete pass to a player who you yourself admit is 'dogging it' because he 'doesn't think his team is very good', it is absurd. A player in his position should be doing everything within his power to elevate his bad team to respectability. Someone like, oh, LeBron James did that for years in Cleveland. As it is, this is not the way for Williams to entice a smart GM into giving him a max contract. Oh, he will probably GET one, from some bottom-feeder GM desperate enough to overlook such things. But if Williams is willing to 'dog it' NOW, how is he going to play when he lands a max contract but ends up stuck in Cleveland or Milwaukee or somewhere like that?

In the end, as far as the potential 'deal' is concerned, there is ONLY one way in which it would be something that should be done: that is if making the deal with Williams GUARANTEES Howard will come here, and unless I am missing something, that is impossible to guarantee, especially now that Morey has already been accused of tampering as it is.

As far as Lowry is concerned, and that ephemeral 'superstar' label: I am going to use an analogy, some of you will understand it, don't be embarrassed if you do.. :grin:

Years ago, I used to play a game with my kids called Magic: The Gathering. If you don't already know, that is a 'collectible trading-card game', where you can go to comics shops and buy rare, more powerful cards, to boost your 'deck', to make you more likely to win the 'duels'. You can also buy pre-packaged 'booster packs' of cards, usually 15 cards or so, but you never know what you are going to get, common, rare, unique, etc etc.

The value of the most rare and powerful cards would steadily go up, until it would reach some kind of market equilibrium. Sometimes, as newer cards hit the market, the once-powerful and expensive cards would drop in price and value, others would suddenly become much more valuable even years after release simply because of some newer card that would work well in combination with it. And so on and so on, etc etc you get the picture.

Now the analogy is this: we want a superior winning 'deck' of cards (our team). Everybody agrees that a 'average' deck is going to eventually lead to 'average' results. Therefore, logically, it becomes a necessity to procure a more high-value card or cards to add to our deck.

So, we go to the comics store. We look in the glass case, and get all glassy-eyed looking at the Dwight Howard cards, and the Deron Williams cards, and we imagine how awesome it would be to have those cards in our deck. But when we see the price tags on them, we cringe, because we know we only have x-amount of dollars in our pocket, and it just ain't gonna be enough. So, we realize we will have to trade away some of the decently-valuable cards we already have, in addition to forking over almost all our cash to buy the Williams card, and then HOPE we will somehow be able to also get the Howard card (because we know that one without the other is going to make our deck go down in flames).

It's a huge risk, a huge gamble, because we know that, while the Howard card would go really well with the Williams card (at least that's what all the magazines say), we also know that someone else may manage to snag that ultra-rare Howard card before we do, and our big gamble just bit us right in the face.

Is it a gamble worth taking?

We look over at the rack filled with the booster packs. Sealed, you never know what will come in them. But, you also know that it was in one of those very booster packs that some other kid found their Howard card, someone else found the Williams card in there, someone else also found their Rose card, their CP3 card, their James card, their Wade card, heck even that poor old Yao card we used to have, that got destroyed in the washing machine - all of those ultra-rare and powerful cards, they all came from the same place. And they are cheap, and everyone has the same shot at getting one of them.

So what do you do?

There's no denying that luck plays a large part in all of this. And yes, it also matters where you are standing in line when the boosters are released - first in line has a much greater shot at getting one of the really great cards.

Morey firmly believes in two things: paying for the already-valuable cards any way he can, and also spending hours and hours with his calculator trying to come up with ways to find great value in under-valued cards.

So the draft is 3rd in line. And as long as we remain in this middle ground, picking outside the top-10 every year, luck is probably not going to be on our side.

So that leaves, developing our own under-valued players, trying to turn them into high-valued players, so then we can maybe trade one of them for one of the *really* valuable cards.

So then, it's back to square one, and the only real question is this: is the Williams card REALLY as valuable as we think it is? Is it possible that the Lowry card we already have might actually be worth more in the foreseeable future? And will we have a reasonable chance to acquire the necessary add-on of the Howard card IF we decide to gamble everything on the Williams card?

This is high-stakes stuff, and it requires careful consideration beyond 'he's a superstar'.

As for myself? I have no idea. It's out of my pay grade, so to speak. I have seen a heck of a lot more of Lowry than I have seen of Williams, and I admit that I am biased. My instinct tells me to keep Lowry. But I am not the GM, Morey is, and all we can really do is trust that A) Morey will make the right call and B) Stern keeps his stupid nose out of the way.

But man it would be so hard to deal with Williams, in one way. How many former Jazz have we had on this team anyway?

 

They conclude that LeBron is producing in the same level during the regular season of the top 5 players in league history (of course, his career isn't over so the stats are only incorporating his prime years so it remains to be seen if he ends up there).

The stats also conclude that Robinson was statistically more productive than Olajuwon in the regular season (mostlyl on offense since PER doesn't do a great job of accounting for defense.)

You don't actually need PER to see this though - it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Robinson's 29 pts -5 assists > Olajuwon's 24 and 3.

Obviously, in a head to head matchup in the playoffs 1995 Olajuwon dominated him....and you can argue that that makes him a better player, I certainly would. So...uh how does this relate to anything? Williams is better because he dominated Lowry in the playoffs? Huh?

 

As a fallback, perhaps we could try to revive the Gasol trade, but with Deron going to LA instead of CP3. There are recent rumblings of a potential Deron to the Lakers scenario:

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/...-angeles-lakers-players-deron-williams-stakes

A possible trade might be: 1) Deron and Petro to the Lakers; 2) Gasol to Houston; and 3) KMart, Scola and Dragic to New Jersey. This would be a push on the Dwight Howard front, as both the Lakers (via a Bynum swap) and NJ (via free agency) would still have a shot at him. In fact, this would free up more cap space for the Rockets this summer, perhaps even giving the Rockets a shot at him in free agency. Probably not, but being left with a starting lineup of Lowry, Lee, Parsons, Gasol and Dalembert would be an upgrade, with 2 potential all stars and three good role players in the starting lineup.

 

So you are saying Lowry is a better basketball player than Deron Williams?

 

Now that would be interesting, and we could get our pick back, I like it....we would still get Pau though, right?

DD

 

Lowry does have better stats than Dwill this season, but what was it 2 seasons ago where we all watched DWill average 25 and 10 in the playoffs and by himself win 2 games against the eventual champions.

I love Lowry and hope he can stay a Rocket, but it's naive to say he's better than Dwill.

 

I would like to have a Ferrari 458 any day over the GTR.

 

Yea its crazy people are saying that after 15 games while Deron has been an elite level player for many years.

Btw Deron is only 27, some of the posters make it sounds like hes in his late 40s.

 

And that conclusion would be 200% wrong. Magic Johnson has never hit LeBron's PER avg (27.04). Are you going to argue that he was never as productive in the regular season as LeBron James? Stats, smats.

So in other words, your advanced stats have flaws?

It depends on who else is on the team and what the needs are.

It relates because advanced stats tell you that David Robinson was better but those advanced stats don't tell you that Hakeem had a post-game, which actually made him harder to stop when the going got tough and Robinson didn't. The advanced stats tell you that Magic never had a season as productive as LeBron even though he won from day 1 and didn't completely dissapear under pressure (difference between playing bad and just "not playing"). Advanced stats don't tell you that Deron Williams is a deadly closer but Kyle Lowry isn't. But again, if advanced stats tell you Lowry is a better PG than Deron we will agree to disagree. Just note that those same stats tell you LeBron is better than Magic, Bird & Kobe, and Robinson was better than Wilt, Duncan, Kareem and Hakeem.