[Poll] Revisiting the Melton trade (I no longer call it the Ryno trade)

The trade was a cap savings move. I dont think Morey ever thought that Chriss or Knight would be serious contributors to this team. Knight makes 5-6M a year less than RA, and Chriss is in his final year, which means he might be attractive near the trade deadline for a team looking for an expiring contract.

The question I dont know the answer to is whether Morey appreciated just how bad Knight would be upon his return. I dont know if he will improve appreciably (I mean he has to, right?), but man he is awful. He is basically unplayable. He shoots under 20% and almost all of his shots are taken without a defender near him. Teams are intentionally leaving him open and he cant hit the broad side of a barn. To make matters worse, he absolutely sucks at defense, and a slow Dwayne Wade at 36 years old was giving him fits (Knight couldnt stay in front of him). Ryno was a liability against the Warriors - yes - but he was useful much of the season, reliably hit threes here and there, and could spell minutes for others. Knight and Chriss give us none of that and we cant seem to trade Knight even if we basically give him away with a first round pick as a thank you.

At this point all we can do is continue to pull for Knight, see him get minutes, and hope he begins to improve on the court and show something resembling NBA talent. I am hoping Morey and Tillman bite the luxury cap bullet (easy for me to say) and hold on to the draft pick and then leverage his expiring contract next year as part of a trade. This team needs to get younger and faster, and trading away draft picks isnt gonna do that.

 

I did not expect Brandon Knight to be *this* bad

 

As much as the homers want to argue, Morey has become washed whether it's his ability to make decent deals or to spot decent talent. What the hell does he see in players like MCW, JR Smith, Nick Young, or KCP. Any other team's homer fans can make the excuse that the GM just sees the potential, so let's not go that route. When you're competing, you want to go with the familiar, as well as someone who simply fits your system. This was a trade to save money and nothing else. It would reflect on him even worse if he actually saw potential in those two players versus Ryno and Melton.

 

Brandon Knight or Chriss are not taking the Rockets over the hump either. They were trash before and now as well. Stop trying to justify Morey's weak decision this season.

 

It sound like knight is a good player and has huge trade value.
You don’t know basketball and you don’t know market.

 

Melo is better than knight and 70% of teammates, knight could be treated like Melo after 10 games,

 

road ryno + melton > knight & chriss

 

Yes, still love the trade.

 

Gordon is on his 30th game and people are still willing to wait for his "slump" to end.

Let's give Knight another 10, and not expect him to be a really good player. That's the only realistic outcome, that he's good enough to be better than most people's 3rd or 4th guard off the bench.

The trade was stupid. Melton could have helped us more with all the backcourt injuries, and he would have a higher ceiling in terms of the next 4 years. He could be the guy who brings down Paul's minutes over 4 years, seems like a perfect backcourt mate to a guy like Harden who handles the rock most of the time. Capela, Melton, House, Clark is a very well priced nice group of role players for the future.

Knight and Ryno are a wash. Guys who can shoot, will get burned on defense and try their best in other areas.

We saved $4m NEXT season (i.e. Chriss's contract expiring). Wasn't worth it. It's going to end up costing us another pick to dump Knight. The price for trading Ryno for an expiring was 2 first rounders, and to outright dump him for a TPE was apparently 3 first rounders. Instead we traded Melton (easily top 20 player in this draft) and will need to trade another first to get rid of the Knight contract. If the price was always going to be 2 firsts, we should have just dumped Ryno and 2 firsts early last year and maybe we would have been able to spend the MLE on a wing this past summer. Maybe we would have been willing to take on Dieng to convince the Wolves to send us Butler.

A lot of maybes. I think Morey is one of the best GM's in the NBA, but this is an outright screw up. He wanted to hit a home run, and it ended up shattering a championship calibre squad.

 

ryno could shoot(he had best or second to the best 3% on the team last year) not sure about knight tho.. for now he cant shoot
had we kept ryno we would be no 1 seed right now

 

Read again. I’m making the argument it’s a means to accomplish an end.

 

Not going to vote. The "end game" was always pretty clear and we are not there yet. That said, the factors you lay out below clearly show "at this very moment" having Melton would have helped.

I give Morey the benefit of the doubt on his moves but will call him out if they fail. He failed on gambles with Melo and MCW.

We'll see if he fails to turn Knight(+ FRP) into something. Or Chriss into something. We'll see if he fails to add a buyout using MLE money. Or we'll see if that was just a Tilman cash saving move.

I'll wait until those things materialize before passing judgement.

But for now, Morey failed to get a serviceable backup PG to reduce CP's minutes. That could have been Melton. So at this moment, that doesn't look good.

 

More than anything the MCW fail is the killer. Such a poor fit. Rockets were trying to get too cute with MCW and how he would work in a switching defense.

Over the summer a player such as Shelvin Mack, would have made a better backup PG choice. He signed with Memphis at VET MIN. Mack was on Orlando last year. And according to @Codman the Rockets had some interest in him at last year's trade deadline.

Put Mack on this team to soak up PG minutes and it is a different story. I mean, we just need "average" PG play. Not the fall off we have now.

 

Always a treat reading your posts, @BigBum. Predictably, your response brought nothing to the table.

I wasn’t making the argument Knight is a good player with positive trade value. I’m just making the argument he’s more movable than Ryno. Huge difference.

Nobody wants a $20M dinosaur that camps out at the 3-pt line and can’t shoot the three. He’s a fringe NBA player at this point and clearly declining. There aren’t many teams that utilize a PF the way we did at his peak as a Rocket.

At least with Knight, in theory, you have a player that belongs in today’s NBA. Obviously, he’s looked pretty bad and is still shaking off the rust, but his chances of securing a spot in an NBA rotation are way higher than Ryno’s are at this point. Smaller contract + that possibility means in terms of negative value, one is far worse than the other.

 

I expected everything we've seen from Knight. He went almost 2 years without being able to play near game speed. And even before his injury he was a defensive sieve. If Lou Williams had the same injury and recovery time, he'd be in the same spot. I don't think we / any team can expect much from Knight until he has a full offseason of strength and conditioning training.

 

I think Ryno would at least be able to give us 10-15 regular season backup 4/5 minutes, and Knight has only just recovered from his injury. I don't think that would make a large difference to the team but it would certainly help especially with Nene out early and Melo checking out.

However, similar to Melo, I don't think Ryno was mentally with this team after his injury and MDA - while tactically brilliant - doesn't strike me as an excellent locker room motivator.

 

Ryno is averaging 3.7 points per game this season in Phoenix. You think we would be the #1 seed with him back? He can no longer play the game of basketball at a competent level. Losing him and Luc benefitted the team

 

Obv that was a wrong move I mean getting rid of Scrubberson is a major win but BK is nowhere near ready, if we got healthy BK then it would have been a steal. Melton was also doing great as a rookie for us I think he would have been Bev 2.0 under Cp3s tutelage too bad we let him go.

 

Scrubberson would be a negative every sec he was on this team and he would get in the way of Clark.

All these ROFs just dont quit, the scrub cant even get mins for PHX and you think Rox can use him? Wtf!

 

The Suns knew Knight was damaged goods (of course), which is why they made the trade. It was a dumpster gamble, which I usually like from Morey, but there was almost no chance of payoff this season. The MCW signing compounded this gamble. We needed a high-floor, low-ceiling type of guy as a cheap third guard.

Meanwhile Anderson is shooting 20% on 3's, scoring 3 ppg in 18 minutes. YUCK. What a fall from grace for a guy who was once a 20 ppg scorer.

Melton was the only non-garbage in this trade, but we had to sweeten the deal to get Knight's garbage contract for Anderson's garbage contract. Chriss is just filler.