"Washed up" Chris Paul is the best clutch player in the NBA and will be in All-Star Game this year

No they don’t...The rockets possessions per game has increased from year over year due to the greatly improved rebounding. Just offensively, we went from rebounding 15th to 4th year over year.

 

Pace? Possessions would come from the increased rebounding. Maybe I misspoke earlier.

 

Could we have gotten Ourbre last year if we hadnt tried to trade Ryan Anderson as a salary dump?

 

I know I’m much higher on Gary Clark than you, but we don’t give young players much of a chance to develop with the main team.

 

Yes, possibly.

The Anderson salary dump came from ownership (Tillman doesn't like paying players to not play) and was a disaster.

 

Kelly Oubre is playing like the best player on the Suns right now and its killing me maaaaan.

 

I really think a majority of it is that the Rockets have not had a single #1 pick since MDA has been coach.

MDA inherited Capela and Harrell when he took over as coach. He increased both of their minutes his first season as coach. Both were in his rotation. He played Capela 25 minutes and Harrell nearly 20 minutes a game. Hell, Harrell's minutes went down with the Clippers. Even Decker got almost 20 minutes a night with MDA.

There really hasn't been a lot of young good players for the Rockets over the last 4-5 years. MDA turned Capela into a starter. Harrell and Decker were both gone in the Paul trade.

The first drafted players MDA had were Onaku and Qi. Neither of them are NBA players. The next year they took Dillon Brooks and immediately traded him away. They drafted Hartenstein when he was 18 years old, and he went to the G-League. The next year they drafted D'Anthony Melton and he was traded before the season even started.

They signed Gary Clark as an undrafted free agent. He played a majority of last season and got 13 minutes a night, even though he shot 34% from the floor and 29% from 3.

I am not claiming that MDA is Popovich at developing players, but he has had almost nothing to work with.... which happens when a team goes 4-5 years without a #1 pick. I would like to sneak in some minutes for Chris Clemons but that is hard to do with the quality of players ahead of him and with his defensive issues.

Hartenstein has earned more minutes and likely will get them. However even he has defensive issues.

 

Fair enough. I was surprised by how much Clark and Hartenstein played last year when I checked the numbers, especially Clark.

I feel a lot of that would be garbage time and not the type of development that builds a viable second unit. Nothing to back that up, but I still mostly stand by my statement. Agree to disagree.

 

This is true. Playing at a faster pace works both ways. It benefits the rockets if they can count on their defense while also being as efficient as possible. But yeah this is a middle of the pack defense thus far

this is why slowing the pace down vs the gs dynasty is able to work bc you want to give them the least amount of chances to score as possible

 

This just shows that Tilman doesn't understand how salaries work in the NBA. In a normal industry, you can just fire a guy if he is not performing up to his pay. Not in an environment of guaranteed contracts. You have to give up some assets to dump a bad contract. Sometimes the assets you pay might be more valuable than the salary you dump if you are not careful.

 

Chris Paul’s first year here was amazing and we kicked ass, took names. We also had the right mix of players that year.

we still don’t have replacements for Ariza or LBM - those guys really held us during stretches where we needed defense. Those guys don’t exist in this current team.

the biggest flaw in the management of this team is a tough pill to swallow. We thought because GSW bounced us each year that we could continue to ‘run it back’ - cause the warriors are done now - we’re right there, right? It’s ours for the taking?

wrong, we still never replaced those players - and now we just try to out score everybody. We don’t have to beat the warriors, now we need to beat the clippers or the lakers or the bucks. What’s our strategy there?

we got caught slippin, and fertita hasn’t helped. But our current team as constructed is super flawed. The core of westbrook and harden can work - but we don’t have the right mix of players around them. Which is why we’re still talking about Chris Paul.

 

I agreed with you until the last line. Paul is such a cerebral player that almost any PG replacing him has big defensive shoes to fill.

Think about the defensive ability of a Capela-Tucker-Ariza-Moute-Paul lineup. That was the anti-Warriors-death-lineup-lineup. Deadly. For small ball offense we could run Paul-Harden-Gordon-[any wing]-[any wing].

I don't know why we thought we could replace that with James Ennis or Thabo Sefolosha.

 

all I know is that Harden is having the best season of his career playing next to Russ

all I know is that Harden wanted Russ over CP, and there’s no telling what would’ve happened if he had to deal with another season with the dude

 

Just thought I'd check in on this washed up CP3 thread after the Harden Russ nuggets game see how everyone dealin with it

 

I'd still rather have CP3 if confident he doesn't break down in the playoffs. That's a big if but when he's on the court, he's a better fit to Harden.

The main benefit Westbrook brings is upping the pace.

 

CP3 had a pretty nice closing couple of ins in the Dallas game tonight, he looks a bit springier. It is what it is now so I don't think about it too much and Russ when playing smart and under control adds many wrinkles to this team CP didn't we shall see how it all plays out in the end

 

If Westbrook had CP3's shooting touch, I would be confident they would take any team in a 7 game series.

Westbrook's lack of a outside shooting touch really backfires on this team on some nights.

 

14-2 run by cp3 and the thunder to close it out against the mavs

 

If Westbrook had CP3's shooting touch, we probably wouldn't have Westbrook.
It's the old, "if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle" daydream scenario.

(Not that I daydream those things... just sayin'...)

 

. I do agree with your CP3 analysis IF we had an Ariza/Moute fix but we don't unfortunately .. in the meantime, I think Russ will continue to "unlock" Harden at a pace we haven't seen or rarely seen in the NBA... also...can the Rocks keep the pace at the 120 range+ I'm waiting to see cuz they are clearly trying to keep the score high out of range to comepnsate for the Ariza/Moute problem