It has been onl two years ago when the Rockets unleashed a barrage of 3s on their way to a record offensive rating. It was a good plan then and its a good plan now. However, having a good plan count for **** if you have tasked a bunch of cheap Benny Hills to execute it.
There are two and only two paths forward for this team: 1) Blow it up. Harden, Westbrook, everyone. Gone. 2) Give Harden and Westbrook fake injuries and have them sit out the rest of the year. Hope you draft someone good in the first round. Make one more legit run next year. THESE ARE THE ONLY TWO PATHS. Now YOU must choose.
tucker can't score. he doesn't force turnovers. he doesn't protect the rim at all. covington is the better shooter, better defender, better at generating turnovers, better rim protector. he does in fact move the needle. however, he comes with his own risk (knee) and of course it would be better to have both but we can't so I'd rather the better and younger player. I do agree that moving Clint remains an option. it sucks that they had to give gordon an extension. his ending contract was valuable. how we probably have to attach an asset to offload a 31yo guard on a long term deal.
I never said P.J. Tucker was better than Robert Covington. My point is the Rockets need both Tucker and another elite 3&D small forward or power forward if they want to have a prayer of salvaging this season and winning the Western Conference. If you swap out Tucker for Covington, they do get a little better, but the gaping hole at either small forward or power forward still exists. Finally, there are other ways to get Robert Covington that don’t involve giving up Tucker. It just depends on if Fertitta is willing to let Morey pay the price.
Don't need to BLOW IT UP, just a HARD RESET. A significant role player trade should do it. Example, Whiteside+Skal for Capela+Tucker+Filler or similar. Would improve the Defense without blowing up the system/style of play. Both teams give and get here but regardless enough of a stun to hopefully get players engaged.
we know tilman isn't willing to pay. so operating with the idea that we have to stay under the tax means we can't have two good forwards lol. you can have one, and that's why I say go after the better one. MDA isn't going to play more than 7-8 players in the playoffs anyway.
that's a problem in itself already. so it wouldn't matter if you only have 1. this team isn't really all in when it should be and we have a stupid owner to thank for that
correct. I would say if we used the full MLE and paid tax last year we probably win the championship just by having more depth. more regular season depth would've put us in first place. we would've played the warriors in the WCF when they were all injured instead of their full team in the second round. if we had one or two more decent players on the roster this year we would easily be in second place in the conference and looking at a WCF appearance against probably the lakers who will be relying on 35 year old lebron and Mr. Questionable to play tonight AD to actually physically make it to the WCF. I'd say we would have a great shot at beating them and going back to the finals. but instead, we are facing second round losses the rest of harden's career unless tilman decides to go all in.
