[Charlie Pallilo] Thabo Sefalosha would have been a Rocket...

You meant well, but this is verrrrrrrry old news.

 

we knew this

 

IBTL

But how do we pronounce the guy's name? I wanna know.

 

many of us know this already but there are still some people whining about the Gay trade

 

I didn't know this.

 

It's pronounced Thah-bow (as in bow and arrow) Sef-o-lo-sha. Sha kinda like how you would pronounce shard.

 

Yeah, I remember that bit.

Too bad, in a way, that we didn't manage to trade #8 for lower picks, something that would have netted us Sefolosha and whomever else.

But we seemed intent that night on getting jobbed on trades, so I don't suppose it would have happened anyway.

 

I'd much rather we moved up and gotten Brandon Roy. I still think he can be something special in this league. A solid player, maybe like Michael Finley.

IMO, the trade for Battier was only justified when Bonzi fell into our laps through pure luck.

 

c'mon guys, does anyone believe some rookie, regardless how good they were, will get playing time under jvg, with our full spuard right now? be that thabo, roy, or whoever, if you don't get to play how will you show everybody that you are good. with some unbelievable poor shooting last night, novak still didn't get to play. can you expect anything else?

 

i've heard enough about the trade, the draft, and who we coulda had. can we stop already?

 

So Pallilo is so unpopular only one person heard this?

Thabo went 13th...picking him at 8 is a stretch. Was it Pallilo's opinion or would he claim a source?

 

Well, now that Charlie and Rich are no longer together on the same show, and can't be constantly tongue-ing each other on-air, it's now more difficult to tell who is the absolute worst Houston sports talk guy. In my opinion, hands-down, it's Pallilo. A bigger idiot you will not find.

However, now that they have been separated, Rich Lord seems to be making every effort possible to wrest that title away from Charlie. Since I have not listened to 790 even one time (why would I *deliberately* put myself through the suffering agony of having to listen to Charlie?), and because I think Mark Vandermeer is actually very good (I feel SO sorry for him being stuck with Rich), I often find myself listening to Mark and Rich while driving home, and believe me, Rich is no slacker when it comes to trying to be a champion moron.

So I would have to say that Charlie is still the reigning champion of suckiness on Houston Sports Talk, but Rich is a close second.

 

so why do this make criticism of how the rockets handled the draft obsolete, again?

 

Dude, I agree 100% ... case is closed!

 

Even it is true, there still needs a little clarification. When Rockets had their drafting plans, they knew they could get Gay at #8 or not? In so many mock drafts, almost no one could predict it. So at the draft scene, if we weren't bound to the agreement with West, probably we would have chosen Gay, it makes more sense. The actual drafting position of Sefolosha is #13, I don't think Gay will drop as deep as that. Anyway, all these are the past, whatever Gay will be, I will always root for Shane, because he is the Rocket now.

 

Germans Pearl Harbor Man Moon Truman etc...

 

GATER, the "source" was Jeff Van Gundy himself. He came out and said so on 610 AM a couple days after the draft.

 

Trading up to get Brandon Roy was the Rockets' Plan A. There was actually a deal in place with Minnesota for the T-Wolves to take Roy at #6. The Rockets would then draft Randy Foye #8 and trade him (plus cash?) to Minnesota for Roy. Unfortunately, Portland GM (and former Rockets GM) Steve Patterson caught wind of this deal and realized that he could get Roy. So Portland drafted Foye and made the deal with Minnesota instead of Houston being able to do so.

The Battier trade was the Rockets' Plan B. There was a Battier-for-Swift/#8 deal in place with Memphis before the draft, with the following condition: If any of six (6) particular players were still on the board when the Rockets came up at #8, then the deal was off. None of those players were on the board. (As an aside, I can only wonder who the one guy was drafted #1-7 who was NOT on the Rockets' list. We know that Brandon Roy was obviously on the list, as was Randy Foye, since he was trade bait for Roy.) Anyway, Rudy Gay was NOT one of those six (6) players. When Portland took Randy Foye and screwed the Rockets out of getting their #1 draft night option (Roy), the Battier deal went through as a fall-back.

If for whatever reason the Battier deal had fallen through (e.g., Memphis getting cold feet), the Rockets would have taken Thabo Sefalosha with the #8 pick. Jeff Van Gundy said exactly that on the radio (610 AM) a few days after the draft. RUDY GAY WAS NEVER, EVER, EVER AN OPTION FOR THE ROCKETS. People need to get over that deal. I, for one, would much rather have Battier than Swift and Sefalosha.

I hope this explains what REALLY happened on draft night 2006.