Do you believe our 2008-2009 team was a contender?

Yea absolutely. Great scoring with Great Defense, big men(pause) and a bench!

 

Had T-Mac been healthy for that year, most definitely.

 

We were a contender without T-Mac and if Deke had not gotten hurt vs. the Blazers we would have beaten the Lakers and the Nuggets.

 

How is this even a question? For those with short memories....


ESPN 2008-2009 Power Rankings Before the Season started. Rockets ranked #4.

 

I never agreed that they held on to Yao/TMac for too long. All these talks are hindsight talks. By the time they/we realized both of the guys were too injury prone to be relied on, everybody else in the league also knew that. They became untradeable. The only way they could trade McGrady was as a huge expiring contract. And because it was so huge, it was extremely difficult to find a trade partner. It just happened that NY wanted to clear out their cap room for the LeBron sweepstakes.

 

That team was absolutely a contender. At the time, there was no reason to believe they should have blown that roster up.

 

I wanted McGrady dealt the year before, when he wouldn't run the offense and was resistant to Adelman. That would have gotten us more than 53 wins in '08-09, since he lost many games for us that year that would have been wins.

 

That was the best team we had in the 2000's.

Tmac just had a good year in that 22 win streak season, Yao Ming played in the Olympics and was healthy, and then add Artest, they were a contenders.

And if we traded Tmac for VC during the tradedeadline, we probably would've ended up with a championship.

 

I personally think that was the best Rockets team since like '97. If only McGrady hadn't screwed everything up and our two centers had would've stayed healthy, look at our playoff roster:

Brooks/ Lowry
McGrady/ Wafer/ Barry
Artest/ Battier
Scola/ Landry/ Chuck
Yao/ Deke

They get past LA, I think they win the championship.
....
Then, you have the "other" guys like Dorsey, Cook and James White

 

Bust that was an impossible scenario, there is no way ANYONE would ever do that at that point in the season. Impossible, just terribly impossible for any GM or owner, or coach to do.

 

That team really had that feeling, didn't it?

Shades of Brando in "On the Waterfront" - "We coulda been a contender!!"

That was a very very exciting run....talk about too bad re: Deke's injury. I remember that vividly; seeing him go down and his body language showed how much pain he was in. It made me sick to my stomach to watch.

 

I guess it all depends upon how you define contender. Historically, you really need to be a 1 or 2 seed, not a 5th, to have a real shot at the championship. It can be done from number 6, but that's pretty rare. Glad as all get out that it was the Rockets that did it however.

It was nice at the time to actually have two stars in Houston, but there were signs that they were not the ones to take us to the promised land. Their games really did not seem to mesh most of the time. Neither had the killer instinct. And the rules of the game were moving away from old formula of one dominating big man. My admiration for Yao just could not make him any faster, as the game kept speeding up.

I am not quite sure just when the writing appeared on the wall, but at some point we had appeared to be just plain fragile. It was unlikely that two stars would just fall apart, but they did, and we hung with them. It may have taken some giant ones to pull the trigger on both of them, but riding their trade value down to near zero has put us in the situation we are in now.

Twenty-twenty hindsight sure helps a lot, but we had some assets at the time, and some really meaningful moves could have been made. Shoulda, coulda I guess.

 

I wanted a blowup when Yao went down after the Lakers series.

TMac and Yao already had 4 or 5 seasons of injuries. It was a little more than obvious that they couldn't handle the regular season grind, but it was a slow boil with peaks and some nice moments to throw fans off that we were always holding off for "next year".

The Yao era was like watching Lost. Big premiere season with a great ensemble cast of quality characters. Some twists and turns. Ultimately a disappointing and unsatisfying finish.

 

i won't say 100% they are but if not they are extremely close.

 

So I guess the answer is no. It's very bold to suggest they blow up the team in 2008. 2009 not so much. By then there was hardly anything left to "blow up."

Personally, I think the Rockets got the most out of McGrady they could by just waiting for his contract to become expiring...I think that was the only way a team was going to take him...immediate cap relief.

I really don't know if our future would be that much different if a determination was made in 2009 not to continue with Yao and T-Mac. I guess seeing what Morey does going forward from here should give us a better idea how things might have unfolded.

 

Should have shut down McGrady in the 07 year when Yao went down.

McGrady would have had 10 months to recover.

 

What are you referring to? The VC trade? I though VC for Tmac trade was discussed if Tmac didn't declare he would undergo surgery.

 

Thunder sure did change pretty quickly. From the worst team in the league to contenders.