Pippen trade years back

Because no team is trading two good players like Bonzi and Jermaine for a washed up cancer like Pippen who forced the team to trade him.

 

Rockets didn't have that much leverage in dealing Pippen, we we're lucky to not get saddled with an enormous contract in return for him, in my opinion.

 

You are so right , we only got worse from that trade and we gave cato 42 million dolars!!! back in the days Pipen+Somebody+Draft pick was worth J.Oneal and Bonzi , too bad we got cato,walt,los,augmon and shaw instead .

Imagine this Lineup

J.Oneal/K.Wills
Griffin/K9
Taylor/Bonzi
Cat/Torres
Francis/Mooch

IR

T-Mo,Rice,T.Brown

That would have been a dynasty .

 

We should've kept Shaw and maybe Augmon. Look how well Shaw did on the Lakers.

 

I think the best we could have done was to get O'neal instead of Cato, only because nooone knew he would blossom outside of Portland.

 

Our mistake was signing Pippen to that big contract in the first place. Granted, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a terrible mistake in retrospect. So trading that big contract away can only be seen as a positive, regardless of who we got back.
The big problem is that the Rockets turned that positive into a negative by handing out yet another terrible contract, this time to Cato. I understand the rush to court Pippen, with his six rings and all, but I can't understand why the Rockets rushed to throw so much cash at Cato after just one great pre-season game.

 

I'm not sure we ever really "had" Shaw and Augmon.

Perhaps my memory dulls with time, but I thought they were just thrown in to even salaries, and the agreement was the Rockets would cut them so they could resign with Portland, or wherever.

 

When the trade was made Cato showed more potiental than Oneal. Its easy to say they made a mistake now but then it was a gamble and a guess.

Pippens trade wasn't the only one like that. We gave up a bunch of scrubs for Francis, Barkley, and Drexler. There were many other also.

I thought they should have went after Mcdyce insteed of Pippen but I understood what they were tring to do.

 

I remember reading articles and listening to 610 when Rudy and others spoke of the trade. I remember them explicitly inquiring about O'neal. Portland was not going for it. They had the upperhand

 

I think that was a classic example of Rudy's offense. Here is a guy known for working inside 20 ft his entire career, yet we had him playing like Matt Bullard. It was sad to see, it also was his decline. In retrospect, we could have gotten more than that for him. SA will be in the same boat when Dunca will get ready to leave. Its tough when you know a player needs out, you can never get value. With a commanding salary of 14mil per, we might be able to give sa some of our trash to get him, Tayor,Cato, and maybe a draft pick or something, but they will not get value. Detroit got Chucky Atkins and Ben Wallace for grant hill.

 

We did get raped on that trade. We could at least got one quality player out of it, we should of held out until they coughed up someone good. They really thought pippen would take them to the Finals.

 

People, we were in a total crap situation. We were trying to unload a guy who, while talented and accomplished, came with a price tag way bigger than his contributions, was proving himself to be difficult to get along with, and had gutted our leverage by making his trade demand public. In that situation, you get what you can, and what can get ain't great.

We could NOT get O'Neal -- not because anybody thought Cato was better, but for the opposite reason. Cato was available because Portland was high on O'Neal. And probably Portland knew Cato was a headcase, and yes, probably the Rockets should have checked that out more carefully, at least before throwing $42M at him. But the bottom line is, we got crap because we were offering crap. And everything else, starting with the immediate spin from the Rockets about what a stud Walt Williams was, was BS or self-delusion. End of story.

 

Really, I think the problem is more that we had some guys who didn't end up panning out as well as we'd hoped. The Rockets had been trying to get Walt Williams forever, and when he finally got here, he became a disappointment. Cato looked AWESOME at first . . . then we signed him to big money, and it's been downhill ever since. At the time, I think we were all hoping for more, but just getting out of that contract (and into another bad one apparently) was worth it.

 

I think Rudy is a sucker for a 3pt shot. Anyone remebering Matt Maloney's agent saying he had offers to play in Greece or somewhere? Next thing you know, he signs 7 yrs 21 million and then was waived. Personally, I'm against contracts longerthan 3 or 4 yrs unless the guy is a franchise type type, which we know it isn't that many of them. Other guys like Moochie, Taylor, and the Cato of the world, if you give them 3 or 4 yrs and it doesn't work, they can get ghost. Matt Maloney is layin up with a female somewhere getting paid by the Rockets. That was horrible.

 

We eventually did.... CATO

 

I get your overall point, but I wouldn't exactly call Horry and Cassell "scrubs." Horry's already collected a couple more rings and Cassell could very well get a chance to play for one. I'd say Phoenix got value for Barkley.

 

Maybe some of you forgot exactly how much Pippen is making compared to Cato.

Cato is making 6 Million Dollars...while Pippen is making 18 Million Dollars.

Kelvin Cato's salary doesn't get anywhere near as high as Pippen's...

 

Rockets traded 3 backup PFs and a good PG for a Hall of Famer.

That sounds like a good deal to me.