Incoming Players DeAndre Jordan 6-11 C from Texas A&M 4.3 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 0.2 apg in 14.6 minutes Marcus Camby 6-11 C from Massachusetts 10.3 ppg, 11.1 rpg, 2.0 apg in 31.1 minutes Outgoing Players Brian Cook 6-9 PF from Illinois 3.0 ppg, 1.3 rpg, 0.2 apg in 6.9 minutes Joey Dorsey 6-9 PF from Memphis 0.7 ppg, 0.3 rpg, 0.3 apg in 2.1 minutes Shane Battier 6-8 SF from Duke 7.3 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 2.3 apg in 33.9 minutes Now we have SIZE!!!!!!!!
There were reports back then about it, you can google it or something, but i remember there were reports, not rumors, about West wanting to move up to get Morrison and after the Gay trade he wanted to try and get Morrison again...now the Gay +pick deal may have been speculation, but he definitely wanted Morrison more. Playing it safe doesn't mean you'll turn out mediocre. It just means you get guys who you know can and will produce and try to get them at as good value as you can. And i did say it's not the way to go when you're trying to build something like LA was when it went for kobe. Shaq was traded in part because he didn't want to be there and there were drama unfolding, you're giving their front office too much credit for that one..and do you remember who they traded butler for? Laron Profit, Kwame, and Atkins. Like i said, sometimes it's a home run, sometimes you strike out. And you forgot to point out they were handed Gasol on a silver platter, othwerwise they'd be right in the middle of the pack with us. I also never said that was the best way to go, just pointing out that they were taking a safer route and that West does make mistakes sometimes and isn't as flawless as it seemed you were implying..
I don't think his value went up any...he's just getting more attention, it's not like Wafer where he had a breakthrough season. Battier got a lot of attention from the NY times piece, the job he did on Kobe that game last year on nat'l TV, and then this year with the run houston had, he emerged as their emotional leader, so he got even more attention and more mention. I think NBA teams realize this, so if they want him it'll be for things he usually does.
Dude, what are you smoking? Its obvious you know nothing about the game or what value certain players add. First of all nobody can stop Kobe, however, what you can do is force him to take difficult shots and thats what Battier did. And u will see how much more feedom he has as they move further in the playoffs becasue you will not find another player to D him up like Shane. Whatever your smokin get off of it...SERIOUSLY!!!!
It's funny how you arbitrarily decided to end the discussion once you were asked a series of questions. Just answer the questions. We're all waiting for your responses. I'll repost the questions later so that you don't have any excuses.
I know how to click back to previous pages Kwame, you're just use to erasing past pages from your memory.. And i believe you're the only one waiting for my response. If you don't know where i stand after several pages over several threads, then a few questions isn't going to get you there. I know where you stand and I know you won't budge from there, so any more discussion about that subject is pointless.
Good, I don't need to repost them but I will if I have to. I've modified my position from Battier being traded to becoming a 15-20 mpg bench player so you're wrong in saying that I don't budge from my position. So stop using that as an excuse in not answering the questions. Stop making excuses in general. It's pathetic. Also, it's not a few questions, it's 6 of them. Please, share with us your insights by answering those questions. You don't have anymore excuses or reasons to avoid answering them. Just answer the questions.
I'll bite on the Battier debate. I know you dislike the guy, everyone's entitled to their opinion. That being said, it has always seemed thast you refuse to acknowledge the intangibles a guy like Shane Battier brings to a team. No doubt, he is not an offensive player. He had a poor year shooting the 3. If you watched him in college, you would have known that his ceiling was a great role player on a Championship caliber team. His basketball IQ, court awareness, defensive prowess, and leadership are few and far between in the NBA these days. I hated the Rudy Gay trade when it was made. I hated it for years. In fact, it was not until this years Playoffs that I actually understood it. You put Rudy Gay out there, and we may not see the end of the first round. Right now, he's a good scorer on a bad team. No defense. No making his teammates better, no work ethic. Who knows what he's going to be. I'll tell you this, he's a long way from helping a championship caliber team. I want to know your opinion on Artest. Do you think we should resign him? If so, why? What do you feel his market value is? i would bet almost anything that if Battier hit the FA market this off-season with Artest he'd have double the suitors. Not everything is always about scoring points. Finally, I will agree that I wouldn't mind having Shane be a 20 minute guy off the bench. The problem is we don't have a SG or a SF. Artest is not better then Battier. He's going to get overpaid and we are going to regret it.
You dont even know what the argument is anymore....i wrote a while back that you don't even realize how much we agree on shane's play and role...most of my arguments have been about his trade, your comments about it, and the value and availability of players back then....your view on that won't change. As for shane, my view is simple. You don't trade him unless he's part of a bigger deal thats going to bring you a big name. If he stays, i don't care how much he scores if the team is winning, as long as he's not hesitating on open looks or backdoor cuts, things like that. If the team is losing, then you cut his minutes back and see what someone else can do for you. All this i've written about before.
Yeah, I can agree Shane brings some of those things, but the fact that you practically don't have to guard him on offense either cancels or outweighs a lot of the so-called intangibles. 15-20 mpg from Shane off the bench is cool, but over 35 mpg from him and he becomes a liability. Moving Battier to the bench will be easy once T-Mac's contract is traded for a playmaking wing and backup center. Also, the whole point of this thread is that since Battier's market value is ostensibly the highest its ever been, shopping him to see what you could get is a good idea. I like what Artest brings even though it seems you don't like him, but you're entitled to your opinion. He brings intangibles himself like toughness, leadership, etc... He also has a unique skillset that most players in the NBA do not possess. There aren't many players who can hold the other team's best player under 20 ppg while scoring 20 ppg at the same time. He struggled at times due to injuries that didn't allow people to find their true roles on the team. Also, he was never brought here to be a primary scorer. He wasn't even that in Sacramento, it was Kevin Martin. So that added weight and responsibility hurt his performance a little. But it's all good, it's not like the Rockets gave up a lottery pick or anything for him. Market value for a player like Artest is 8-10 million per year. I see nothing wrong with a deal that gives him that much per season for 3 or 4 years especially since the Rockets, for reasons that have already been explained, will not be much of a player in 2010. It's win now remember. Cool, thanks for the response. I still, however, want you to answer the questions I posed in a direct and specific manner. What are you afraid of? If you aren't afraid of anything, just answer the questions!
It was an exaggeration, i just said it since i figured thats what you expected to hear. I do like him as a player though. This seems to be a loaded question, since some of those guys don't do the same thing as Battier. Bowen is close. Ariza/Pietrus aren't as good defensively and better offensively, but not as technical/detailed. To sum up what shane does, i noticed this season how he keeps his hands up waiting for a pass to cut the time it takes to bring his hands up to catch, but what surprised me is how he doesn't put them down until his teammates shoot, realizing there's a small chance they'll have to pass in mid-air and he'll be ready for it. The moment they release the shot he snaps out of it and goes to the glass. I guess it's things like that you can't measure. Guys sometimes get stuck in mid-air and end up throwing away the posession because everyone else has their back to them, aren't ready for a pass, or left their spot. Obviously it's a small thing, but it's not that easy to be consistent with it or you'd see more guys doing it. Most people remember it as shane for gay, so if we're looking at it that way i'd say it's an exception also, where houston felt they really needed shane to complete the "team" and were willing to give up someone like Gay who was potentially worth more to get him. However, it was really swift and gay for shane. From what i understand getting away from swift's contract enabled Houston to make some moves later on. I don't remember what moves exactly, but i think i read it freed them up to eventually make the deal that brought scola here. If that's true, then i don't think it's as one sided as it seemed or that much of an exception, since teams routinely give up more talent on paper to another team to get out of bad contracts early, so they can make better moves earlier also. That's the hindsight bias again. Looking back it now, knowing we could have used Gay to replace tmac, or help that 07 team score more, then yeah i'd say (and have said) that it was a mistake, but only because i know how it turned out. However, it wouldn't have turned out much differently as far as playoffs results are concerned. Yao would have still been out in 08 and 09, tmac in 09....Gay and an injured Tmac weren't gonna take this team very far in 08, and Gay alone was going to takes this team past LA this year. He's still too young and inexperienced. You also have to take into consideration the roster changes had Gay been kept. We would have never drafted another scoring 6'9 wing player in Greene, and therefore, may not have had the pieces to acquire Ron at all. Who knows if Scola would even be here since that would mean keeping Swift. Who knows if we even trade Rafer since we only drafted brooks to be that possible third scorer we needed, if we have yao/gay/tmac, then a third scorer wouldn't be a priority. We could have had rafer/tmac/gay/landry/yao starting this season instead...and then come playoffs rafer/wafer/gay/landry/yao...then against LA rafer/wafer/gay/landry/chuck....of course you have to factor in who we drafted instead of Brooks, if we kept bjax or traded him, etc...but i can't see how we could have came up with better than we had this year after al the injuries. Without looking back though, i can't say it was a mistake because i still believe if everything went according to plan (no injuries and Yao turns out better, like 27 and 13 or so), then we would have at worst turned out like the Pistons, one ring, but several conf finals and/or finals appearances, which may not seem like much, but i think the league is too talented lately to have any kind of dynasty, so even one ring is quite an accomplishment. I didn't follow his career closely early, so i honestly can't tell you why. That's probably been the weakes pro team he's been on though so he hd a diff mindset. Gasol was a rook, White chocolate wasn't a great scorer, then it's Lorenzen Wright, Dickerson, swift, not much great or consistent scoring there. My guess is when he entered the league he played Duke basketball since that's all he knew, had this new role to adapt to next to tmac and yao, where the idea was pretty much " give them the ball and get out of the way", and i think he adapted too much to it over the first 2 yrs and it took a while to snap out of it late this year when his scoring was needed. Usually people that are that detailed and technical about their job can't really make a significant change on the fly like that. I expect him to go back to working on his individual offense this offseason though. At that point for the plan they had in mind, yeah. Also, Shane's regression isn't going to come as quickly as you think. I know you've said this year's poor regular season performance was due to his decline, but i think he showed late and in the playoffs that it was an injury issue and still is the same battier. I don't think his offensive issues are due to regression. Not sure what the rockets' D prior to shane has to do with the question. I've written before how it was due to JVG and he sort of passed the torch on to shane/deke/chuck, who have been said to be (by the coach and players) the defensive leaders and examples for this team since JVG left, therefore keeping the D top notch. If shane goes, deke retires and chuck is on the bench, who's going to take over in that role? Not Ron, he's too caught up in his own battles to direct a defense. And like i said previously, i dont think his value went up, he's just more popular....NBA teams know what he brings and what he doesn't and it's nothing new. What houston can get depends on who they're trading him to and their reasoning. If a team like phoenix finally decided they needed some serious defensive perimeter play, then i can see them offering barbosa, but he doesn't fit here so no deal would be made anyway. It would be a win now move similar to what houston did, but again, they'd have to believe that's the direction they wanted. If they continue to believe offense will win them a ring, then obviously shane is not worth that much to them. Again, that's what i mean by a player's value changes, it's not always fixed. It's fixed salary-wise only.
Thanks! Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Also, this notion of Swift's contract allowing the Rockets to make moves later on is false. The reason a player had to be included along with the lottery pick was to absorb Battier's contract. The Rockets actually added a slight amount of overall salary with that deal if I remember correctly. Thanks for finally taking time to answer my questions.
I'd like to make an offering to the gods in hopes that they finally kill this thread once and for all:
I disagree that Shane's lack of offense cancels out most of his intangibles. I would love to get a good SG or 3 man for Mac's contract, but that remains to be seen. Like i said, I don't have a problem bringing Shane off the bench. I don't have a problem starting him if we can land a good SG. Really, it doesn't matter to me. I'd entertain trading Shane. In fact, I'd entertain trading anyone on this team if the price was right. We need a shake-up. I don't dislike Ron. I think his skill set is declining and he's overrated. I don't think he brings much leadership to the team. That's ficticious in my opinion. He does bring intangibles to the table such as toughnesss as you described. He's no longer a 20 ppg scorer. He can't handle the ball, can't create for his teammates, and can't create his own shot. He's now a jump shooter since he has abandoned his post game (which I found to be extremely effective). Maybe he's just not a fit in this offense. I don't know. He was brought in here to bring offense, and he didn't do a good job of that. His defense was a far cry from what it was even one season ago. 8-10 million per year for Artest? I'd like to see if the market honestly dictates that. I see him as a 6-7 million dollar a year player for 3 seasons. Just me though. It is win now. I agree. We just disagree on Battier and Artest's value relative to each other.
No sh it! I've ignored this thread for a long time and popped in this morning because I just can't believe the title is still bold. 25 pages of this?
RV6, like I've said many times, it wasn't about Gay as it was a young talent. Lets say it was gay, which it really wasn't, there were moves made that wouldn't have been made by the team. You keep bringing up swift and his contract, but that was a mle deal. That means that all a team has to give up is a 4m player. Mle type contracts get moved all the time. Not to mention that if you take into account a rookie contract at 8 vs shane's contract, that's different money. The landry,scola and brooks deal couldve still been made. Maybe we don't get artest, but its also possible we don't need artest. Artest was brought in because the team didn't have a quality 3rd scorer. I can tell you right now that gay is probably a better scorer than anyone on this team with the exception of a healthy yao and mcgrady. So that also means you probably still have last yrs draft pick. Its easy to explore and talk about the possibilities and its even easier to have theories and pie charts to diagram intangibles if that's what you want to do, but when you really watch and understand basketball, you don't have to do all of that. I've never said shane wasn't a good player, I just think he's a good bench player unless you can afford to insulate what he does offensively. First it was chuck,then rafer, and now shane. He is the last of the ultra limited, jvg era players playing big minutes. Once the team either moves him to the bench or trade him, they will be a more efficient offensive team. Many think they would nosedive defensively, I go back to pre shane when the lowest they ranked were 6th. I'll take 6th defensive and maybe 8th offense any day.
