Watching the Rockets play over the last month or so, and looking at what we did against the Lakers two years ago in the playoffs with Yao and T-Mac in street clothes, I've finally concluded that it would be in our best interest not to pursue another superstar oriented team. With Yao's career almost over, I think it's time to move on with a different model of building a team. Rockets have some good pieces Brooks, Martin, Scola, and Lowry, but we need to perhaps add one more solid piece to the front-court with the next draft. At this junction, it would be much wiser to pursue a 2004-Detroit-Pistons type all-around team rather than breakup the core nucleus for one superstar like Carmelo. The league is no longer about one superstar and role-players winning a championship. The new "dream team" format is pretty hard and expensive to duplicate these days with multiple superstars. Every contender (LA, Boston, Miami) has two or more superstars plus a solid bench. With this kind of talent consolidation, the only realistic option for the lesser teams, is to go all-out money-ball and stack up talent and depth at every position albeit non-superstars but excellent team players. This is the model I would like to see the Rockets follow in the post-Yao era. Frankly, we don't have the pieces to acquire superstars without leaving the bench very thin at every position. Therefore, our focus should be on building a talent loaded team capable of attacking and taking the contenders by surprise.
I think for the No-Superstar model to work, you need to have an elite defense. The Rockets are far away from that, and if Brooks/Martin/Scola are going to be major pieces in the rotation I'm not sure its possible to achieve an elite defense.
True but then again, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton and Chauncey Billups weren't exactly known for their elite defense prior to joining the Pistons. I know Larry Brown molded that team into his vision of an elite defense. However, Prince and Big Ben were the only elite defenders on that team. So we can always add those kinds of players to the mix and often at a very cheap price. Also, I'm not calling for a coaching change. No, Adelman has be excellent with what he's been given the last few years. I think the burden lies on Morey to now come out and eloborate on his vision for this team now that Yao's career is over. The last few years, Morey was caught between building a contender with 2 superstars and finding valuable talent. Now the contender idea has gone sour, we need to first build a playoff team and then work from there. Before, we concentrated too much time and energy on finding that one missing piece which would put us over the top hence the Artest-like one year rentals. That situation has changed and Morey is now free to exercise all options both short and long term.
I agree. It will work for a playoff seat, but not for a championship contender, except we build up a very solid defensive team.
while the idea sounds good, i still disagree. Like others have already mentioned, that Pistons defense was a tremendous defense and physically imposing. Had length, and shot blockers on that squad. We dont have that with the current make up of this team, and I dont think there's a Rasheed or Ben Wallace type players available right now. There's a lot of talk of us trying to go get a superstar now because we have assets to do so with over $34mil in expiring contracts, young talent, and draft picks. I think if we have a shot at at least ONE superstar caliber type player, you go get it - whether it be CP3 or MELO (or in a dream world, BOTH). BUT, even though Les and Morey have said that they'd be willing to rent a player for half a season, i dont think that would be likely.
The reason that teams feel they need a superstar to win is because players aren't perfect. No matter how perfect the game plan is or how well the offensive system works, players will not always be able to execute it perfectly all the time. It will bog down, especially when refs swallow their whistles and the opposing team clamps down on D. When this happens, that is where the superstar comes in and shines. A perfect example is the Lakers. They normally try to run a triangle offense, but when the game is on the line or the offense stops, they dump the ball to Kobe and he makes things happen. It is true that you don't NEED a superstar to win. A superstar just makes things way easier for coaches to win games.
I love the hindsight 20/20 vision so many poster seem to display on this board. In fact, none of you said anything to that extent when Joe Dumars was quietly assembling his rag-tag bunch of misfits to take on the Lakers juggernaut. Most of those moves went completely unnoticed by the mainstream until the Pistons shell-shocked everyone in the Finals. So please spare me all this talk about elite this, physical that. I bet none of you would even notice today, right now, if someone else was building a similar team in the league to take on the Dream Team. Nope, most fans like to run with their superior understanding and knowledge after the fact. Look I'm not trying to start a flame war but please don't give me captain obvious responses. I'm here talking about building a sleeper dark horse type lethal team which seems easier to do these days because of all the media attention on the superstar moves like the coming Melo trade. In this climate, if Morey were to make his move then it would go completely unnoticed and would actually come at a fraction of the premium it would take to land Melo in Rockets jersey. All I'm asking is to forget the sexy pick and go with the deadly silent type.
We are giving captain obvious responses because the Pistons are one of the extremely few teams and one of the only that I can remember off the top of my head in the last 20 years that managed to win the championship without having a "superstar". They did it by having players commit to the gameplan and play shutdown D, all this Rockets team have proven is that they can beat lottery teams. Sorry we are being so obvious but this Rockets team won't win anything by taking the Detroit approach, especially since they are nothing like the Pistons except for not having a superstar.
You're using two team that don't even share the same philosophy. This "No Superstar" Idea you want to use while comparing to that Pistons team does not make sense. The Rockets are a fast paced high-octane offensive finesse team while the Pistons were a slow paced physical defensive "ugly ball" aka "JVG ball" style team. Its not as easy as adding a couple of good defensive players around subpar defenders like Brooks/Martin/Scola without a complete overhaul of the players and coaching philosophy to get to the level of the 04 Pistons A better comparison would have been the 2002 Sacramento Kings.
So if I understand you correctly you have: Compared Morey to Joe Dumars (which I find somewaht amusing) and you essentially want the Rockets to become another version of the Utah Jazz. Well, if it's a dark horse that floats your boat then relax because they don't come any darker (or sleepier) than the current Rockets' roster. Because if you're wanting for that sleeper to awake or that dark horse to show up, you're going to be waiting for a VERY looooong time. The NBA is a star-driven league. Always has been. There's a reason why teams win titles with guys named Bryant, O'Neal, Duncan, Pierce, Jordan, Olajuwon, Johnson, Jabbar, Bird and not guys named Brooks, Lowery, Hill, Battier, Miller, Lee, Williams.
Yeah this team is basically identical to those Pistons except we lack the most important piece, the big time stopper in the paint.
Going to have to disagree with you there. People seem to forget that Chris Webber was an MVP candidate year in and year out, not to mention possibly one of the best passing bigs to ever play the game. He had a perfect skill set for the high post, not to mention added some awesome defense.
I agree with you for the most part. We could build a very strong team that way. However, the other posters are correct in that Detroit had a very strong defensive team...much stronger than what we currently have. Defense is the primary weakness of this team, so that is what the Rockets should look to add. If Rox are able to add 1 or 2 strong/near-all star defenders (centers in particular)on this team without breaking the core that we have, then this team could go pretty far. I don't know if it is a championship team, but it could go far. I know that might be easier said then done. But with Yao's contract and the other TEs, plus a Jordan Jeffries, then we might be able to add a strong but not-superstar level defender that could take us deep into the playoffs. We shall see.
I'm just using that as the closet comparison in terms of the philosophy that team had was a High Paced Offensive team and even then that is a stretch because they had the 6th best offensive rating in the league.
