Ladies and Gentlemen, My masterpiece: http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61600 You guys should really check out the few threads that I've started. You will find: No threads with idiotic trade proposals. One thread suggesting an offseason signee (pike). Several threads saying that Rudy T needs to go. One thread guaranteeing all along that Van Gundy would be our coach, amid all the speculation that it would be Brown, Dunleavy, etc. Love me or hate me (and I know alot of you do), I am in the small percentage of posters on this board who don't flood it with idiotic crap, and actually knows what I'm talking about. Hey, lock this one up too, DoD.
yeah, but my dad can beat up your dad. all i know is that pike lit us up several times and i'm happy for him to finally get out of bball HELL!
ok seriously no joke, we're finals contenders, the lakers added payton and malone, and we added pike and badiane, LA your going down
Jimmy Jackson looked GREAT with Sacramento but trust me, he wouldn't fit in well with the Rockets. He tends to turnover the ball a lot and demands the ball in order to be effective (not with SF, Cat and Yao being here) I watched him play in Portland and he hurt us as much as he helped. Bryon Russell?! The guy is light years away from his days in Utah. To be honest, he sucks nowadays. He wouldn't add any value to the Rox. Now that we have Pike, we need a hard-nosed rebounding PF who defends and knows his role. I wish PJ Brown was still around or Ben Wallace STuart
PFs that you describe are much more expensive than 32yr old shooters like Piatkowski or guys like Posey (who can always be had). that's why we moved too fast on Kenny, imo. If we had KT right now, would could been looking to keep him, and moving EG for help elsewhere, or we could be packaging KT and EG together for a real star potential PF...or we could have got KT involved in that Kings trade. Teams would have been asking about him for sure...that's why Philly locked him up so quickly. bottomline: by keeping Kenny for the duration of the season we: (1) don't have a lull period while Posey/the team was adjusting (which hurt us), and (2) We just would have had much more trading flexibility than we do right now....starting with not being afraid to trade Eddie for a serious 3rd guard, for fear of leaving us with just MoT and a junk backup PF.
btw: does anyone else now believe that the Rockets summer strategy is to split the MLE across two veterans. And that that was the main issue with money for Posey in that we didn't want to do $5m in MLEs for two veterans as well as match $5m for Posey. If it were me, I'd still match Posey's 4yr, anyhow.
All true except KT, MoT and EG were all not happy with they way playing time was being distributed. Trading Kenny was as much about relieving the PF logjam before it started to hurt the team (a la Portland) as it was about acquiring Posey. The Rockets weren't ready to give up on EG and KT was far more tradeable than MoT. The Rockets made the wise move at the time to protect the team and be fair to the players (especially Kenny who had worked hard to drop weight for the "KT at the 3" experiement) while getting a chance to audition Posey for the job. According to CD: "Everybody knows we had an overload at the power forward spot, which has been talked about quite a bit. "We've been looking at different things we could do, and this was the most obvious thing we could do without waiting a whole lot longer. It's something we think will add to the team."
I understand this popular belief, but I think it is misguided for Rudy to have subscribed to this. I say screw worrying about Eddie's fragile confidence, if he clearly wasn't ready to start; screw that. When you have 3 guys wanting time, there are many coaches who would have just pissed off one player. And that player would have been Eddie, for his lackadaisical play. Eddie's play hurt our playoff chances way more than PT mgmt to not play him would have hurt us. Both the Posey transition and Eddie doing nothing hurt us more than necessary. I also don't subscribe to the philosophy that Eddie needed the PT more than we needed to make the playoffs as a team. Total team development in playoff experience trumps Eddie's development at age 20, especially since he didn't even develop given the PT. All you had to do was bench Eddie and give all the time to KT and MoT. That would have worked fine, and would have sent a statement to Eddie that he needs to work harder before he gets PT. Also, you could have eased him into becoming an NBA player by making him backup SF for a year...like Kirilenko. btw: for every Portland example you can give (which is overstated, imo, because it was more about implosion for different reasons), I can show you a Philly-like team who is stocking up on one position. Look at the Spurs, they now have 3 SGs, with the addition of Mercer. imo, Eddie felt like the chosen one, and KT flat out knew he was a superior player....and MoT was caught with still limping around knocking off his scarred tissue (which was acknowledged). That could have been handled better.
Definitely agree with you here, HP. Eddie could have played as a backup 3, with KT and MoT sharing the PF minutes. I think that EG has potential, but it wasn't wise to put all our hopes onto the skinny shoulders of someone like EG. Let's face it, he's no Garnett, as much as we want him to develop into one. The Rockets were blinded by the fact that we gave up 3 first rounders to get this guy to realize that he still had a lot of maturing to do. The logjam wouldn't have been too bad if we had let him play a tweener 3-4 position, instead of trying to change him into a post player. And after giving him so much PT and seeing him not produce consistently, I would have benched him and tried to teach him as the season progressed on the bench. I think he crumpled under the pressure, and we lost a good PF in KT because of it.
I would welcome Pike with open arms if he was an addition, but letting Posey go, considering that we actually lost KT too, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I hope they don't plan on making him the starter at 3. Pike probably would look great as our sharpshooter off the bench, but not as a starter. As matter of fact, all signs are pointing to Griffin being played at the 3, if you ask me... that's the only sense I can find in not matching Posey, which is a damn shame. If that's the plan, making Griffin a Shawn Marion type, he better start working on his handles ASAP.
I got to agree with you heypartner on Kenny Thomas. When the rockets traded him they lost alot of toughness, they lost their best defender at one of the toughest positions in the western confrence and they lost probably pound for pound the best athlete on the team. I think this team would have made the playoffs with Thomas starting and MoT coming off the bench. I would have done every thing I could to have kept KT a rocket.
Thanos, Are you saying that the Rockets should have matched the Grizz deal for Posey? Paying 6 million a year for a player of Posey's caliber is ridiculous, and would only add to the bad signings of Cato, Mooch, and MoT. I still believe that CD is going to pull a trade to get a starting caliber 3 in here, remember we still have Glen Rice's contract, which is looking very valuable right about now.
Yes, I'm saying they should match. A starting salary of 4.5 million, the MLE is cleary not overpaying for Posey. If there's one player the Rockets BADLY overpayed that's Moochie. Cato's not nearly as overpayed as some label him, and Mo at the time, showed promise. It's his injury that doomed us. What IS ridiculous is saying that Posey is NOT a starting caliber 3. There aren't a lot of SF's on the league that are as better than him as you are saying. There was no need whatsoever to fill a need that was already filled by Posey. Why look for a 3 in a trade when you already have one? Rice's expiring contract should be used to bring in the right 4 to play next to Yao or a more suitable backcourt mate for Francis. Your entire thinking is flawed because the Rockets themselves wanted to keep Posey, and have decided against it because Les suddenly has gone cheap on us. And considering that he has gone cheap, all signs point to Rice being kept and his contract expiring to keep us SAFELY away from the dangers of the luxury tax... Never mind that Yao is a cash cow, Toyota has probably paid big time for naming rights and Les just got himself a shiny new arena to booth.
You misread by post, I didn't say that Posey wasn't a starting caliber 3, I said that CD should trade Rice for a starting caliber 3. I was a big fan of Posey, but just don't think that he's worth the money he's getting from Memphis. If I were CD and Les I would go to Jerry West, since he's looking for another C, and offer him Cato for Battier/Brevin Knight. West gets his size, we get a starting SF, who I think fits better than Posey, and a solid back up point who's contract expires at the end of the year. I'd then go to the Heat and offer them Rice/Mooch for Brian Grant. Grant contract is huge, but he's reallt replacing Cato's and Mooch's. Grant could be our starting 4 as well as the main back up to Yao. These two deals would make us the 6th best team in the West. If only CD and Les though like me.
no, he's referring to the self-serving piece of crap post of rocketfat.. I dont know why I even bothered clicking on the "show single post" link... I knew there was a reason why he was on ignore..
thanks for the warning. Now you know why I couldn't figure out who Oski was talking to. btw: off to Behad's. Hope to see you there.
You guys take this as if piatkowski is some all star or something with the attention u giving him lol..he's a 32 yr old matt bullard role model. I don't blame u...we just got worst becuz of Lakers, Spurts and Wolves just got better and what's worst the west just got better and we got worser losing posey. Why the hell did we trade kenny. ..if i ask that i should ask = if u can get sprewell(all star) for van horny(underachiever(scored 2 points in elimination match at playoffs))...then y o y didn't we get a blockbuster trade instead of signing a washed up veteran piakowski
