Analyzing and assessing our championship aspirations

No Bosh.
Personally, I am glad that this charade is over. Bosh would've been a nice addition to our squad talent wise and would've been the missing length and athleticism required to challenge the Lakers frontcourt. To be perfectly honest, my main reason for wanting Bosh has always been because Morey was after him. My faith in our GM was primarily why I supported the efforts to go after Bosh. I thought, "Hey, if Morey's #1 target is Bosh, then he must be great for us." That being said, I don't think that losing out on him means that this has been a waste. By putting our name out there in the mix amongst other teams, we have established two things: 1) our team has the assets to offer teams attractive packages in a s&t scenario, whilst retaining enough of our nucleus to be competitive. This type of message will be enticing to owners with struggling franchises and stars on non playoff teams. 2) Houston is committed to winning and is willing to pay max money to acquire top level talent.

So where do we currently stand? Right now, the Rox are a midpack western conference playoff team fighting for homecourt advantage. We are a good team but not true contenders. This might be enough for a lot of other teams, but Les and Morey's motto is "championship or bust". Therefore, the one and only question we need to address moving forward is; How do we make the Rockets into championship contenders?

I wanted to analyze our team in order to determine where we can improve. The 2010-2011 Rockets are Yao/Scola(re-signed)/Ariza/Martin/Brooks w/ Hill, Patterson, Hayes, Andersen, Battier, Chase, Taylor, Lowry(re-signed), and possibly B. Miller. Our quality and depth on the bench is our greatest strength at the moment.

Yao-He will never be the clear #1 option on a championship team, but his importance to our championship aspirations is comparable to Gasol's role with the Lakers; no Gasol=no championship, no healthy Yao=no championship. Like it or not everything rests on Yao so he will not be traded.

Scola-The downgrade from Bosh to Scola is something that I can live with. He is EVERYTHING we want from a PF and a perfect complement to Yao (sans the length and athleticism). Is he a championship caliber starting 4? If the 5 is a healthy Yao, then yes, I absolutely think so. Besides, he is already a top 10ish player in his position and so upgrading would be very costly with only marginal on court improvements.

Martin-As with any player, Martin has his weaknesses. However, he is also already a top 10 player at his position and so the same principle I've stated with Scola applies. In addition, Martin offers an extremely unique skill set that Morey believes is beneficial to the team's success. He will not be traded unless we acquire a superstar in return.

This brings us to the two starters that are most likely to be traded. It's not because the are poor players, but more so because they are the 'weakest' links on a good team.

Brooks-He is coming fresh off of a MIP season and is the classic sell-high candidate. The combination of his salary and youth that makes him so attractive to other teams will degrade in value next year, even if he improves as a player this year. But, his ability to create his own offense and his 3point shooting ability is extremely important to the Rockets so he will not likely get traded unless we can get Chris Paul or such. That would be the pipe dream if N.O. can't stay afloat this season but unless something incredibly stupid occurs on NO's side, this is not going to happen.

Ariza-This is the most likely candidate to be shipped out. He offers good value but the things that he provides to the team are the easiest to replace. The likely targets would be AI2 or G. Wallace. Will either make us true championship contenders? I would love to find out.

My point is this. We are a good team without Yao, great team with him, and championship contenders if we can get an upgrade at the PG or SF position. Not overpaying for marginal upgrades or bad fits this summer might be our Plan B. We can afford to wait till the midseason deadline to go all-in.

 

If Yao is healthy we are a 55+ win team.
We need to be a 60+ win team to be true contenders.
Morey's words.