Grantland-Simmons: Reference to Rockets needing a David West type player

how many championships has david west won? asking for a friend...

 

I don't know, we've had teams that take superstars and surround them with talented vets. That was pretty much the entire Yao/McGrady era, and it took us how long to make it out of the first round?

The key for us is figuring out our core and keeping it together for a few years. We're lucky to have a lot of young talent on the team. It is time to bring in some vets. But there's still a lot of work to be done between tweaking the roster and winning a championship.

 

Simmons may not be spot on on everything but he is correct that leadership is an issue that needs to be addressed. It is hard to go deep into the playoffs if everyone seems to be running around with no direction and undisciplined play goes unchecked.

Putting David West into a system that discourages midrange shots though, might muddle up the team's identity even more. When Dwight Howard had that monster 1st half as the Rox repeatedly fed him into the post, did they get any significant lead vs the Blazers at any point in that half? No, because at no time in the past couple of years were they a low post team and to force that in the middle of a playoff series most likely will not work.

And it is foolish to think that we were really a play or two away when with the talent level we had, it should not even have been that close if some semblance of leadership came from either the coaches or star players.

 

Talented vets? Yao and Tracy? Umm, no, they never actually played a playoff series together surrounded by "talented vets", they played playoff series surrounded by garbage, and then they took turns being injured when the team had talented vets, but never the two did meet.

 

He has won more 1st round series than Morey, though.

 

Think we need an elite PG. Someone who can stop Chris Paul, Lillard, and Westbrook from getting into the lane at will, but who can also score themselves when needed.

So I would go young. Not old. Feel like we need some height and quickness combo at PG.

 

I think trash is a strong word. We had some decent vets, they just tended to be overpaid or injury-prone. Finding a cheap, durable, and serviceable vet is pretty much like winning the lottery.

2004-05 Playoff Roster

Code:

Rk                  Player Age G GS   MP  FG%  3P%  2P%   FT% TRB AST STL  PTS
1            Tracy McGrady  25 7  7 43.0 .456 .370 .488  .824 7.4 6.7 1.6 30.7
2             David Wesley  34 7  7 40.0 .352 .476 .273  .692 3.0 3.3 1.3  8.1
3                 Yao Ming  24 7  7 31.4 .655      .655  .727 7.7 0.7 0.3 21.4
4                Jon Barry  35 7  0 26.1 .438 .478 .400  .875 4.1 1.3 0.7  8.6
5                 Bob Sura  31 7  7 26.0 .435 .538 .394  .667 3.9 2.0 1.0  7.9
6               Mike James  29 7  0 24.4 .468 .000 .547  .958 1.9 2.3 0.9 11.6
7               Ryan Bowen  29 7  3 17.9 .320      .320  .667 2.0 0.9 0.9  2.6
8            Scott Padgett  28 7  4 15.6 .375 .417 .333 1.000 2.7 0.6 0.4  3.6
9          Dikembe Mutombo  38 7  0 14.4 .545      .545  .769 5.0 0.3 0.3  3.1
10          Moochie Norris  31 2  0  3.5 .000      .000       0.0 0.0 0.0  0.0
11   Clarence Weatherspoon  34 1  0  1.0                      0.0 0.0 0.0  0.0

This team had lots of vets, but Juwon Howard went down and we didn't have a starting PF by the time we got to the playoffs.

Bob Sura later got hurt, costing us significant cap space. Jon Barry was cheap but only had a couple decent years left. Moochie never lived up to his contract and was traded for peanuts. Howard's contract was always bad given his production.

A couple of years later, significant changes to the roster:

2006-07 Playoff Roster

Code:

                                                                         
Rk               Player Age G GS  MP   FG%  3P%   2P%   FT%  TRB  AST  PTS
1          Rafer Alston  30 7  7 309  .338 .320  .375  .769  5.6  4.1  8.9
2         Tracy McGrady  27 7  7 280  .394 .250  .435  .737  5.3  6.6 22.8
3         Shane Battier  28 7  7 272  .451 .442  .500  .875  2.4  2.0  9.5
4              Yao Ming  26 7  7 260  .440       .440  .880 10.0  0.8 24.4
5           Chuck Hayes  23 7  7 197  .706 .000  .750  .400  8.2  0.5  4.8
6          Juwan Howard  33 7  0 157  .400       .400  .636  7.1  1.6  8.0
7           Luther Head  24 7  0 141  .306 .261  .385  .500  4.9  2.0  8.2
8       Dikembe Mutombo  40 7  0  40 1.000      1.000 1.000  9.9  0.9  8.1
9           Kirk Snyder  23 3  0   9  .333 .000 1.000        4.0  0.0  8.0
10           John Lucas  24 2  0   8  .000 .000              0.0  0.0  0.0
11   Vassilis Spanoulis  24 1  0   3  .500       .500 1.000 12.0 12.0 48.0
12      Jake Tsakalidis  27 1  0   3                  1.000 48.0  0.0 24.0

This team had a good starting 5, but we had to move so many bad contracts the year before (Weatherspoon waived, Moochie Norris traded for Maciej Lampe, Vin Baker waived, Derek Anderson traded for Gerald Fitch) that we had problems filling out the bench. Bonzi Wells was our big free agent vet that year and he was a total flop.

My point here is that it's way better to have youth and be looking to add experience than the other way around. Vets are great, except that the good ones are expensive and cheap ones tend to have reliability problems. We've managed to avoid taking on bad contracts to build a team this time around, so we're in a good position to add talent.

 

we had marcus camby promise to be back in the playoffs. what happened to that? morey is too cheap to add veteran presence to a young team with not much playoff experience. its moreys fault for being too cheap.

 

They do have an Ibaka, his name is Howard and he is way better. I like Ibaka so fundamentally I agree, we need a junk yard dog. I would prefer one that works the perimeter. Rondo, Courtney Lee.....etc

 

Lol no. Just no. We had hot garbage surrounding Yao and Mac. Talented vets would be players like the Mavs had in Jet Terry, Finley or the Jazz had in Okur, AK 47 etc.

 

Alright, smarty pants. Tell me how we're supposed to build a team like the 04-05 Mavs, whose starting lineup put them over the salary cap. We're talking about a team that had to let Steve Nash walk because they had 4 MAX PLAYERS in 03-04 and couldn't afford to keep him.

The Jazz are even harder to emulate, for two reasons. First, no Jerry Sloan player has ever left Utah and played better than they did for the Jazz. Second, the post-Stockton/Malone Jazz were built through the draft (AK-47 and Deron Williams) and two free agent robberies of teams in salary cap hell that couldn't afford to keep restricted free agents (Boozer and Okur). The only team that comes close to pulling the moves that Utah did for Boozer and Okur are the moves we pulled for Lin and Asik, our moves just didn't pan out as well.

What hurts your argument the most, though, is that NONE of the players you mentioned were what I'd call "vets" when they were acquired by their teams. Your players were either drafted by their teams (AK-47) or acquired as young players (Finley - 2nd year, Okur - 3rd year, Terry - 5th year).

I just want to know who these quality vets are, and why aren't we signing or trading for them? How are we going to find more experienced, reliable, hard-nosed leaders as upgrades in starting positions on this team, without giving up someone like Parsons?

 

Every team in the league needs one of those. You know why?
Because he doesn't exist.

 

The young guys need support and guidance for the the playoffs.