This past season completely sucked, even if we did get into the playoffs. Like I said, Rockets fans who have been around have higher standards.
Those years were special to me, like I said, it's when I first started really watching basketball. I fell in love with the sport and team during the 09-10 season and will always remember those first couple of years because of all the new experiences I had following the team, watching them perform, the draft, everything was new and exciting for me. I really enjoyed watching them, I personally love watching a team overachieve, and hate seeing teams under achieve (13-14 and 15-16). I don't care if they didn't make the playoffs, this years team made the playoffs with a worst record and embarrassed them selves which was horrible. AB was far from a perfect player, he was undersized, couldn't play defense, was a SG in PG's body, he wasn't great I know that, but did have a great season. Yes him increasing his efficiency while increasing his volume of shots like he did while being the focal point of the offense was special. In almost every case, when the volume increases, the efficiency goes down, when you become the number one option, the efficiency goes down, when you combine both and the efficiency goes up, it's because the player has made a big improvement. AB stepped up big time that season for Houston. As for being a Rocket fans who's "been around", sorry I wasn't born yet when the Rockets won championships, I started watching basketball when I was 12, in 2009. I saw some of the Rockets playoff run with Artest/Yao against the Lakers but I didn't follow the season or basketball that much at the time, the 2009-10 season the first season I REALLY stated to follow the nba. Sorry my standards aren't as high, I hope I can reach your level of fandom one day bro.
No fan should ever root for their team not to make the playoffs when they can, since the future can be unpredictable, though the loss of the draft pick did sting a fair amount. You ever wonder what people mean when they say the 3 point shot is more efficient? Shooters tend to become more efficient with more shots. Like I said, AB did improve at the long ball and shot a lot of them. That was definitely his largest area of improvement. It is also a statistical fact that he improved very little elsewhere. Did he play with heart and leave it all on the floor, absolutely. Did he improve significantly as a player, I suppose we will just have to disagree. Metrically and per the eye test, I would personally have to say no. Oh and remember how I said his efficiency did improve? I was actually being generous there. His PER was 16, which is barely above average. That said, it was also the peak of his career and he never really recovered as a player after his injury. Another point of reference, Lowry who was a backup and couldn't shoot that well yet, was nipping at his heels with 15.5 PER. Again, not very good stat, but Lowry outshined AB in most other places regardless. Since when did we consider not making the finals and barely being over 0.500 "overachieving"? We didn't overachieve, we achieved exactly what we were; a team not good enough to even make the playoffs. Overachieved would be if they made the playoffs. They performed up to standards considering the best player on that team was arguably Scola who I also loved as a "recent" Rocket. Last season's team did arguably better than any lowlight seasons as well and it was a poor season where lots of different things went wrong. You can say that you hate it, well here is a hint, so do all Rockets fans. No fan likes to lose unless we are tanking and even then we don't like it, we just would deal with it. Difference is however, we recognize standards. We recognize there is a standard to achieve (championships) and "they did their best simply" doesn't cut it for most. Neither does "they sucked and underachieved" either though. You can appreciate and love AB all you want, just try not to glorify him or the season the Rockets had. It was a failure of a season that should have gone one way or another. You can argue that they played as hard as they could, but they ended up exactly where they were supposed to, which was "just not good enough".
I'd take AB over Prigioni personally, but a 3rd return would probably not be the best thing for anyone in their short career.
