To read this stuff on the Chron feels unreal. This blogger must have come from New York with a secret mission.
If he goes then Bye we could just pick up a cneter/pf that is an aggressive typr pitbull that can give us 15/10 consistently and this team will be fine. Trade Tracy's contract for a decent player then we are a faster and even more tougher team that runs Adelman's system better.
Maybe that's the reason why he thinks Yao is not a super star. Yao must be compared with Hakeem. Yao could be the best center ever in some franchises, but obviously not in Houston.
I'm not comparing him with Hakeem at all. But even if he were better than Hakeem, it wouldn't matter...because he can't stay healthy enough when it matters. 4 years in a row of season-ending injury. 3 ofthe last 4 seasons he's missed at least 30 games. Those are the key stats. What he does when he's on the court is very good. I love the guy as a player. But if he can't stay healthy, it doesn't matter. And I don't think, as he ages, that staying on the court is going to magically get easier for him. If the solution to injuries is to lessen his minutes....then I don't think he's worth a max contract.
Yet some people still can't wrap their brain around this fact. How many seasons/years wasted because the franchise has two injury prone superstars.
I agree 100%. If Les is going to protect his investment he and Morey need to have a serious talk with bothYao & Tracy about their future with the Rockets. Yao neeeds to play a lesser role,with reduced stress, reduced minutes and become only a second or third scoring focus, he should not play the stand still back to the basket position, thus stopping all the wresteling matches that he has to put up with,playing this way he might last longer. This new role will not deserve a max contract. (Same goes for McGrady if Les decides to resign him) Both McGrady and Yao are damaged goods and need to realise that their next contract is possibly not what they are expecting.
The thing is: where would rocket be without the two injury prone superstars? Would they be better off? Maybe if they are lucky in the draft. But it's also possible that rocket just becomes another clippers or warriors. Two injury prone superstars at least give you hope for a title each year. W/o them, you may spend most of your time studying draft prospects than worrying about playoffs.
What title hopes? Who honestly thought this was a championship caliber team come playoff time? Every year we're limping into the playoffs PRAYING to get past the first round. We FINALLY broke through this season. The Warriors have advanced as far in the playoffs as the Rockets in the past 5 years. I think Morey is smart enough to not give up either Yao or Tracy for nothing. But what we have isn't working. The goal isn't to merely get out of the first round of the playoffs.
I don't know where you get your stats, but I would be a bit more prudent with the numbers if I post them up on my favorite sports team's fan site, especially when I tout them as "key stats" to diss a player. Below are the numbers of games Yao played in each of the last 4 seasons: Code: Season Games Played 05-06 57 06-07 48 07-08 55 08-09 77 I guess I don't need to tell you how many games there are in an NBA season, so it's not exactly a rocket science to figure out how many games Yao missed in each of the last 4 seasons. Also if you may recall, Yao didn't end the 06-07 season with injury. I know (and many other, too) you don't like Yao, that's OK. But it takes a lot of guts to goof up two numbers in a row in broad daylight, I have to admit.
You don't read the GARM that much do ya? Pretty much every year, 75% of the GARM believes were the #1 team in the NBA and that anybody on TV who says we're not is a 'hater'.
1. I like Yao. He's a Rocket, so I like him. He also seems like an excellent human being. 2. I read the 30 games number elsewhere without "fact-checking" it. Having said, that...if you're playing a maximum of 57 games over a 3 year stretch, you're missing a helluva lot of basketball games. And I don't think it diminishes the point I'm making. You're right...he missed 25 games in 05/06....I said 30....still roughly 1/3 of the season. He missed 27 and 34 in the others. That's an average of 28.6 games per season over that 3 year stretch. Pick nits with it all you want....but he misses too much basketball.
LOL, if only the NBA can cut the season short to 50 games a year....than Yao = Cal Ripken jr in consecutive full season games played.
I haven't been in the thread before. Sure, that's a legit question Rockets should consider. But consider the following: 1) you are not likely to get another dominant low post player for Yao. Plus, if it comes to you HAVE to trade Yao Ming, I doubt the return would be too high since everyone knows they have another shot through FA. 2) The team needs to be rebuilt. Those nice PF tandem named scolandry? They won't be as productive or useful once Yao is gone. You have to find other pieces that fits the new identity of your team. 3) There would be at least another 5 years till Houston gets out of the first round again. If you look around the west, and think realistically about the players you can get once Yao is gone, that's a reasonable estimate. 4) Do you see the sticker about clutchfans on 1560? That would be reduced at least once Yao is gone and the team enters the rebuild mode. It's not like Houston is a town that is crazy about basketball even they are not that good. We've been through that before, think of the SF years. 5) Those local Rockets blogger job? They are most likely to be under strain also. That's the most interesting question in that blog entry. Does the writer consider his job security when asking that question? I don't know which side of the risk Houston is more inclined to take.
so, I think a question can also be asked: Can Houston afford to keep as many paid sports bloggers in the next couple of years if it doesn't retain Yao? IMO, that's as legit a question as the original.
Yao has already exceeded Ralph's career in Houston by a lot. Sure, Ralph's first 3 seasons are arguably better, but after the injury he was never close to the same player. Yao has played 4 full seasons out of 7, if you include this season. During the 3 seasons where he averaged about 55 games, his numbers were the best they have been in his career. I think that argues for retaining him, and I expect us to. I also expect us to be nervous about his health every single year. Oh, and if he says he's going to play for China during the summers, then all bets are off. I'd trade him. Considering how he's held up, permitting summer ball is simply unacceptable. We've been more than fair. It is time for Houston to come first, especially if he expects a max contract.
Before Yao came to Houston, Houston is just a local brand like a no name hamburger joint in your neighborhood. Right now , Houston is a global brand with Yao just like McDonalds. Without Yao, Les is just an average Joe in China or in Asia. He knows it. He would not hava been able to tapped into those business connections so easily without Yao's picture on his business card. Yao's value to Les's business porfolio is beyond playing basketball. His primary goal is to make money just like any other business man. Why would those businesses advertise in Toyota Center if Yao is not on the Rocket team? They could have spend those advertising dollars with the Lakers which is much well known team in the basketball world and have a popular guy named Kobe in China. By the way, those ads are written in Chinese. They are directed at 1.3 billion Chinese, not to the people within 75 miles radius around Houston.
