[Chron] Dick Justice:What can the Rockets expect from Yao next season?

actually apples to oranges, bynum is not as valuable to the lakers as yoa is to the rockets lakers can still win games without bynum and make the playoffs they have already proven it on multiple occasions, the rockets cannot win enough games conssitently to make the playoffs without yao, and they also suffer from bad shootingnitis

 

OK, we need another pretty decent center, like Deke.

Still, I think we can move up in the draft PLUS get a hot FA. But, we'll see.

 

You can not trade away quality players to build around Yao....you HOPE he gets better, and with his work ethic, I think he will be about a 32mpg player, which is 8 minutes a quarter.

However, I would hesitate to trade away players unless you are getting a SUPERSTAR player in return.

DD

 

That article was meaningless. He provided no quotes from anybody within the Rockets organization. Where does he get this 25 minute figure ?? BIG z had teh same surgery and played 30 minutes a game. Yao may never be as good as he was a few years ago but he will still be an star and a force to be reckoned with.........there is no reason to think otherwise.

 

LOL Captain Obvious to the rescue

yeah that was exactly my point, I was being sarcastic in saying apple to apples

 

Big z is way smaller than yao and he doesn't have the offensive or defensive load of yao. Plus look at the few years after big Z's surgery.

 

It is possible that two of the above mentioned players will not be on the team next season.

 

I love Yao as a person and have enjoyed most of his performances. However, he is very, very injury prone, and the Rockets are still trying to make him the centerpiece of their plans. This is illogical and unwise. For the last four seasons he has sustained a serious injury. I think the Rockets are making a huge mistake. I would make an effort to trade him a la TMac. Frankly, I have doubts that he will even return. If Yao is at training camp in the Fall, no one will be more shocked than me.

 

This is EXACTLY the point that has to be reinforced here, in my opinion, Hayden_SFC.

The pitch has been that Yao is the difference-maker for these Rockets. He is the Rockets' best chance of challenging for an NBA championship in the near future. An that's true.

If the idea is that such a run can be made with Yao topping out at 25 minutes a game as a "franchise" player, then that idea is doomed to fail.

Preserving or protecting Yao in the hopes of preventing an injury isn't commitment to winning. It's hoping that you don't lose.

That's not the way to go, to me. If you can't rely on Yao for large stretches of games (or if he's a situational player for you at this stage), then what you're saying is that he's more of a liability than he is an asset. And then you would have all of those looming chemistry issues (whether or not Yao could effectively mesh with a more up-tempo style of play), becoming very real problems.

It is possible that you could take advantage of Yao's minutes in certain situations (which is what happens with a lot of players), but you simply can't approach any game situation thinking that Yao's minutes have to be curbed.

The risk of injury for Yao, in truth, isn't really any higher for him than it is for anyone else. And after re-tooling the roster, now's as good a time as any to go at this whole NBA tile thing full bore.

Nobody treaded cautiously with you-know-who and "managed" minutes, and pushed the idea to "win now", even when the consensus around here was that player maliciously and intentionally sabotaged that effort.

Now, people are going to say that we've got a better chance of winning it all with Yao NOT playing, hoping to conserve him for the postseason?

Really?

Why would you not want as high a postseason seed as you could get? Why would you not play every game and every possession as it it were your last?

How can you expect to win if you're afraid? I thought we'd turned some kind of page on that kind of thinking here.

You adopt a preservation of minutes approach with teams that have won the title (San Antonio, Los Angeles, Boston) because those guys have proven that they can win, and the bigger concern for them is health as opposed to seeding and matchups. Those teams have the makeup mentally to win if they're healthy. They've already done it.

The Rockets advanced from the first to the second round last year for the first time in a long time, and now we need to ease up on the throttle?

Makes no sense to me, Hayden_SFC. If you can't rely on Yao...if you can't trust him....if he hasn't earned your trust or not insulted you or your teammates or quit on your team....and he does so many things that help your team win.....

...than he's as big of a problem as whats-his-name was supposed to be....

....except that Yao's too nice to say it to his face....

 

The reasoning for what we're doing is quite simple. Yao, if he is traded, will not be traded until next February when we can get the most out of his expiring. Given that that will be most of next season anyways, there is no reason not to simply load the dice one last time and see what Yao will do for this team anyways. It might work, it might not, but if it doesn't work, we can simply trade Yao, let his contract expire, and we're already in terrific shape to rebuild in 2011, with good draft picks thanks to NY, loads of cap space, and so on.

If you have a problem with making Yao the centerpiece of your plans, than that is logical. The logical question however is... what's your alternative?

 

in other words at this point before Yao has stepped on the court in a year, they'd settle for 25 minutes a game

it's speculation. until Yao gets on the court and they can see what condition he's in and how his foot is they don't know.

25 minutes is a conservative (but not unreasonable) number.

it could go up it could go down. this article is simply common sense. it might take him more than a full season to establish just what his proper playing allotment will be

 

From the standpoint of winning a title yes Yao should be shipped out hopefully after he returns and shows he can still play. Les won't trade his cash cow unless Yao demands a trade and even then he'd try to hang on to Yao.

 

All you can assume he will be 20/10 or not even be a force...none of you know until you see the man in September play in training camp so lets stop ASSUMING and HOPE FOR THE BEST.

 

Yao Ming is carrying anywhere from 50-120 lbs more than our other players. When he comes down on his feet from a jump, that's hundreds of more lbs of impact on his feet.

 

I say we give two more years to a team built around Yao to see if it will work in today's NBA. Yao has too much goodwill in Houston, in the league, and in China for us to just trade him. At most, we slowly ease off dependence on him by trading/drafting for a big and developing Hill.

RA should take a page from San Antonio's Popovich who manages his starters' minutes throughout the season so that they can last into the playoffs. San Antonio with Manu's form back is impressing me lately. In no way should RA continue his practice of back to back 40 min games for the starters. No recovery time spells sure injury.

 

It's funny how they compare a 260 lb guy to a 315 lb and ignore the difference in impact on the feet. Yao's feet are also pretty small for a man his size. This provides a smaller area for the impact to be spread over. Yao's weight is more comparable to Shaq, but he has smaller feet. Shaq has size 23 shoes, while Yao only wears size 18.

 

I've been thinking for a while that Brooks needs to be traded while his value is high. He's a great scorer and can be a great piece for a team, but he's not what we need. He's a liability on defense, especially now that we have Martin out there. I'm guessing Morey is going to trade Brooks for a big while his price is high, which will let Lowry slide into the starting lineup.

 

If Yao just stood in our paint and moved around every 2 seconds and did nothing else we would still win 5 more games this season.

 

You don't say, BetterThanEver?

Why, then, did Yao manage to play practically injury-free for the early part of his career, with the exact same height and weight concerns?

Again, to me, Yao doesn't risk injury (relative to his size) any more than anyone else does. And to your point about Yao's weight, I feel that he may need to get his weight down around his weight earlier in his career (between 285-295 pounds) instead of the over 300 pounds he's carried the past few seasons.

That may seem like an insignificant difference, but a little less weight would do wonders for Yao's feet, I believe. I remember Larry Brown lamenting the idea he had for Rik Smits to gain upwards of 300 pounds when his bones couldn't handle it, once he saw how much better (and less injury-prone) Smits became once his weight got down to about 265.

Nothing's set in stone in this endeavor, BetterThanEver. You're going to have to risk players getting hurt, or underachieving, or quitting (to say nothing of the opposition), or anything else you can think of that creates the challenge of winning in a pro sports league, if you have hopes of success set upon those players.

Yao's never been what anyone would consider a "banger". Yao's game has never been about physicality, so much as its been about finesse. One of the reasons why there's a cry out now for some body to bang in the paint next to Yao is to give him some relief from that incessant pounding and wrestling.

The bone Yao broke in his leg in the 2006-2007 season came from a collision with a teammate, Chuck Hayes, for God's sake. You'd like for things like that not to happen. Especially to your franchise player. And especially not as frequently as they seem to happen to Yao.

But it's risk vs. reward here. You risk Yao getting hurt again if it gives you a chance to win, until it's decided that Yao can't be relied upon. That decision hasn't been made by the people in charge yet, BetterThanEver.

But hopefully, someone is paying attention to Yao's weight and is planning to get it down. That as much as anything else would help Yao avert injury.

That, or maybe having him dress out for games and not play in them.....

 

That Line up looks Amazing on paper...so much size and versatility