I think that Kandi man is on the block. He is willing to sign for less than 8 million/year. Compared to Yao, he is a bargain. There are at least 50 better centers in the WNBA and it should be easy to get a better deal so that we can pour another 10 million on the powerless forward position.
I agree we might trade Yao rather than max him. But this logic is hardly reasonable. In fact, you can say Tmac and Kobe are not that great. They take so many shots to get their stats with a poor FG%. With only five shots, Kobe can only score 5~ 6 pts, so why give him 20 million/year? Not mentioning his 4.5 TOs.
Flip Murray of the Sonics is apparently on the blocks. Reckon it's worth looking into? He can give us some shooting and offensive production..although there's doubts about him being a team player. Anyways, he's still young and I guess at this point if we can trade Mo T for him it'd be a good pickup? Don't know about salaries though...but Sonics are probably looking for some inside scoring to go with their outside shooting.
vunny1408, THe one thing Murray won't give us is shooting. Wasn't a good shooter last year and is even worse this year. Hell give you offensive production, but only with the ball in his hands. Hes a scoring 1, which essentially has no benefit to this team, especially since hes not much of a passer/distributor.
The Rockets would never trade Yao Ming at this point in his career. It makes absolutely no sense business wise to do that. Looking at stats is great, but you can not reasonably compare players by stats alone. There are so many things that a player can do that can impact a game that is not recorded by RPG or PPG. For instance, do teams change their game plan to stop KandiMan. Do you think Kandi's presence on the court can dramatically change the flow of the game? Yao Ming on the court (even when he is playing soft) commands so much defensive consciousness (i.e. leaning from the opposing PG/SG, sagging of defenses) from the opposing team that other Rocket players benefit. This fact, however, will never be recorded on a stat sheet.
One other difference is the deffensinve attention both players get. There's about two players and more constantly guarding Yao.. As for cato I guess he is pretty much left alone 5 ft from basket.
1. Yao demands a double or triple team each possession. In fact, Yao is often doubled before he gets the ball. If Yao gets single coverage, he can consistantly score 20+ against anybody in the league. 2. Cato wouldn't be double teamed by a high school team. If Cato ever saw a double team in his life, his PPG would be .03 RocketsPimp, do you understand how this simple fact impacts how offensive schemes work? You lose all sorts of credibility by comparing Yao to Cato.
Come on Jeff. Don't tell me I have to resort to using these in my posts. Or even these, or god forbid, this guy
Well, Glad to hear it, now all we have to do is wait for Yao to clearly understand his place and begin to take over on a nightly basis. Yao Mean is coming...I HOPE DD
Can't compare Yao to Cato because Cato isn't going to ever see a double team in his Career, his name will never be at the end of a game plan marker board. If 80% of the Centers in the leage got as much pre planned defense against them like yao does they would avg half what they do now. Don't forget that Yao is scoring over tough defense, he just makes it look easy sometimes. Then again, he can make the easy look real difficult.
I can't believe that some people don't think Yao deserves the Max. If the going rate for a max player is Pau "19.2 and 8.7" Gasol, or Zach "No Defense and quite possibly a future Porker" Randolph, then Yao at the very least is in their comparable class. And if Yao can ever improve on his assertiveness and gain more of a scorer's mentality (as well as stop bringing the ball down low where guys can strip it), then his ceiling is way higher than these other guys.
The rockets should trade Yao...but who are you gonna replace him with? Another 'bargain' that brings nothing to the table? Are you looking to up the average age of the rockets yet some more? Want the 02-03 Magic in red uniforms, 'cept slower? Actually, I'd bet that if Yao's traded, those very haters that call him soft and what not would be the first to start a thread in GARM excoriating CD and JVG for their idiocy in letting Yao go. But maybe Yao is a liability to the rockets. Perhaps Yao and the rockets should part ways so both can realize their max potential. Yao can yet change his mind about how he feels as this horrible season progresses.
I can't believe this thread has turned into a serious conversation about trading Yao! Do you people even understand basketball? The man effects the game on both ends of the court. He attracts multiple double-teams on offense and he is a presence in the middle on defense. And, he is still getting better! Is he inconsistent at times? Yes. Does he need alot of improvement in some areas? Absolutley. But, don't sit there and tell me he doesn't deserve a max contract or should be traded, when he is only 24 and is easily the second best center in the league and shows signs of improvement.
Yao's current performance hardly deserves max, but again, there are only a handful of players that deserves max.
If they are going to trade Yao, Rox has to do a sign and trade. Then most likely, it will be a max contract. With Yao's rookie salary, Rox can't get anyone good back.
5 baskets is a lot. The difference between Tim Duncan and Yao is 1 basket + 1 foul, and 3 rebounds and yet everyone knows Tim Duncan is much better than Yao. I agree he doesn't deserve the max, but it would be worse if he got away for nothing. It's not like we can use the money we saved on him to get anyone else...