[ESPN True Hoop]Breaking Down The 4-Team Trade (Rockets)

We should have took Collison and Posey for Ariza.. lol.. then start trading again. lol.

 

Collison is worth more, but Posey has negative value.

 

Totally agree. The first thing I thought of was the 09 Alston trade which gave Brooks the ability to become who he is. I think Battier still has a solid year or two left in him so I am totally confident he can play starters minutes until Bud is improved on defense.

 

Totally agree. Very poor move out of the front gate by the new front office. Paul is gone by the trade deadline.

 

exactly

 

I kinda thought the same thing. Collison looked pretty good last year. Trade CP3 to build a new team, keep Collison.

But what do I know?

 

Lowry is my favorite player on this team....

Just an idea... we didn't have to give Lowry that contract, if we traded Ariza straight up for Posey and Collison in the beginning of the offseason.

 

Just like his shot, his swing naturally missed.

 

that will be a great trade. unfortunately, couple more millions of saving is more important to Les.

 

Great to hear about Kev Martin / Courtney Lee's professional relationship.

Our team is replete with guys who respect each other and will complement one another, especially Yao/Miller, Brooks/Lowry, and now Martin/Lee.



Also, people who are sad about losing Ariza forget his little mental lapses. He isn't that strong mentally and was prone to tantrums and over-thinking.

 

Morey's clearly trying to dump some salary to get under the cap, but I worry about defending the wing. We've had the luxury of having 2 really good wing defenders the last couple years, which helped us check Roy and challenge Kobe. Battier needs help. I worry about if we face a team with a good SG and SF. Martin will get lit up.

 

Well, my $.02 is that overall the big winner, by far, in this trade is Indiana. Collison for the last 2.5 months of the season averaged appx: 19 ppg, 8 ast, 2.5 boards, while shooting 51% from the floor and 45% from 3 point land. I would be surprised if John Wall can even come close to being that efficient on the offensive end in his first year.

I like what this does for the Rockets. We get rid of a player who spent most of the season either at the bottom or near the bottom in the NBA for FG% for players with over 20 mins/game and is a terrible "fit" for the inside/outside game (assuming Yao returns.) In return we get a great "value" contract in Courtney Lee. He also fits the offensive scheme, in the fact that he can shoot straight. We also get a $6m trade exception which just adds to our flexibility for the rest of the season.

Another way to think of this is the marginal value added per dollar spent on ariza compared to the marginal value added per dollar spent on Courtney Lee. I would guess the value added per dollar of Lee would totally dwarf that of Ariza. We might lose something on the defensive end, and it might be tricky to replace all the minutes we gave Ariza. But, overall this seems like a pretty solid trade to me.

 

What you said will be completely foreign to most posters lol....but it was well said.

DD

 

Lol agreed, oh well for them. Collison should have got them a all-star type of player with his potential, instead they get a role player in return.

 

This. I was shocked Indiana just pillaged Collison. He's probably got the highest value/$ contract out there. New Orleans just got rocked. This was a Walsh-like move. They gave up a potential star in Collison and instead got a role player instead. Ouch.

 

Wasn't Lee guarding Kobe Bryant in the finals 2 years ago for the Magics as a rookie

 

You do know $.02 doesn't get you what it used to, nowadays, jjsto....
...but that's why Daryl Morey gets to spend Les Alexander's money and not the rest of us.

I was never as down on Trevor Ariza at any time as a large majority of people here have been, because I knew from the start that he wasn't going to be a panacea in terms of his individual play. Ariza had already played 4 full seasons in the NBA before coming here, and his postseason performance for the Los Angeles Lakers notwithstanding, he was never supposed to be the elite wing player the Rockets may still be looking for, because he hadn't shown that he was capable of carrying a team individually for long stretches.

And hammering him for not being able to do it (opportunity or experimentation or whatever), was just not sensible. Ariza may develop into an all-star player or even an All-NBA player. Late-bloomers do crop up from time to time (Steve Nash and Chauncey Billups, to name two). But not as often as we all like to think it's supposed to. Ariza was always a complementary player, and shouldn't have ever been seen as anything else.

But I do feel that Ariza would have benefitted greatly from playing with a healthy Yao Ming. Just not at the price tag he had, considering the club's moves with Luis Scola and Kyle Lowry. As much as Shane Battier is revered, the Rockets are already overpaying for complementary players, and Battier's contract will have more trade appeal around the trade deadline.

This move does signal a full-fledged effort to anoint Chase Budinger as the heir-apparent to the small forward position, in my opinion. Of the three players the Rockets had slotted to play the spot (Ariza, Battier and Budinger), Budinger has the most potential. He can offer the Rockets a "soft" triple-double stat line every night the more minutes he plays—Budinger can score, he can handle the ball competently, he is unselfish and intelligent—and if his individual and team defense improves, he will be here for the long haul.

And that's definitely a good thing, jjsto.

Again, most of these moves hinge on Yao Ming. The Rockets will have to see what Yao can give them, but if Yao can't be anything more than a role player himself, the Rockets will be spinning their wheels until a decision can be made about his future.

The next trade for the Rockets, jjsto, will be a watershed one. Or that is to say, it HAS to be a watershed trade. The Rockets net a all-star/all-nba player regardless of what happens with Yao, or they go full bore into rebuilding the team.

 

Courtney Lee is a great pick up in a swap for Ariza. His contract as mentioned in the article is cheap as chips and he can ball. Don't know why it didn't work out in NJ but in Orlando the guy was a player. This means Battier and Chase can man the 3 spot and it will be Martin/Lee manning the 2 spot. I think this is a pretty sweet line up at the moment that makes sense financially given Lees contract.

For NO I think Ariza will thrive playing off Chris Paul. His got the skills if someone makes the plays for him