Lior Eliyahu is gonna be unreal!! Just kidding. I like what Shane Battier brings to this team, shooting, perimeter defense, leadership, and hustle. To me, he's can be a combination of Bruce Bowen and Raja Bell, Bowen's defense and Bell's offense, I believe this will be his role here in Houston (defensive stopper/ deadeye shooter). That seems to be exactly what the team needs. I know some people will say that he's nowhere near Bowen's defensive capabilities, but you don't get that reputation as a defensive player until you've done it on the big stage. Nobody heard of Bowen/Bell before their teams went deep in the playoffs. I see alot of posters complaining, he's too slow, he's not athletic. Well, do you need to be a great athlete to bring defense and shooting? Again look at Bowen, do you think of him as a great athlete? You need anticipation, experience, reputation and your teammates behind you to be a great defensive player. Battier can do everything Bowen can do on the defensive end with some seasoning and a few 'tricks', and he's far beyond Bowen offensively. If you'd told me in may that we'd get a solid starter out of this draft, I would have been happy because this is a terrible draft that went 7 deep. Last night my initial reaction was a little miffed like most of you here: why didn't the rockets take Rudy Gay and get younger and more athletic, surely Rudy can be a key player on a championship team with all his atheleticsm, a third/fourth option that would get good numbers because people didnt' pay much attention to him. Then I realized that he was the third option on Uconn, surrounded by NBA talent on a well built team with a good point guard. What do you remember from Rudy in the NCAA tournament, I recall him jacking up tons of outside jumpers / showing very little basketball IQ. He did help contain Roy in the 2nd half, but that was also due to Roy being in foul trouble. I'm pretty sure that you cannot count on Rudy being a key kog on a championship team, the best you can expect is a guy that brings it on certain nights and doesn't on others. Some championship teams can get away with having players like that because their stars are assertive. We are in the unique position that our stars are nice guys and need the role players to fire them up. That's why I like the Battier trade, he can lead by example for the rest of our team, Rudy cannot.
newsflash: bowen and those unathletic spurs didn't get out of the 2nd round this year. and we don't have near the depth that the spurs did.
Nobody said battier is a bad player. what we are talking about is rockets should have received more than that from this trade. WTF, we signed swift with full MLE last year and then kicked him out without getting anything back. Now we need to find another PF with our MLE again. Then next year we will do it again. Come on, you fXXXXXXXXking idiot front office. CD you SOB. JVG you Idiot.
I am not upset about trading Rudy Gay as much as what we are getting. We can get more than just Shane Battier. Also if the rumors are true that we are trading Stro also, we are just digging a hole for ourselves this next season.
I keep holding out hope that there going to be more coming our way, Mike miller in particular, as part of this deal. That being said, the deal as is right now, it just highway robbery, the Grizz get the 8th pick and Swift for Bat, I like Bat but he's not worth that much on his own
agree. We dont have the depth our PF situation just got alot less athletic and everyone is a year older. I dont like the fact the Rox are thinking of long term plans.. Find a solid starting 5 with good draft picks to develop for the future and play some minutes to learn the game. If TMac goes down with another injury we are sunk and this franchise will be crap for years to come. We have no young talent, no future. Does this look like a championship team to anyone? J
First of all, the only reason the Spurs didn't get out of the second round was because of the bizarre NBA seeding system that had the best teams in the conference playing in the second round. That system will be changed next year, and every year in the future the Spurs would have been a WCF team. Second, the Spurs have won 2 of the last 4 championships, and easily could've won this year if not for some bizarre calls that went against them in the final seconds of Games 3 and 4 in Dallas. To act as if having a Spurs-esque roster would be bad is a little bizarre. And no, we don't have the depth the Spurs do. But, they don't have the starpower we do either. I'd say there's a very good case that a healthy McGrady and Yao is better than a healthy Ginobili and Duncan.
as i said, gay straight up for battier, that is fine with me. Adding SS into this trade is just insane.
I for one am not bumming about this. We dump a useless Swift back to Memphis, pick up a good quality role player which all the people in the BBS who are b****in' about the trade said we needed allf of last year. There has to be more to it otherwise they would not keep mentioning the July 12 release date and also the salaries don't match up. One thing to point out about the Gay trade, a lot of the things they were saying about Gay's practice sessions, lack of effort etc. were exactly the same things they were saying about Eddie Griffin but oh that "athleticism" and "potential" ....LOL
Battier is subject to Base Year Compensation until July 12th. So the trade does not work NOW, but yes, it magically gets the green light on July 12th. It's extremely likely that that is all they are waiting on. No hangups, no extra players. It's basically like someone telling you two weeks in advance that they're going to ass rape you. It's bad enough that you know it's going to happen, but you also get to toil over it for a while.
I was p. last night too but I have come around. I like the trade. You have to look at it this way. The trade is getting Battier for an unknown rookie and free up some cap room in the form of Swift's salary. . When Switf 1st came here, I had high hope but that hope has been dashed. We signed Swift as a FA so it did not cost us anything. He did not pan out so keeping him would put us in a hole, salary wise. Trading away Swift's salary by itself is, sadly but true, a positive for us. . Battier is a solid starter, not great but good at both ends, a 3th option kind of players. . Gay almost certainly won't give us much this year and next. He might be pretty good in 3, 4 yrs or he might not be. How many 7th pick are now stars on their team?
Now, as for the deal itself, I'm not in love with it, but I think the reaction is hilarious. What, exactly, made Battier a consensus good selection at the #6 overall pick five years ago? Did you really expect him to be more than a 12/5 player with great defense and winning intangibles? I guarantee you he's right in line with what Memphis expected when they drafted him. No one expected him to be able to create his own shot... they expected him to be the ideal role player, and that's what he's been and still is. I also think some of you should analyze the history of No. 8 picks in the NBA draft. For the most part, they're marginal players. Occasionally there are studs, but I really, really have doubts as to whether the people who think Gay is a stud actually watched him in college. If you would've told me before the draft... heck, during the season, that we could get a good starter and an ideal role player for the No. 8 pick in the draft, I would've been ecstatic. It's not the NFL, it's the NBA, and the No. 8 pick isn't all that valuable. Now, I'm having a hard time with adding Swift. I think that we didn't get full value for the package and that's not good. I can't imagine, even with a bad year, that Swift has gone from being the steal of the market at his contract to actually being a negative. Maybe he has. In any event, while I'm disappointed, I'm having a hard time getting really worked up about losing Stromile Swift. As for this team not being championship caliber... are you kidding? If we were to add Mike James, and have a lineup of James, McGrady, Battier, Howard and Yao... to me, that team when healthy can compete with anyone in the league.
Good grief, people! Battier's contract is more expensive AND lengthy than Swift. We didn't free up any freaking cap space. All we did was free up roster spots that we can't fill because we don't have any freaking assets left to acquire quality to fill the holes in our freaking swiss cheese slice of a roster! F_ck me!
