I support Alston-he signed a reasonable contract. He is a very good to excellent distributor with a shot that should improve with less pressure. Rafer is fine.
Plus, Alston is a better defender than we give him credit for. In the past, he's been invisible. Last season, he actually did a semi-decent job. I don't know what else you could ask from a PG. He's hit the 3pter in the high 30's 3 or 4 times in the last 5 seasons, so we know he can do that. He's shown that he could play with Shaq as well, meaning he's a good post player. He gets some decent entry passes in there as well. I just don't know what else you could ask for from Rafer. He makes 4M. He doesn'tcomplain. He listens to JVG, and he believes in the offense. Give him a chance to play with Yao/T-Mac, we will be pleasantly surprised by his scoring.
If we stick to J lucas now, we have to start our D work all over again. Let rafer be his mentor for at least 1 more season. Anyways Rafer 6'2, JL3 5'11. Height will be an advantage
All I was able to read from that blurb was JL3 is still playing very well... How could you not be pumped for this season??
Rafer averaged 6.7 apg last season and 2.5 to's with over 12ppg. For years, we were dreaming of that kind of PG. Now we got it, it isn't enough. The ONLY problem is his %. Last year's 3pt % was a 5 year low for him.
JL3 will never be a starting NBA PG. Rafer is adequate for this team. We now have enough shooters/scorers that his attempts will go down and his shooting % will go up. I expect a big improvement over last year. If not, he will remain the starter while JL3 and/or V-Span cut into his minutes.
John Lucas III isn't a bad player, but I don't think he could challenge Alston at the point, simply because Alston has more experience and is more comfortable as a point guard. I'm hoping that V-Span might prove to be a bigger threat though.
Both statements by the author are dead wrong so far as I've seen. Alston's biggest strength is his ability as a distributor. From what I've seen of Lucas as a pro, his biggest strength is his speed and ability to penetrate. His passing was good in college, but he hasn't proven it at the NBA level yet. Lucas may be a more likeable guy, but I've never heard of Rafer being a bad teammate in Houston. All that being said, if Lucas really pushes Skip, the Rockets will be better for it.
I would love to see VSpan be good enough to bump Alston to the bench. Currently, with the addition of Wells, Alston is the "weak link" in the starting five. That is, if he plays like he did last year. Lucas is likely to never start in the NBA, but may see a few minutes a game. Why the Rockets traded Mike James for Alston will never be clear to many fans. Of the many dumb personnel actions this team has made over the last ten years, this is one of the dumbest. This team "could" have had a starting lineup of Ming, TMac, Wells, James, and Battier.
I want to see what alston does with the people he has around now. He posted ok numbers with a scrub lineup last year. But i think V-Span will turn alot heads this year. Did you see what he did against the leagues finest in the WC. Should be interesting.
Alston will be fine as long as he isn't trying to distibute to a bunch of scrubs and be asked to do a lot of scoring on his own too, like last year. I'd expect his numbers to go up across the board, including three-point percentage and maybe excluding PPG.
I don't know what Rafer you were watching but the one I saw last year was not a threat from outside and ran an EZPASS lane to the basket on defense.
Here's the thing. Alston has not yet really had a chance to show what he can do with a team which has all three of them (Alston, Yao and TMac) all healthy and playing together at the same time. I suspect that, if these three guys stay healthy, AND taking into consideration that we will now also have Battier and Wells on the floor too, people will come to appreciate Alston a lot more very quickly. The thing about having JL3 on the team is that, in the past, we did not have any kind of adequate player at the point backing up Alston. JL3 may not ever be a guy who becomes a surefire starter in this league, but as a backup pg, as a spark off the bench, nobody will be complaining. We won't find ourselves saying, 'Oh no! JVG is putting LUCAS in!! Argh, the game is lost!' He will play well enough for us, possibly even really well in stretches, and will most likely continue to show some clutch ability like he did in his brief stints last year, and especially over the summer. That's depth. And having VSpan hopefully able to play point in spots, as well as TMac able to be the primary ball-handler if absolutely necessary is not a bad thing either. That's flexibility. This team has talent, depth, and flexibility. Now we need to wait and see on the chemistry, character, and intelligence.
No one seems to mention that last year Rafer was coming back from a broken leg. A BROKEN LEG! His shooting percentage was a five year low, so was Wesley's shooting off when he came back from knee surgery. A shooter without his legs is going to misfire. When watching last year, I felt Rafer was asked to do too much. He missed the first part of the season with the leg injury and then when he came back a gimpy Yao and Tmac were rarely both out there. He had no other shooters on the floor that could hit a shot, and often would jack up a shot at the end of the shot clock as the best of several bad options. I'm not convinced he can't be the guy for this team yet. I think we should give him a chance to show his stuff with a full roster of NBA quality players. Last year the Rockets didn't have that.
lucas has to worry about getting minutes from spanoulis. spanoulis might steal minutes from rafer because of his size and shooting ability. he is also a very good passer and leader.
I love how the same myths about Alston are continually dredged up again and again. This should be required reading for the entire BBS: http://www.clutchfans.net/news/1348/hard_look_rafer_alston/
