Stop trying to back track your exact post was . They cant bring you wins or championships and that is simply not true. Malone brought wins with the Jazz Charles brought wins with the sixers and suns
I agree Nuggets have better assets than Rockets now. With that said, you do need superstars to win in this league. Here are the reasons: Even at max, superstars are severely 'underpaid' compared to league standard. If we go by player's performance worth in $, Lebron is easily worth 50 mil per. His actual worth is reflected by a his performance on court. Durant is probably worth 40 mil per. A team with the most "player's worth" has the best chance of winning. This is why any team with prime LeBron or KD has the best chance of winning. Highest salary (Lakers, Nets, Knicks) will not give you better chance of winning; actual performance worth will. Superstars shine and bench depth means little in post season. When it's time for playoffs, superstars will play insane amount of minutes. Sometimes, 44 mpg is not unheard of. When the opposition team has their superstars on court, no coach in their right mind will sub in his bench players. That how it is in playoffs.
I guess I was wrong about super stars don't bring championships. I'll admit it. Maybe if I said Superstars don't always bring wins and championships it'd be different. Either way it doesn't change my opinion on Denver and their situation.
This is exactly what i've been trying to preach. A team this brand new(only 2 players remain from last season), young and inexperienced shouldn't normally be winning this soon. We're just on our first year of rebuilding and still with maximum cap space going into the off-season. Just take the Hornets for example, that team is just as talented and young as we are and they're on pace to finish with possibly the worst record in the west while our team on the other hand is battling for 6th seed. Again, our main goal for this season is to develop our players and build team chemistry. Making the playoffs would give this team priceless experience at this early stage into our rebuild.
Superstars might not always bring you championships but teams with them have the best chance of winning championships.
If you took Harden off the Rockets and put him with Orlando _ I would prefer Orlando.... That works with a bunch of teams...
That just goes to show how good Harden is. Other than Asik and Parsons, the rest of this group are bench players at best..
I think we have more tradeable assets. Guys like Lebron, KD, WB, Wade, Parker, Duncan, Bosh aren't going anywhere.
Assets aren't just good players. They're good players on low priced contracts. Denver has been handing contract extensions to their players left and right and here are some figures: Lawson will be making upwards of $12 million a year until 2017. Gallinari will be making $10.5 million until 2016. McGee will be making $11 million until 2016. Good players yes but they probably won't even be able to resign Iguodala this summer unless to go significantly over the tax or trade Wilson Chandler who I think they'd rather keep. You tell me what's more attractive: Parsons making $800,000 or Asik making less than $9 million for two more seasons or any of those other players listed?
Exactly. We don't have all that many assets now anyway. We traded all our players and all our draft picks last summer, then cut all the players we traded for except for Toney Douglass. If the Harden trade hadn't come through, we'd be years behind the Bobcats. We did have three very nice free agent signings, though.
This is self evident. If you define a superstar as a top five player, clearly the top five players at any one time will never be on the same team. Only one team can win a championship in a given year, so every year more superstars will NOT win a championship than will win one.
But since Harden is with Houston and Lawson/Igoudala are with Denver, and because this is the real world and you can't just switch players between teams for hypothetial "if's." Houston's assets > Denver's. Houston is more populated than Dallas, but if you move Houston's most populated areas to Dallas and vice versa; then Dallas would be more populated than Houston. Right?
Exactly, no term from the Morey era bothers me more. How about "good players" or "players with great potential", something other than the impersonal, dehumanizing term "assets."
Reeko you took the words right out of my mouth. Denver is a nice team no doubt but the way their constructed their a 2nd round team at best with no money or tradable assets to improve the roster. The only player not on a rookie contract thats worth his contract is gallanari. Let me put it this way, with the amount of money all their players make if you were to try and trade one of them you would not come back with greater or equal value. I'm no Lof at all but your never going to be able to tell me that Lawson is 4-5 mil a yr better than he is. Your never gonna be able to tell me that McGee is 4 mil better than asik ( he's actually considerably worse) your never gonna be able to tell me iggy is worth 16 mil more than parsons. I think you get my drift. You gotta take into account that the rockets are younger, have max cap space and there best player is locked up for 5 more years. While the nuggets have no cap space and their best player (iggy) is a free agent. They really have to think hard about keeping that core together because if they offer iggy lets say a contract like they've been say 10-12 mil than their gonna have issues signing mannimal after next season. One more thing to point out now this is just opinion, but I don't think the nuggets will be better than the rockets next year at all even if the rockets don't use any of their cap room and the nuggets keep all their players. If the rockets a) didnt start out the yr slow because of lack of chemistry or b) had used all their cap space of mediocre talent like Denver. We would already have a better record than them. Also james harden is a top 10 player and is only 23 yrs old and is locked up for 5 more yrs. that alone is worth 5 assets that the nuggets have. The nuggets are a nice young team that is built to make the playoffs every yr and if that's your goal cool. With that said they will never be looked at as title contenders unless 2 off their players make that jump to Allstar level with one of them becoming a superstar but I could make thy case for a number of the younger cheaper rocket players. Plus we already have a true superstar whose young. You made a nice case, just showing you that you our, well, wrong.
Only way to get playoff victories is with a star(s). Only way to get a star is tank or keep flipping assets. Morey has said the way they're going about it is taxing on coaches and players (and fans), but it's the only way without tanking. Adelman was clearly not on board, but I imagine McHale knew this was part of the plan going in, even if it's frustrating.
There's no doubt Morey is very very good at finding players undervalued by other front offices. Parsons as a 2nd rounder. Asik off the bench for what is now a very economical contract. I think Jeremy Lin will be a pretty good value too. Add DMo, TRob, Beverley, and maybe Royce White to the list of players possibly undervalued by other teams. But there's a difference between doing that and building a team that wins a title. I think Morey will get there but that's a big question mark for me. I like our team, but sometimes the best way to do something is the obvious way. In the NBA, that means getting at least 2 if not 3 of the top 10-15 players in the league. With one of them being in the top 5. We don't have a top 5 player right now. And it's hard to see that happening even with all our assets.
I think you should probably have said "Superstars ALONE don't bring championships." With that, you could provide some backing to support your point. So if that's your point, then — OK. But the inverse of your argument would be that "Championships are not won without superstars." No, superstars do not guarantee a title, but the facts are that titles are almost always won by teams that have superstars. You NEED one (or two) in order to win. Either way you meant it, your post(s) undervalue the presence of a true superstar on this team. Getting a guy like Harden is no small deal. Second — anyone with a pulse can realize that the Rockets do not currently have a championship roster, and that Harden alone is not likely to be enough. The team is a work in progress. That's where the original point of this thread begins to matter. For those of us who want to get that second star in the fold, it's an interesting point that the Rockets are perceived by an NBA scout have a good stable of assets. How anyone can see a negative in this is entirely beyond me.
