We traded Gay!!!!!!!!!!!!! <div style="width:480px;text-align:right;"><embed width="480" height="360" src="http://static.pbsrc.com/flash/rss_slideshow.swf" flashvars="rssFeed=http%3A%2F%2Ffeed1041.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fb414%2Fjevjnd%2Ffeed.rss" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" /><a href="http://photobucket.com/redirect/album?showShareLB=1" target="_blank"><img src="http://pic.photobucket.com/share/icons/embed/btn_geturs.gif" style="border:none;" /></a><a href="http://s1041.photobucket.com/albums/b414/jevjnd/" target="_blank"><img src="http://pic.photobucket.com/share/icons/embed/btn_viewall.gif" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
Lowry isn't a starter,but he would have been able to drive,and play defense. His athleticism and physical strength would have been a useful contrast to Rafer. Lowry has been a decent addition to the team in general since he has been here.
The 05-06 season, was the 1st year Yao started putting up monster numbers, it was also the 1st time he got hurt, a toe infection if I remember right. It was also the 1st year T-Mac got hurt. How could the Rockets have known both players could never stay healthy again. Given that Yao seemingly turned a corner in 05-06. It made since to go for a title when they had the chance, and Battier gave them a better chance to do that in the short term. And as for Gay he's an over-rated, over-paid chucker who will never win anything, so I don't regret the deal honestly.
Lowry was excellent for us last season. He was a big part of what we did last year. It is not like he sucked. This year, well nobody on this team except Scola is playing even good basketball. And remember, Lowry was limited in preseason so he couldn't get into the right shape. I give him some time before I make that statement.
You guys are idiots. Did you watch the game? With seconds left and his team up 2, Gay dribbles all fancy and gets the ball stolen by LeBron, who raced down the court and dunked it for the tie. He redeemed himself with that shot but it shouldn't have come down to it. The previous play was incredibly stupid.
Lol @ the Rudy Gay haters coming out of the woodwork. Also, for those saying that the Rockets never planned on keeping Gay, that's part of the problem. When arguably the most talented player in a deep draft lands in your lap, I don't care what your plans were for the night, you take him and don't look back. While Battier continues his steep decline, Rudy Gay will just get better and better. This was the worst trade in Rockets' history. "Win now" move
I like win now and win later moves more. Miller / Yao / Hayes Scola / Hill Gay / Ariza Martin / Budinger Brooks / Lowry / Smith Coach: JVG I'm gonna stop thinking of what could have and what should have been done. To be honest I enjoyed watching those Rockets teams, and I'm not sure if I would still be a fan if it weren't for some of those moves. The Rudy Gay one will sting every time we see him hit a game winner, but just remember all of the clutch threes Battier has made for the Rockets.
Sorry man, but it's not all about all the game winners Gay has hit. Don't act like he's just some kind of end of the game specialist or something. He's a young, tall, athletic multi-dimensional basketball player. Just go and look at his numbers and compare them to Battier's pathetic numbers and you'll see why so many have been upset with this move for a while now.
I find it funny posters here are talking about going to the lottery as a "good thing" when they are also complaining that Battier isn't helping his team win games. LOL which is it? If tanking is what you want isn't it better to have old man Battier now instead of Gay? Or it just that you don't want to lose games but to magically have lottery picks year after year? We were in WIN NOW mode when we made the Battier trade. Our two superstars still looked like superstars at the time, why waste their primes by drafting another raw prospect? The average fan who loves highlight reels and thinks Allen Iverson was one of the league's best scorers EVAR would hate the Battier trade. People who are actually concerned with Ws and Ls love it, because all Gay did his first 5 years in the league was drag Memphis down iresponsible chucking and slacking on D. Now that he's become somewhat decent, Memphis happens to be paying him max money. And for those who actually think Gay at 15M is better than KM at 10M...why don't you look at Memphis' W-L record first before making such outlandish statements? They're hardly better than our record, despite having Gay on their team
Why don't you look at our record and the Kings' record before Martin got here? I'm not saying that you said that Martin is a winner, but he's exactly the kind of one-dimensional player that we didn't need rather than a multi-tooled Rudy Gay, who Jerry West obviously happened to see something in. The issue isn't that going to the lottery is good, but rather that it's our only way to land one of said multidimensional players. Battier wasn't the worst deal in the world, but if we would have been patient, it certainly wouldn't have been impossibly to get him by some other, less costly moves. I find it funny how posters say that trading a lottery pick was the only way to trade Battier. Don't think that Morey doesn't regret this pick when he sees these strings of losses because we can't land a good player. Granted, that's not all on Morey and is largely on Les who is low-balling players and treating players like dirt bags, but keeping Gay would have been something to build on from here. As it stands, we have Memphis' former, out of shape, point guard and as a return they have our stud and got rid of Rafer a long time ago. I say that we should stop dealing with these guys. We could have been further along this rebuilding process, and I think that many of us would rather have Gay instead of Kevin Martin at this point. Not that Martin's a bad player, but just that his contract and Lowry's contracts are Jared Jeffries-esque contracts.
Batum was dealt for Donte Greene which lead to getting Ron Artest. As far as Rockets go with moves leading to success, I'd say it was worth it for Artest to get the team past the 1st round hump and give the Lakers a 7 game scare. Sadly, we need anything we can celebrate over here
To be fair, we were trying to make deals which put is in the best position to win. Battier was great for us from 06-09. Nobody can deny how important his defense was the year in which we made it to the 2nd round and had Yao not gone down, could have even won it all. Gay is good and I wish him nothing but the best, but the deal did serve it's purpose. Yao's injury problems, TMac turning into ****, and other unlucky factors prevented us from winning. Not Battier. BTW, it wasn't just Battier for Gay. We even got rid of Stromile Swift's contract.
I guess they thought Alexander Johnson who the Grizzlies also drafted that year was immovable too? (who the Rockets also got later on). I mean, they didnt give Johnson to us so they must have thought he had all kinds of potential until he was "dumped" onto others. I guess it woulda been worth keeping Rafer Alston around instead of being "fooled" into picking up Kyle Lowry.
whatever one thinks of the battier side of the trade, i find the overrating of gay ridiculous. we seem to have a couple of rudy gay myths that have built up. the first being: what exactly are the multiple dimensions of rudy gay? shooting from the right side of the basket and shooting from the left side of the basket? he shoots a lot to score a lot. that's about the extent of what he does. he rebounds decently i guess but it's nothing special, he doesn't create for others at all, and he has played crappy defense for most of his career. wow, what a juggernaut we would be with that skillset. over his past 3 seasons, he has basically been a 19.5 ppg scorer with a mediocre 53.7 TS%*** who hadn't averaged over 2.0 apg and who sucked at defense. that all adds up to a 16 PER player with poor D. why does the term superstar (or even star) get thrown around with numbers like that? if battier is the definition of doing the little things, gay has pretty much been the definition of only doing the big things (scoring). the second main myth seems to be: he will? he's 24 years old. people don't do much improving after this age. most big time stars were pretty much big time stars by the time they were 22 or 23. rudy might refine his game like everyone does, but i wouldn't be looking for big leaps. he's been an amazingly similar player his whole career. his number in his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th seasons were extremely consistent and in fact seasons 3 and 4 were slight declines from season 2. his total numbers have taken a little uptick this season, but that's really just because he's playing a league leading 41.3 mpg and his 3P% and FT% are well above his career averages. unless he's really just a way better shooter all of a sudden and it's not just a hot streak to start the season, if those fall back to earth, he's pretty much the same rudy gay he's been for 3 years and quite possibly might always be, a guy who shoots a lot and doesn't do a lot else except hit the occasional game winning shot to make people proclaim his greatness. oh, and he better get better and better because he's getting max money (part of the problem with people that only do the big things is they tend to get paid beyond their value because too many GM's like looking at the big things). ***one big reason his true shooting percentage has always been so low is his amazing ability to not get to the free throw line. he's never taken more than 5 FTA/GM and this season has actually gotten even worse, with only 1 FTA for every 4.7 FGA. to see just how bad that is, shane battier is getting 1 FTA for every 3.7 FGA! battier is an old, unathletic guy who camps out at the 3 point line but apparently rudy is a young, athletic guy who camps out at the long 2 point line. on the overall trade, we actually valued battier less than the #8 pick, thus why we got rid of the overall negative that was stromile swift. at the time of the trade, yao had only had one injury in 4 seasons and that was someone falling into his leg and breaking it, nothing to do with his foot yet. predicting his horrible injury history wasn't easy. given the choice between a young, inefficient chucker with no D and a D-playing, 3 point shooting veteran when you have a 4 or 5 year window with 2 stars (a window that obviously slam shut much earlier), i wouldn't take the rookie, even if you want to argue there are cheaper ways to acquire said veteran. since battier and bruce bowen are pretty similar in playing style (with bowen being even a little better on D), do you think the spurs would have traded bowen for gay with bowen at a similar point in his career? i don't think they would have. on kevin martin, he's basically rudy gay without the rebounding and game-winning shots but with much better efficiency. his salary certainly isn't crazy when compared to gay's. and how is anyone complaining about the lowry trade, much less acting like we got "got done" by memphis. i'm not even sure rafer is still in the league and we got a good backup point guard out of the deal. seems pretty good to me.
