This is very likely a knee-jerk thread, but I wanted to stimulate some discussion on the merits and cons of playing the two at the same time. This is not a "LET'S SHIP BOTH OF THEIR BUTTS OUT" thread. I think both of them have their uses and I like them both in the rotation for sparse minutes. The issue comes in putting them on the court at the same time, mostly because the two cannot cover each others weaknesses and in fact share many similar strengths. This redundancy is hurting the team in the games I saw (see: Golden State and tonight). It is certainly difficult to gauge how not playing them together would have helped us more-- after all, we still haven't found a win yet. But form what I'm seeing in terms of overall cohesion, once the two hit the floor at the same time our defense suffers and our offense isn't much improved. This is for a multitude of reasons. Miller is not a strong rebounder and even weaker post defender. Hayes, while an excellent post defender, is unable to provide ample help-defense because he is limited by his size and athleticism. If he does help out, we no longer have any size left to get the rebound and everyone sits around looking confused as to what happened. On offense, Miller knows the system cold and has shown to be pretty efficient at hitting the outside shot and setting up others. But at this point, we have another breakdown-Hayes role-- and frankly offensive strength-- as the passer-screen setter and Hayes is left as more of an off-the-ball cutter due to restraints on his offensive game. While Hayes is a great rebounder for his size, it's not enough to secure sufficient offensive rebounds to compensate for our failed offensive possessions. So IMO, putting the two on at the same time hurts our team and hurts both their games. Hayes pairs well with Yao because Yao has a very different skillset compared to Miller, one that complements Hayes extremely well. Furthermore, Miller may be better served paired with a stronger or more athletic 4-- perhaps the Miller/Hill combo may have more merit. I don't know how Patrick Patterson is coming along but frankly he may have more use and merit than pairing Hayes with Miller, which I am increasingly come to believe is a bad duo. Just my thoughts.
here is my thought process: 1. the rockets are not a championship team, as currently assembled. it will take some time to reach that level. 2. older players like shane and miller may not be effective long enough into the future to contribute when this team is ready to contend. 3. younger players like hill, pat, and bud may be important pieces to the rockets future and need to play more minutes than the older players. if you call this tanking, so be it. its more important to develop our young talent than win meaningless games now. who wants to get the LAST lotto pick? or worse, a first round exit?
1. we have to wait and see 2. (im not sure) but what about yao? 3. (lets take timberwolves as an example) I'll just wait a while until Rockets develops again...
