With Ronnie Brewer, How Good is the Rockets bench now?

I prefer Covington with Howard than any of those guys without Howard.

 

Yes, Norris Cole is a pretty terrible basketball player. He is a good example of a player becoming overvalued as a result of getting PT for a championship team. If he played for pretty much anybody else then nobody would even know who he is.

Pat Riley has done a poor job of surrounding Lebron with young talent. He also needlessly traded away of bunch of first round picks by acquiring Lebron and Chris Bosh in sign and trades rather than signing them outright. Even worse, he gave them early optout clauses. Hard to complain too much, since they've won it the past two years, but it will not be easy for Lebron to win championships with Miami beyond next season. And I think Lebron knows this.

 

Yeah, I said better implying "better in the league" as opposed to "better than the Rockets". Wasn't really clear; my bad.

With a thread titled "With Brewer How Good is our bench now?" we are operating under the assumption that the talent level on the Rockets bench is some approximation of what can be considered "good." Miami and Indy have benches that are in the same stratosphere as the Rockets'. Maybe we need to take the homer glasses off.

I disagree with you that Ray Allen absolutely sucked last year. Def not the Ray of past, but a solid clutch shooter that fits their system.

Cole sucked for most of the reg season, but seemed to turn the corner in the playoffs and actually had some good minutes handling and shooting the ball in the Chicago series.

I'll give you Rashard Lewis. He's sucked for a while now.

Spurs guards picks were about upside. Cory Joseph was okay last year. Nando de Colo showed a few flashes, but was inconsistent. I imagine that, between the two of them, one will step up in '13-'14, especially given the system they are in. Danny Green struggled in Cleveland, and it took him about a year to catch on w/ Pop (at the same age as Joseph). Splitter looked bad in his first year with the Spurs at the same age as de Colo, and now he's a heavy rotation guy. Both are starting.

I really liked Darrel Arthur off the bench in Memphis before he blew his ACL. Tough and was hitting those midrange jumpers. Didn't look as good last year after sitting out a whole season, but there's room for him to turn it around, much like I think many of us are hoping that Casspi and Brewer recapture some past success.

 

Those are open roster spots, according to ESPN, which is slacking. Kuku gave a better link a few posts up.

I bolded teams that are similarly good or outright better than the Rockets. In addition to those, you could probably also throw in GS, Minny, and Sac as having benches with similar talent level as the Rockets'. Yeah, the Kings.

Point being, Houston's bench is aight. I think homer glasses have us rating it too high.

 

Maybe I went too extreme in describing Allen's performance last season. He may even be heading for HOF someday but it doesn't excuse him for the way he played his D on a team which was so focused on team defense. On/off court +/- showed Heat was better when Allen was off than on on both ends.

I will be keeping eyes on the other players you mentioned this season.
<PRE>
Team Oppo Diff
Player Split MP ORtg ORtg ORtg

Ray Allen On Court 2036 112.4 107.4 +5.0
Off Court 1940 114.3 101.0 +13.3
On Off 51% -1.9 +6.4 -8.3</PRE>

 

For sure showing his age, looking one and two steps slow. At 38, getting beat by really quick guys is to be expected, but he looked kind of apathetic closing out on shooters and other times, outright lost. Lacking the tenacity he showed on those Celtics teams from '08-'10.