Donatas Motiejunas now a restricted free agent, no qualifying offer for Terrence Jones

Guys follow my logic....which coincidentally leads you to believe we are Sign and trading D-Mo for Ricky Rubio. Brilliant.

 

Fair enough, maybe you're right, but if you are, the Rockets will be a lottery team.

 

If the Rockets want to sign and trade DMO for Paul Millsap they have my blessing.

 

Probably not.

Harden has shown that he can get you to the playoffs at minimum until proven otherwise. I doubt everything goes wrong like it did last year, and regardless what you think of D'Antoni, it's a coaching improvement from last year.

Injuries obviously cancel all that out.

 

The problem is that a lineup with Gordon, Harden, Ariza, Anderson, and Capela is a lot worse defensively than the lineups we had last year. When your team is consistently playing 2-5 when the other team has the ball it's going to create a ton of holes for you to try and claw your way out of.

 

I dont think there are too many scenarios either way where the Rockets are going to be viewed as a fringe playoff team at best, and likely lottery.

People will have their opinions here in either direction, but I'm sure the majority of the NBA media "expert" opinions will lean towards the lottery either way.

The only question is will they be fun to watch and root for or not (circa 2010 Adelman Rockets), and be one of those teams that people don't like playing against.

 

No info on Ricky available right now. Both minny and Houston not leaking anything. We can only hope. Half of 22.2 is 11.1.

 

I guess that'll depend on if you like competitive basketball or not. If you like fast paced high scoring games where the Rockets are blown out 130-110 then it might be fun to watch. I would imagine teams will LOVE playing against the Rockets given that according to you the Rockets will be playing 2 on 5 on defense for most of the game.

I don't see a scenario where you can have that many just terrible defenders on the court at once and still maintain a lead no matter how good the offense is.

 

Ι doubt it. Not when two playoff teams from last year got much worse (OKC and Dallas) and except the Jazz not any other team that was fringe playoff got much better.

 

See we can agree on something. There is hope in the world.

I personally think this team will be pretty frustrating for Rockets fans to watch because nothing pisses off die hards like watching their team not give a s#$% on the defensive end and the other team getting easy looks. That's my biggest fear this year is not enjoying the games because there are easy defensive fixes that they just gloss over.

Hopefully I'm wrong and its more of a 2010 Adelman style where they actually play hard and you even though you got guys like Scola who can defend a 9 year old, you at least enjoy watching them work hard, and give effort.

 

This is a valid concern, no doubt, but I'm willing to see how MDA and Bzdelik choose to approach that. Our offense should be good enough to mitigate those concerns to a degree.

 

My pre-preseason rankings -

Tier 1-
-GSW
-SA

Tier 2-
-Clips
-OKC (still)
-Memphis

Tier 3- (fighting for 3 spots... arbitrary rankings because much will depend on health, and maturity of young players like with Minn)

-Denver
-Minn
-Port
-Dallas
-Hou
-Utah
-NOLA

The way I see it, if Minn pups take a step forward as does Utah even a slight bit, and Denver & NOLA stay relatively healthy, the Rockets are going to be fighting an uphill battle for the playoffs.

I'd be shocked if the Rockets are better than all the team in tier 3 but I hope I'm wrong. At least two of those team are going to have a good year. You can't possibly have all 7 teams suffer bad years with no improvement.

 

Right now the West looks like this to me:

1) GSW
2) SAS
3) LAC

Then we have a bunch of teams that will be jockeying for position: 4-9.

- Portland
- Utah
- Memphis
- Houston
- OKC
- Dallas

- Minn - heads the next tier but could jump up to the next grouping.

- Den / Sac / NOP / Phx / LAL

 

For the first time in forever, I'm saying San Antonio is not going to be in the top tier. I think they will be around as good as the Clippers.

 

Not a reach, since there will only be one team in Tier One.

 

If dmo back is cleared to play and Drs think that the chance of him re injuring it again is under 20% I think signing him to 8m a year for 3-4 years is a no brainier.

I don't think dmo is getting 10+ because as we've seen nobody found him to be worth that. If a team wanted to offer dmo that kind of money they would have already.

I think dmo can be a nice big who plays the 4 and 5.

Although I really think his best position in the nba is ultimately the five.

He needs to learn how to position himself on D and stay straight up which he was starting to do before the injury and also adding a 15 foot jumper. He's never going to be a strong rebounder but if he can be a 10 rebounds per 36min guy I'll take it. He has a skills set that could make him a poor mans Marc Gasol and that's a nice big to have coming of your bench.

 

IMO the west will be like this
GSW
LAC
Spurs
Utah
Memphis (depends on health)
Houston (depends on health)
Portland
OKC

Utah for sure in my mind if they dont' have a significant injury will have homecourt advantage.
Portland I can see them having a down year because of inserting Turner in the starting lineup.
I can see also NOP having a surprise year and reaching up to the 6th seed in the playoffs.

 

Nobody cares about defense Bobby. They wanted Dwight gone no matter what.

 

If MDA can cut the teams stupid turnovers down we will all see a marked improvement and that should help the defensive numbers somewhat. I think this team as currently constructed is a mid 50 win team with the main reason being Harden is in his prime and he's that good. But its still going to be in Bzdelik we trust and they won't touch GS, Cavs or even the Spurs.

 

Yeah, true, and Dwight sucked at defense too.

DD