Any way you dice it, in this fantasy situation the top two big men are Hakeem and Moses (if you prefer to put Moses as a PF and Hakeem at Center, it’s cool).
No judge zone - this thread is for everyone to choose their all-time favorite Rockets player by position! Most people enjoy the legacy of Harden than T-Mac
Most casual fans enjoyed Harden's era over Tmac. But die hard Rocket fans & overall basketball fans wont agree. The ONLY reason the Tmac wasn't successful here was because of injury. He never out right quit mid game like Harden's done on multiple teams. Quitters get no praise here
As a died hard Rockets fan, I can admit I was heartbroken when we traded Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley for T-Mac...we almost beat the Lakers in the 1st round with Steve Francis first year in the playoffs with Jeff Van Gundy. Jim Jackson made a crucial bad play in game 1 that lost us the game...we needed a better roster around Steve Francis and Jeff Van Gundy wasn't the best coach for Francis or T-Mac.
Steve Francis was a turnover machine that refused to give Yao the ball. Tmac was miles better & worked better with Yao. I was excited to see Tracy McGrady come here
Still, McGrady couldn't get out the first round with a healthy Yao...not disagreeing with you regarding T-Mac being better than Francis. I would argue Van Gundy was a bad hire after Rudy T stepped down for that roster. If Rick Adelman was the Rockets coach during the prime years of Francis and Mobley, we would've been contenders in the West. Unfortunately, Adelman inherited an injured superstar duo in Yao/T-Mac and it will always be one of the big "what-ifs" in the NBA.
TMac's years coincided with Yao's. Both guys were riddled with injuries. And in the early years when they were relatively healthy, we had JVG who didn't know how to utilize two of the best offensive players on offense and Carroll Dawson who didn't know how to surround them with good role players. By the time we had a good offensive coach and a GM who was good at trading for role players, the two stars already had more down time than playing time. That said, I didn't like TMac's attitude on handling his injuries toward the latter part of his time with the Rockets. It could have been more professional. Harden had problem with handling adversities too. Neither guy ended their career with the Rockets in an amiable manner.
Yep, and I believe we didn't have the right roster/front office to build a team around Yao/Francis/Cuttino
