I'm warming up to the "addition by subtraction" theory, though I disagreed with it at first. Especially, I think trading Battier and benching Miller really challenged the younger players to step up their play. Battier and Miller are great veteran players, and they covered up a lot of mistakes of their younger teammates - Battier on the defensive side, and Miller with his offense and knowledge of the Adelman system. By the trade deadline, time had come to take away the crutch and see if the young players could stand on their own. I don't think they were ready to do so in the beginning of the season, though.
Yeah no crap! I like it how the writer was able to see it, but I knew this was going on since the beginning of the season. I was thinking the best way to solve it was to get a star or semi-star for the team, but it was to simply trade away a couple key pieces for some future pieces.
This is his way of saying "I told you so" to Morey. They had a twitter war, albeit friendly, after Simmons said the Rockets have too many talented players at the start of the season.
Simmons is incorrect. Our depth was not the problem. Go ask Philly or San Antonio; they have great benches. It was that early in the season, we got messed up with a lot of injuries and RA had to figure out his rotations on the fly. Lowry had a back problem. Then AB got injured. No one could run our bench properly and Lowry and Martin needed time to get in sync with each other. When AB got back, RA had him competing with KM's minutes. It was just a mess. Chase went into a long slump so Shane had to play long minutes (and we know how weak his offense is). CLee had the minutes but didn't have the offense down pat and had late-game mental mistakes. When Yao went down, RA shuffled his frontline until he got comfortable with Hayes-Scola and Miller-Hill (later Miller-PPat). He only "discovered" PPat's defense after the trade deadline.
So Brooks sucked because they had to many starting PGs? I fail to see the logic in that. Does Jason Terry suck because they have too many starting PGs? You're basically saying AB is a moron, and I agree. That has nothing to do with rotations.
I don't think so. Kyle Lowry didn't cause AB to suck, AB just sucked for whatever reason. Lowry didn't cause the Manu collision that injured AB. Lowry also didn't cause the "no extension" policy that upset AB (they also didn't extend other players, including Battier, whose performance and professionalism were not affected by a lack of extension).
Here's the problem with the "we had too many talented players" critique. How do you determine which talented players to keep, and which ones to discard? That's not an easy problem. Suppose the Rockets decided that Brooks was their PG of the future, and they didn't bring back Kyle Lowry. OK, that would have been one way of addressing the "too much talent" issue. Does anyone at this point honestly think we'd have been better off? Maybe if you know, before-hand, which players are going to be really good for you and which ones aren't, you can get away with limiting the amount of quality players on your team. If you're a veteran-laden team, that's quite possible. You know what you're going to get. With a younger team like the Rockets that's a very dangerous strategy. What if you pick the wrong players?
He called the Rockets the #16 team in the NBA. So what? Based on the way things go, we'll be the 17th team in terms of playoff seeding. And about why we sucked early on...does it matter? We sucked early and now we don't and if we could have gotten that for a whole season we'd be safely in as the 5/6 seed the way we're playing. Still not good enough for a championship. I really hope this whole lack of a superstar thing plays itself out in the offseason, and we have an anchor to once again tie our boat to for the next few years. I just hope it's not an also-ran like Chris Bosh or Carmelo Anthony .
that's what a lot of guys will do. what bill simmons says is on point, almost every coach narrows down their rotation towards the playoffs. and i'm not a simmons fan, although i think he is a brilliant writer
The Rockets tried to keep two starters and only pay one of them. They didn't have to do this, they chose to do it. It didn't work. Doesn't matter whether it's Brooks' own fault or not. Doesn't matter if Battier played decent. Everyone isn't always going to fall in line with those tactics. That seems to be the author's point.
When the Celtics have a lot of quality players, they call them deep. When the Rockets have a lot of quality players, they say they have too many guys. In short, winning justifies all.
To be fair, DM was looking for young players to step up, but Brooks, Chase and Hill regressed before the trade deadline. If they had continued to progress, would've been easier (not easy) to pull off a three+expiring(s) + filler/picks trade for a star or near-star to shorten the rotation AND still have enough capable players (unlike Knicks). But perhaps DM is too calculating. Too hard to have an all-bases-covered strategy.
Simmons also forgets Rockets history with injuries. So what happens when your main man (or with us, several men--remember in our 6th game, Ish Smith was our only PG) goes down? I'd rather have a deep rotation. RA said after the SA game, we now have a narrower rotation. The shorter rotation is actually for his benefit. Because it takes the guesswork out for him.
