No need to straw man the argument for rebuilding. The argument is win with youth and room for growth. That is the NBA. If your developing players don't win, you use a top pick to draft or trade for top talent, then you develop that talent to win. Every team has followed this pattern. Top 10 pick is necessary, top 5 is even better. The better the pick, the better your opportunity. And the better your GM and scouting department and coaching/development staff...
TANK verb 2: to make no effort to win : lose intentionally <tanked the match> intransitive verb 1: to lose intentionally : give up in competition courtesy of Websters...
Had McGrady and Yao stayed healthy, I highly doubt you would be saying that. I am sure you are aware that Yao Ming retired 6 months ago. The team isn't going to find a new direction that quickly. Right now we have a team built to complement Yao. Give it some time. In the meantime, we have quality players and a ton of youth with upside.
I was pretty proud of that team that lost to the Lakers in the playoffs. After watching their best player go down to injury, they scratched and clawed and fought. They lost the series, but I believe did the city proud.
Have you ever stopped to consider that the team IS tanking but not coming out and telling the public? You won't sell many tickets by saying, "oh, by the way we're not going to try hard so we can draft well." Not one move have been a legit acquisition. It's all smoke and mirrors in that regard. Tanking is an art. You have to look like you're at least trying hard so that you can maximize your profits in the process.
I think if this team is not contending for the playoffs...we'll see a mini-fire sale of Scola and Martin.
That's EXACTLY what I thought when they fired future HOF coach, Rick Adelman and brought in HOF player, Kevin McHale.
I'm not for tanking already, if we start the year out 5 - 20 than I say let's tank, but what I mean by that is not that I watch them to lose but let's go ahead and play the young guys as much as possible and get them experience, see what they can become. Nobody really knows if Twill or Jhill will become anything significant, how about Patterson and Morris? With that being said, I'm not in favor of trading Scola and Martin just to say we are rebuilding, this is what the stupid astros did with berkman, pence, bourne. They traded these guys and got little in return. The trade that makes the most sense if we are rebuilding is to trade these guys to a contender for one of their young developing players, one that already has a year or half year under their belt and has proved to be effective. I'm not in favor of trading for a playoff's team draft pick just so we can be stuck with another 15 - 29th pick, that defeats the purpose of rebuilding to land a star.
cosigned Kwame Brown, Sam Bowie, Michael Olowokandi, Greg Oden, Shawn Bradley, Stromile Swift, Jay Williams, Darko Milicic, Adam Morrison, Marcus Fizer, Joanthan Bender, Sheldon Williams, Tractor Traylor (RIP), Joe Alexander, Kedrick Brown, Frederick Weis, Michael Sweetney, Yinka Dare..... ...and Hasheem Thabeet
you're absolutely right...there's risk in every potential strategy. there's always risk. but even our own GM has said that losing is the easier way to rebuild. i've learned from these message boards that our GM is never wrong about anything.
Tanks for the memories.....not! Win as many games as you can Rockets....fight,claw, scramble--just do what ever you have to Sammie-lois-PP-kyle-everyone in ! Go Rockets!
The Rockets are at a precarious state in which they don't have a star but aren't terrible. I am not necessarily in favor of "tanking" per say, however, they will continually maintain pedestrian until a dramatic change occurs with the roster to shake things up. There are too many guys on this team who need minutes in order to learn and would not ever see the playing floor unless there were more minutes distributed. I'm not trying to contend that there is some super star on the bench or even that a roster shake up would produce immediate results. There is no way to find out the quality of youthful players the team posses without allowing face time in real game situations.
Unless I misread your previous post, it seems you are implying Yao would not have taken us far. The probability of landing a #1 pick again, is very slim for us, even if we were to be much worse than we are currently assembled. If Yao is the best to come out of that group, and you are implying that he could not have brought us a championship, who is to say that a group of relatively unknown players this year, or in the future could have any better of an impact for a #1 pick? We could have always gone with top 5 picks Mike Dunleavy, Jay Williams or Drew Gooden instead....
No, I think Yao's injuries were ridiculously foreseeable. It was discussed on draft night. In the history of the league, everyone who played at 7'5" or taller was playing limited minutes by their early 30's and was done by their mid 30's. And none of those guys had logged the kind of minutes Yao had already logged in China. And you're exactly right...you do not know with a draft. There is always risk. But we knew that year wasn't as good as others in terms of the draft crop...the 2012 draft crop, on the other hand, looks promising...though there are certainly no guarantees.
