IDK wtf he see's when K-low7 and Goran is on the floor at the same time. It did not look good when K-Low tried to make his come back after his illness.
I found it interesting his comments about being in the lottery (tanking). When asked about losing more games to get a higher draft choice, He said "those teams average being in the Lottery 8 to 10 years and have a hard time getting out. There can only be one winner each year so those teams tend to get stuck there". and they chose to emphasize the other options of cap flexibility for free agents and trades than the tanking strategy (in a nutshell)
There entirely different players. Monta scores off the dribble, much better ball handler, better passer, same on ball D but Monta will get you some steals as well. He's also two years younger and cheaper. K Mart is a better shooter from 3 and at the line though.
I didn't think Last year the FO was going to start playing younger players. Morris was a project and I knew he wouldn't get PT because of Budinger. Once we signed Dalembert I knew we were going to shrink the rotation and there would be no room for raw players. I knew Donatas would stay in Europe to keep him growing. I know the Rockets will draft upside but I think (Hope) Morey is ready to Trade for it using our Veterans (Lowry, Scola, Martin and Dalembert) as bait. I want all of those payers GONE!
He was saying I guess we will end of up having to trade Lowry for Tyreke because that's all there is out there since there's no chance in hell for Deron or Howard and he doesn't want Gasol. Does he also mean high upside in PJIII and Royce White? Or upside by trying to get Beasley and/or Randolph out of Adelman with Martin trade?
Not really. They really are quite the same result wise. Milwaukee was a 9th place team in the East, then they traded a guy out for the season for Ellis, and ended the season 9th place with him. KMart played the best season of his life last year on a 9th place WC team. This year he kind of sucked, then got injured, and the Rockets are still a 9th place WC team. They are freaking mirror images of each other.
I think the radio host asked some good questions, but he had to know that they are smack dab in the middle of discussions for the 2nd busiest trade day of the year coming up next week. -Morey MUST say that they can use Dragic and Lowry going into next year or it KILLS any trade leverage they have going into next week. -Same with Dalembert. He cant just say, no we are trying to trade him right now as we speak because he's worthless. -Also, if they dont trade Dallly, then yes, I would agree that he should retained. At 6.7 mil expiring next season thats still great value for a productive Center, and a semi-productive starting Center in the NBA. He will still be an excellent trade piece next February for contending teams needing major frontcourt help.
Agreed. It's almost gotten to the point for me that, when a front office says it wants someone to stay, the very necessity for making the comment means that they are seriously entertaining not retaining the guy. Either via trade in Kyle's case or not picking up the option in Dalembert's, you can be sure that if the Rockets are discussing moving anybody on the roster then those are the two most talked about. Here's another great example of a statement which means the opposite of what was said: "We still have high hopes for Marcus Morris." The fact that nothing has been said about resigning Dragic, keeping Patterson, or resigning Camby says to me that we will probably get those things done.
Blah Blah Blah... There's my recap Spoiler [Sorry for being late, he was stuck on the phone.] With 2 first round picks, how often has your phone been ringing with people either trying to move down or up in the draft and how open are you to that? Pretty active right now. A lot of trade discussions in the league. People saw there was a trade yesterday. Our first focus is to try and move up but we're open to other ideas as well. We're chasing high upside, whether through trade, draft, or FA. Moving up in the draft is one way to do that. If a deal makes sense, we would pick up future draft picks to help our trade and then we got room in FA. You were with Motiejunas last week. Give us the run down. He just came off winning the championship in his league in Europe. McHale, myself, Sampson, we had a whole crew at the pre-draft camp in Italy run by our head of scouting Arturas Karnisovas. He looks good. Took a big step forward in rebounding. That was one area of concerns and why he probably fell in the draft. Last year, we asked to him to focus on it and then set the rebounding record in Euroleague so pretty good. He's a young player. We have pretty high hopes for him that he can help us out down the road. With our team, it's pretty hard to get on the floor. So we don't know when that will happen exactly. He's quick. A 7 footer, mobile. Runs the floor well. Can shoot it. Both left and right hands are strong. Overall, someone we're really interested in. Odds we see him this coming season? This season? 100%. I guess I should say 99.9%. He's planning to sign with us. Obviously our draft pick and we're allowed to sign him right there at the start of July, so a few days from now. Kevin McHale was on NBATV recently and talked about the most important thing for Houston going forward was to stay the course. Because of your success, you're in a rough spot. You're not likely to get a top 3 pick to get a game changer. Can the Rockets stay this course and build a championship caliber team? Or do they need to shake something up drastically to get that franchise type player? We do need to add a significant player. Our trade last year was targeted at that and ended up not going through. One thing people are fixated on is, when teams are trying to get back to having that franchise player, they go through many, many years, in fact, when it goes really well, they go through 8-10 years of being one of those worst team in the league, getting high picks. Unfortunately only one team wins, so it does take teams a long time to get back in contention. That's the traditional way it's done. What we're trying to do is maximize all 3 of our tools - free agency, trade and the draft and not just one of the tools, which is the draft. That could take some time as well but we think that gives us just as good as a shot to turn the ship around and at the same time, maximize our chances of quicker ??? while staying competitive. We're basically leaving all those tools available and maximizing all of them. Obviously we're hurting one of them by being competitive and not having the first, second, or third pick in the draft but we're a team that has had success picking later and we're obviously increasing our chances pulling things off through trade and FA. The best you've been positioned? Your best chance to make that move? This year, I think every year from here on, we'll keep trying to turn that corner. Obviously we haven't done it yet. This is the 2nd year since we haven't had Yao Ming. People view it as year...feels like a long time since he hasn't played here and that's true from a significant standpoint but last year was the first year we didn't have his contract on the books, constraining what we could do. This year we have more flexibility through FA and trade to try and upgrade the team and we got our best draft picks as well. We recognize we need to take a step forward and we're working hard to do that. Situation with Dalembert? Yeah, it's not an option. We're planning to bring him back. It's not a club option, it's a partially guaranteed contract. When Sam played for us, he was effective when he was out there, a little inconsistency but he was effective for us. And Kyle Lowry. He wants to be a starting PG. Where do you stand at on the PG situation? We played best when we had Lowry and Dragic out there. Our strategy is to continue to add good players who can help us win. Kyle and Goran were arguably our two best players last year. We plan to bring them both back. Kyle had some frustrations last year and we plan to work with him to improve those.
It doesn't sound like he's very optimistic about Dmo helping soon. Obviously, if there are trades he may have to play significant minutes, but otherwise, i don't think there will be a focus to give him minutes. Some posters were penciling him in as a significant part of the big man rotation next season...
Of course not, rookies rarely make a difference, it takes until year 2 or 3 for them to really come into their own. CBud and Parsons were pretty unique, in all honesty. DD
d-mo will play because he is our most talented big men i think and high upside guys so is marshall out of the question because he is goin to be a steal true PGs are rare to find and i really want subzero he would be instant offense and could possibly be a all star too
with respect DD, i think rookies can make a difference, and not just rookies at the top of the lotto. Klay thompson made a difference. Isiah Thomas made a difference. Faried made a difference. i won't even talk about players like Kyle Irving and the difference they made. I just don't think it's as rare as you are saying. There are several examples every year.
Motiejunas will have to wait his turn. He won't get minutes early. And at PF, they have depth to not have to depend on him until he proves it in practice.
