"Don't trade for Howard! Our draftees will be stars!"

Sign and trade in free agency is off the table with the new collective bargaining agreement. He can't get his extra year in a S & T. The main reason I would not risk it is because of his back injury. He may never be the same player. I would prefer to see him play several games before I sent a bunch of young promising players, draft picks, and took back Orlando's crap.

 

this.

 

Then why do you read them?

 

Right and if you add our possible two top ten picks with one possibly being a top five we will have to give them all up for punk ass Dwight Howard for one year

 

I highly doubt Rockets are giving up that much. Think about it they are basically the only team with a realistic shot at getting him. Morey isn't going to give up the farm for him

 

There is another factor here that the OP is not accounting for.

If we pass on Howard and go to war with the rookies, we will probably suck bad enough to get a better pick than the 12 - 20 range of our past drafts. That, plus the prospect that Toronto might just suck again this year, would likely change the math of the original post. Our longer term future would probably include more drafted "star potential" than what we currently have.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't pull the trigger on a DH trade; just that there are additional considerations to the initial argument.

 

Morey seems to be pretty good at finding talent off of other teams that arent getting the chance to play. See Lowery and Dragic.

 

I'm still on the fence as far as Howard, but unless his back is a serious issue, he'll play his heart out next season. Not because he gives a crap about the Rockets, but because its a contract year and Fegan will push him to his max. He has to put up good numbers if he expects to sign a big deal here, or anywhere else. He may want to leave and not resign, but he will definitely play hard as a Rocket. If he wants to leave Houston, any b****ing and moaning won't be public. Fegan has too much to lose if this same Dwightmare happens again.

 

Obviously by my response, I don't. Haha

 

I'm with you OP. As long as the deal isn't completely ridiculous we have to make it. People are attached now to the rookies. Ill be excited to see how this all plays out after Tuesday. Hopefully Morey can bend them over in this deal like he does the Knicks.

 

Back problems are not a walk in the park. When will he be fully healthy to train. Lin himself said at the press conference that he is close to returning back to his pre-surgery speed and explosiveness. That is about 4 months for a routine meniscus tear. Obviously these things are not as simple as fans make it out to be. Who knows when Howard will be able to get back to training and how long it will take him to return to pre-injury form.

 

I want to keep the draft picks because I don't want Howard but not because I think one of the rookies or DMo is going to be a superstar. I think we have enough young guys with upside that we can possibly get 1.5 all stars out of the group but I think the chances of one turning into a superstar is very low. However, I think with such a young team we can be bad enough to get 1 or 2 top 5 picks in the next 2 years and that is where we can possibly get our superstar. Maybe we get lucky and we end up with pick 4 or 5 from Toronto also.

 

if we get howard then orlando would probly want DMO IMO

 

first of all what don't you all get about d-mo can't be traded. Anyways I'm so glad this thread was made. People in here going CRAZY over some good summer league performances. The Summer League that was just dominated by josh selby and saw adam morrison play the best basketball of his career. BTW neither one of them will be starting for an NBA team ANYTIME soon. Everyone keeps talking about the draft as if its a guarantee. Well if it was why are THE SAME TEAMS IN THE F'N LOTTER YEAR AFTER YEAR? The OKC route is rare, as in it's RARELY successful...

 

I am equally fine with watching the rookies or getting Dwight. I trust Morey not to give up the farm when we are one of the 2-3 teams even in the conversation to trade for Dwight.

That being said, stopping your search at 20 is a bit misleading since a good GM could have picked anyone 12 or below all the way to undrafted players. If we extend the search back a bit further that includes some more names like Rajon Rondo, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Gilbert Areanas, Tayshaun Prince, Carlos Boozer, Josh Howard, Mo Williams, David Lee, Monta Ellis, Marcin Gortat, Marc Gasol, Courtney Lee, Serge Ibaka, DeAndre Jordan, DeJuan Blair, Taj Gibson, Darren Collison, Jeremy Lin, MarShon Brooks, Kyle Lowry, Paul Milsap, Isaiah Thomas (SAC), George Hill, Aaron Brooks, Tiago Splitter, Arron Afflalo, Carl Landry, Daniel Gibson, Kevin Martin, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Anderson Varajao, Kyle Korver, Steve Blake, Boris Diaw, John Salmons, Michael Redd, Mehmet Okur, Luis Scola, Trevor Ariza, Gerald Wallace, Ron Artest, Hedo Turkoglu, Jamaal Magloire, Richard Jefferson, Zach Randolph, Goran Dragic, and that is leaving off quite a few "average" players.


There are quite a few all star level players, though the point still stands that the odds are against any of our rookies ever being an all star, and if you traded any one of the players on that list for Dwight you still wouldn't say the team that got Dwight was ripped off IF Dwight stays.

I enjoyed watching the rookies in summer league and they showed some nice potential. I would be fine watching them develop this year if we don't get Dwight. At the same time using summer league to predict how they will do in the regular season is about like using the preseason to predict who is going to win the title that year.

 

I think all of them have a good chance of being solid starters at least. Also Marc Gasol is also an All Star now. I think Dmo and Lamb are the most valuable of our rookies. Dmo is a 7 ft pf/C. 7 footers are very rare in this league and there are few quality centers. Lamb is valuable because the SGs in this league are very underwhelming maybe because some SGs are masquerading as Pgs *cough* Westbrook, maybe Rose, Curry. They are a bit undersized but they can play SG for sure.

 

Awesome post. Great points all around.

 

This. We could have at least 1 top-10 pick and the cap space to sign some free agents next season for some veteran presence.

 

With the Howard thing, we're not giving Orlando anything...no way!! We help absorb their contract and give them Martin expired....that's a lot already. No other teams can do this!! This is pretty HUGE. If we say the hell with you, we're not doing deal....where are they going to go to help them absorb those HUGE contracts?? None!! So if they're asking for our rookies, they aint' getting none! We can give them the 1st round from Orlando and probably Dallas or this year's first rounder and 2nd rounder....that's it!! We ain't giving them ANY OF OUR ROOKIES. They really have no choice but to accept it because if they don't....they GET NOTHING from other teams. We can tell them that because of Howard uncertainly next year when he become free agent, this is not good for us...so why should we give them more when we're not certain about Howard future...so take it or leave with nothing!