For as much flack I get for the whole Marcus Morris franchise player thing, no one actually read what I wrote about him in that thread: IF Morris can play SF, then he is too quick for bigs, can spread the floor, and post up smalls. A potential allstar. IF he can only play the PF, he will be average at best, a tweener. This was the Rocket's line of thinking as well when they drafted him. And guess what, he can't play SF. Sure he hasn't peaked yet in less than a full season, but if you can already evaluate that he will never become a full time wing player, his upside is limited to a role player.
Of course a backseat type b****ass player wouldn't care if he starts or not. "However you want to use me"? That's right Patrick, that's all you will ever do in your career. Get used. Patrick wouldn't dare step into woods. No wonder b****ass player attracts b****ass fans who wouldn't dare step into tipjar thread calling his ass out.
Classy... You know you're losing your agruement when all's you've got is name calling. Yes we might make squeek into the playoffs but are you really going to tell me that we're a better team? Going into the playoffs with a swagger vs sqeeking in and getting thumped are 2 different things. And weren't you the one that was all over the Gasol was the best we could get trade? And the Morris is...? Somehow I see your track record as a +1 for Carl.
LOL. Gotta love it when people re-write history. He has never been a good defensive player, he likely will never be a good defensive player
Yes PPat had great rotations and was always in the right spot. Too bad it never translated into good defense... or at the very least it was not effective. That much is not even up for debate. The Rockets had a Defensive rating of 106.0 with PPat in the line-up.
Again, the point is, Morris has not played in the NBA much more than Robinson. If Morris was judged "peaked out" what about Robinson?
You are just flat out wrong. His pick and roll coverage was top notch and his rotations were ahead of the play signally a commitment to studying the game and executing the right plays. He also did not foul very much. First of all, it is up for debate. Second there is no public defensive metric which does a good job of measuring defense. Why? Because it doesn't matter how good your defense is, the ball going in still is ultimately in the hands of the offensive player. If a player is hot, it doesn't matter how well covered he is. Case and point Chuck Hayes, who is an excellent defender, his Drat has been 106, 109 and 111 in the past three years. He is absolutely an effective defender. Defense, above all, is from a coaching philosophy and style of emphasis. We are never going to be a good defensive team with our style of offense. There is a tradeoff for having a great offense and it includes not getting back on defense and being set before the ball makes its way back up the court. Our only real plus defenders this year have been Patteron, Asik and Douglas, everyone else mails it in half the time or doesn't know where to be. This isn't really surprising because they are the ones with a little more experience. I really don't even know what you people are looking at. D-mo has been a disaster defensively, literally night and day from Patterson.
PPatt was an adequate defender. He was never a great defender by any means! He was pretty good at defending against pick-and-rolls but his post defense was crap and his rotations were usually a step slow. What games have ppl been watching? DMo might look a bit lost at times, but he's been fine defensively on pick-and-rolls and great on the perimeter. Not so great in the post though. The trade didn't ruin this team defensively - it just messed up the spacing and chemistry. That's it.
I think we're a team that recently had spacing and experience problems because of a trade that clearly makes us better in the long run. In the short run we may have lessened our chances of the playoffs, but we're still around 90% chance of getting in (yeah, I know about last year). In any case, interesting enough as some poster has pointed out, we're .580 AFTER the trade and .520 BEFORE the trade...so maybe we're not so much worse off. We've been erratic, but our defensive rebounding has improved a lot (from one of the other threads).
Swagger? This team was 29-26 when we traded Patterson. Since when does a team with that record swagger into the playoffs?
29-26 with a tough schedule..we probably had the most difficult up to that point actually. It eased up right when we traded Ppat. Eyeball test tells me we look worse on the court as a whole, especially considering it's against weak competition lately
We weren't getting blown out. We beat some good teams closely lost to others. The last game was the worst loss and the lowest scored for the season combined...at home...to a pretender... If you can't see the diff before and after trade then I don't know what to tell you.
agree 100%. I would add beverly for good defenders, he is a pest on PG's, and can go get rebounds as well.
Missing U: DMo+Robinson and the Basket. 4 for 15 combined. Coach had to call on Delfino to guard Favors and stop the bleeding tonight.