Totally agree here I mean look at size differential: Rockets vs heat Lin 6'3 bev 6'3? vs chalmers 6'1 cole 6'1? Harden 6'5 vs wade 6'4 Allen 6'4 Parsons 6'9 cappsi 6'9? vs bron 6'8 miller 6'7 Aldridge 6'11 vs bosh 6'10 Howard 6'11 vs andersen 6'9 Clippers Paul 6'0 collision 6'0 Crawford 6'4 reddick 6'4 Hill 6'8 Dudley 6'7 Griffin 6'10 Jordan 7' Spurs TP 6'1 Green 6'7 Gino 6'6 Leonard 6'7 Duncan 6'11 Splitter 7'0 In the nba.. Size does matter and with Aldridge we would be legitimate contenders!
Morey talked up some analysis on the advantage of havings combo-players, or players that can play multiple positions on the floor. That is the advantage Aldridge has over Love. Love is and always will be a PF. Aldridge can play PF and then slide over to center and your defense won't collapse. This is also why I think Llull is destined to play for the Rockets. He's a combo guard, just like Harden. IMO, Parsons is strictly an off-ball SF, which is a great fit for this team's needs. He tried to play some combo guard last year with mixed results. The same is true for Garcia and Papanikolaou. So the future for the Rockets is: Combo Guards: Harden, Llull, Canaan, Beverley Off-ball SF: Parsons, Garcia, and Papanikolaou Combo Forwards: Aldridge, DMo, TJones Center: Howard
Does all this really matter when it matters. He adds that extra dimension from mid range and come crunch time or play off, and thats what makes the difference between winning and losing when defenses get tight.
If we land LMA we will probably lose TJones and or DMO along with Asik and a few 1st round draft picks
Asik+Motiejunas+1st round picks in 2014 and 2016. Return the group of Portland 2nd rounders as well sounds fair and clearly would be paying a big price. Howard/Smith Aldridge/Jones Parsons/Casspi Harden/Garcia Bev/Lin With this lineup, Bev needs to start. Lin comes off the bench with a solid group and would thrive in that role IMO.
Player development is understated in significance and underachieved by all clubs i believe. Its being resorted to recruitment from various leagues with little in house development. i hope this can be changed.
I really don't think that Asik likes the idea of staying in HTown playing along Dwight Howard that is why they kept everything in silent mode about Asik not on trading block! Morey is simmering something inside the pot!
I get the feeling if we do bring in LMA for Asik, we would have to take bake Robin Lopez, I don't kno what his contract looks like, but he would be a decent back-up
But this is exactly my point though, the reason we have a starting pg sf and a bench is because we dont have LMA. Wanting to upgrade the PF position is fine but if your gonna add a max contract to do that we lose everyone else but vet mins, dleaguers, howard and LMA. There s a valid point that morey is amazing at picking 2nd round talent, but honestly I like the team we have now. Gutting it for lma and bunch of vet mins turns the entire team to a mercenary squad where everyone signs for just 2-3 years and we suffer variants of the dwightmare, hardenmare or lmaware every couple of years. I want us to be more like dllas or san antonio which had a core group of guys they rolled with yea after year.
If there's anything Rockets fans should have learned from the Yao-McGrady era it's that you DO NOT put all of your eggs in one basket. You need talent and you need balance to compensate for injuries. With a healthy Dwight, sure, we are potentially a championship level team. Without him we're 40-something wins and a first round exit, just like last year. What happens if he gets injured? What happens if he has to miss a key game due to illness or picks up a stupid technical foul (as he's been known to do) and gets suspended in a Game 7? A player like Aldridge gives you the flexibility to still run your offense and draw attention away from the perimeter. It's been proven that the spread PnR attack is easily neutralized by our opponent slowing the game down, forcing us to play one-on-one and baiting us into contested long two's and three's. Our offense stalls whenever the transition opportunities are limited and the long ball isn't falling. Dwight's presence in this offense (and in particular, our PnR attack) is what is going to enable us to reach the next level offensively - a point that I think we can both agree on. My point is: with a versatile PF like Aldridge, you have options no matter what the situation or lineup is. With Dwight, without Dwight - this offense would still function and figures to be even better with a player as good as LMA essentially being played one-on-one no matter what. In response to your other points: 1) LMA and Chris Bosh are most certainly worth their max contracts. You are free to have a problem with Bosh making as much money as he does (same as LeBron), but the fact of the matter is he is one of the best two-way bigs in the game. A player that Erik Spoelstra has even described as the "most important" player on Heat. Not sure what he was thinking there when he said that, but you get the point. Like Bosh, LMA is also one of the best two-way bigs in the game (and makes $5M less than Bosh, FWIW). The key here is being proficient on both ends of the court. Something that doesn't apply to Scola, Morris or any of the other examples you used. Also, arguing against a model that's won a team back-to-back titles is a bit of a reach, in my estimation. Are Miami's "Big 3" contributing equally? No. LeBron is the best player in the world x20, Wade looks like he's starting to decline and Bosh seems to disappear in the playoffs. That's fine...but it doesn't mean a potential Harden/LMA/Howard "Big 3" would have the same problem. 2) I'm not worried about anybody being underutilized. You could make the argument that since LeBron isn't averaging 30 PPG anymore, like he did in his Cleveland days, that he's being "underutilized" to some degree. Same with Wade or Bosh. Winning championships is the ultimate goal and it changes everything. Why else would Dwight agree to sign in Houston and why else would LMA be seemingly quietly pushing for a trade to Houston? These guys are ready to sacrifice a few points off of their scoring averages if it gets them a championship. Aldridge does so much more than just PnR. He's a master of the high post. He can back his defender down, turnaround, fadeaway or simply spot up. He's the type of player that you can feed the ball to and let him create his own offense. Something that he's much better than Dwight at doing. This type of advantage would be invaluable in crunch time whenever teams get used to seeing our ISO's, PnR's and Dwight's mechanical looking post game. Another area where the examples you used can't be trusted to do. 3) Disagreed entirely. LMA makes $14M this year ($15M next year). That's actually relatively cheap for a max contract player. If you're asking do I think LMA > Asik/Lin then, yes, I think LMA is worth more to us than both of those players. And, even though I have suggested that I would be willing to part ways with Parsons to get this done, I definitely get the vibe DM will pursue Aldridge with Parsons off of the table. So, no, I don't agree with your suggestion that getting Aldridge will result in us gutting the team. From a free agency standpoint, his contract is the same length and cap hit as Asik/Lin's.
Blazers are in no hurry to trade LMA, especially not for Asik, Lin, or anyone else on our roster not named Dwight or Harden. They may be interested in Asik, but its going to take a lot more than that to land LMA. Rockets have to play the waiting game and hope a 3rd team gets involved and that something happens that would encourage Portland to trade LMA this soon. Bottom line, if LMA wants to be a Rockets, he will be. No reason to offer up the farm to get him right this second.
Substitute Dwight Howard for Lebron James in Miami's case, and your argument is exactly what would occur there as well. In a league where if you aren't first, you're last, you are by virtue of the nature of the situation not only best fitted to win by putting all your eggs in one basket, but in all but very rare situations required to. If Lebron misses key games, well Miami loses, it's the risk that must be taken in order to have a chance at winning a title, that's why every team hoping to win a title takes it. To not do so means you can at best get lucky one year and that's that, and given the strength of the current nba pinnacle teams, that tiny chance that teams like Detroit and Dallas took no longer exists. A 40 win team without Dwight is actually a very good team for the situation, because if he's missing the whole season, you aren't winning anything, and if he misses say 20 games, going 10-10 is actually a pretty solid return. In essence, you need to be respectable when he's gone for short stints, but accept you're winning nothing if he's gone all year.
It's likely going to take for their owner to accept that they're going nowhere the next couple years, the GM probably knows it already but that's not how trades like that work. As for Asik, Jones, Dmo etc, it's not enough right now, but it's a hell of a lot better than anyone else is offering (basically no one is offering enough). From their GM's perspective, he can wait until the deadline and see how various young players turn out through the first half of the year without seeing much decline in Aldridge's value (for all he knows, some other team might have some kid blow up that they're willing to trade, or our guys might bust), but if he goes beyond the deadline, that contract's value will plummet. The only problem with waiting for the deadline is it will impact their own draft pick, and this is the year where sucking 24/7 is the next best thing to contention.
we do not have to lose parsons or lin to get LMA.... We will lose Asik in free agency in 2015 anyway LMA can be a starting PF and back up center (in case of injury to howard)... We are set up beautifully, unlike the heat, to add 3 max players. We wont have to gut our team. We only have to give up basically players that were not in the rotation last, picks and of course asik.
