Rockets will sign Dexter Pittman, per source. Will waive Greg Smith.

He could be a good body for practice too, to prepare for LAC's Deandre + big Baby + Griffin or OKC's Kendrick or Memphis' Zach Randolph. Especially since we don't have any bruising big men (asik is sort of finesse for his size, so is Dmo and Tjones).

 

 

 

Damnit Camby, that's just ridiculous. He knew he was injured, signed a contract, then bolted to come back later in the year...

 

I wonder if the Rockets ever reached our to Big Baby. Don't recall such a report. Maybe they were still hoping in early March that Greg could come back.

 

@1:53 this guy even scored a fadeaway jumper. Haven't seen that from our centers for a while...

And yes, he does look better than I expected. Highlights are highlights. But some of the things he showed (blocks, etc) look promising.

 

Dexter and Big Baby scrumming under the basket...visions of 2 sumo-wrestlers grabbing each other's jocks and grunting.

 

I WAS enjoying my lunch

 

I have not read this thread, so apologies if this has already been posted.

Mark Deeks (a/k/a "Sham" on this BBS) wrote a great article for "the Score" about this move:

http://beta.thescore.com/nba/news/477729

FYI, Mark is a fan of Smith and thinks the Rockets may have made a mistake by waiving such a good player. To the extent that any of you follow me on Twitter and saw what I've tweeted about the justifications for the move, you'll know that Mark and I don't quite see eye-to-eye on this one. We even had an exchange via Twitter earlier today. Still, his counter-point is excellent.

 

Saw the Twitter banter. I think Smith has more value as a sign and trade than Pittman does as a unguaranteed deal. Pittman may help win one more game this regular season that would give Rockets HCA. Rockets giving up a lot of flexibility in my opinion, but I see the point in having another center for the remainder of the season.

 

Deeks is not taking into account that we are trying to win a championship and he is overstating how good Smith is. For as good as Smith is, the #1 skill needed for a 5 in the NBA is the ability to control the defensive paint. Smith, like DMo, is a total sieve defensively. And he's never shown improvement on that end of the floor.

On the other hand, we will very possibly need every one of Pittman's 6 fouls at some point in the playoff if we go all the way. Not to mention we weren't going to pay Smith one cent over the minimum to be a backup center for us next season. Because we're either going to try to clear cap to sign a max free agent by trading away Asik, Lin, DMo, and Jones for nothing but future draft picks and cap space or we're going to try to trade Asik/Lin/pieces directly for a third superstar.

If we trade away a bunch of guys for cap space to sign a max player...we'd be dumping Smith anyways and losing his Bird's rights. And if we trade directly for a third superstar using contracts on the books, then we've got our 3 superstars plus Parsons and Bev and our full MLE. There will be a lot better backup centers that can play defense chasing us down to sign with us for the vet minimum or possibly the bi-annual exception to play on a star-studded team. In that case, Smith wasn't going to get offered more than the minimum from us anyways. Guys like Elton Brand, Nazr Mohammed, Chris Kaman, Jordan Hill, Chris Andersen, Ekpe Udoh, Greg Stiemsma, Jason Smith, and Cole Aldrich represent more value on a minimum contract playing backup 5 that can provide some paint defense than Greg Smith.

Sorry, the move had to be made for the playoffs and hopefully championship run.

And I think there could possibly be one more roster move as well in the next 4 days. Not definite but possibly.

 

With his foul trouble, Greg Smith was not a good defender. He was a good rebounder, which is great, but not a good defender. That's something I was hoping he would improve on this year, but he never got healthy.

 

Hard to believe Smith was our starting PF last year in the playoffs.

 

Did the author watch Smith's performance in last year's series against OKC. Dude was a complete liability against the OKC (just look up the +- for each game).

 

Morley is still collecting rubbish players!

 

Greg Smith would be fantastic If he was paired with a stretch 5. His lack of range kills us as a PF, and he just doesn't control the paint well enough to be a Center.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>F Greg Smith, released this week by the Rockets to make room for Dexter Pittman, has officially cleared waivers</p>&mdash; Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNSteinLine/statuses/455104657623228416">April 12, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



And nobody picks him up. Becuz....he is injured and can't play and his "value" as an expiring contract with Bird's right really doesn't have any value.

 

A stretch 5 that could play a lot of paint defense and cover a lot of ground.

 

Yup... Maybe a prime Jazz Mehmet, of Sam Perkins, haha...

 

This team also struggles to get rebounds when Dwight and Asik are not on the floor. If Dexter can crash the boards the way Smith used to do ... then he would boost our defense greatly. No point in defense unless you grab their miss.

 

Thats why I hate NBA, some players have ring averaging 6.9 minutes per game in career, and some HOF's does not have one. I imagine that type of players in 10 or 20 years selling that ring on ebay just because they have no moneys left and ring is nothing special for them because they didn't really earned it.

Btw, this dude is even bigger fouling prone than Donuts - 1.7 fouls per 6.9 minutes? wow