Any x-rocket player can be a headache...even if they were marginal... Asik & CP they 'll do major damage impacts whenever they play against the Rocket for sure
I was answering the point that Howard was a better defender in light of the fact that adding him made us a better defensive team. The logic was wrong because Howard had better backup. Anyway, heypartner made the same point you did about our records with and with out Asik. We were slightly better with Asik than without, about 3 more wins over an 82-game season. (We did not account for the fact that some of those games were under the Twin Towers experiment, which had pretty bad results.) We were fortunate that Howard has been healthy. The backup center spot is a big hole in my opinion.
And we were about 6 games from missing the playoffs. Even a small percentage is a huge difference in the West.
Who was our backup center last year when Asik was out? D-Mo? Dorsey will be a much better backup center than D-Mo. Also, we won 54 games last season. We won at a .647 rate with Asik not playing and that equates to winning just over 53 games. Less than a one game difference with no backup center. We'll be fine.
I am not sold about Dorsey until I see him play some good NBA games. If his improvement in Europe in the past few years is as good as advertised, then I agree that the backup center spot is solid. Again, using last season's records for projection has an underlying assumption: Howard will be as healthy as he was last season. Nobody can predict injuries. Depth is supposed to be a counter-measure for injury risks. I am not talking about catastrophic season ending injuries to our star player. That kind of thing would destroy a season no matter what. But missing 10-20 games (or a couple of games in the playoffs) is not uncommon for a relatively healthy player. In those situations, it makes a big difference whether we have depth or not. But we'll see.
the point is that we played at a 53 win pace with D-Mo as the backup center. Even is his time in Toronto, Dorsey was already a backup center than D-Mo. Take a look at Dorsey's per 36 minute stats in the 43 games that he played for Toronto in 2011. 9.3 pts, 13.1 reb, 52.5 FG%, 1.2 blk and 1.7 steals. That's very similar numbers to what Asik put up his two years here: 12.2 pts, 14.0 reb, 54.1 FG%, 1.3 blk and 0.7 steals 10.4 pts, 14.1 reb, 53.2 FG%, 1.4 blk and 0.5 steals. Even if he didn't improve any over the last two years, he's still easily better than what D-Mo was providing while Howard was out. If we could play at a 53 win pace with D-Mo as the backup, then I don't know why we'd do worse with Dorsey.
Dorsey was also significantly younger and more athletic at that time 43 games is still a small sample size
You're not seriously trying to defend him are you? Especially with that statement. He's 30 years old.. You make it sound like he's 35. Plus it's not like he has a lot of miles on his body or suffered any serious injuries. You'd think that after having played in the NBA before and then leaving to gain international experience and being a veteran of the sport you'd have learned some things over the course of 6 years. Doesn't appear that way.
I think a lot of people were hopeful (even confident) that Asik would not be missed for two reasons: 1. With Howard, the back up only needed to play about 12 mpg. And we could always play some small ball too. 2. We had "the best defensive big in Euroleague" replacing Asik. I have warned that we could not rely on Howard being healthy and foul-trouble free all the time. And I was very skeptical about Dorsey's ability to be an NBA player. That said, trading Asik was necessary because of how unhappy he was being a backup, which was understandable. The problem was how we addressed the backup center issue.
You are a great poster and you have been mostly right regarding our ability to make up for the loss of Asik over the summer. But you failed correctly predict that instead of Dorsey > DMo, it's DMo >> DMo. DMo has replaced DMo as a legit Dwight backup/replacement. Asik has been pretty good for NO though. But he's not really moving the needle for them. Their defense is still pretty bad and his minutes are pretty low for a starter. Definitely more replaceable than I imagined over the summer.
I love how Pelicans fans complain about Asik offense(he gets blocked many times per game or that they play 4 vs 5) and Mavs fans about Parsons because he is fading away when he shoots or he has cold/hot stretches etc... things we had to deal the past seasons. They were all happy that they got the best end of the deal but i think Morey made the right decisions.
Asik has never given the rockets games like DMo has recently. Even the numerous DMo haters on here have quieted down with all their "hot garbage" comments. DM got the best deal he could in the circumstances for Asik...and recognized that he had a developing back-up in DMo. With Black and Dorsey improving with every game, DM the GM's position is improving with every game.
You can't evaluate Asik from his offensive output, and if you're talking about defense, then DMo is nowhere close to Asik. DMo has had some solid games, but he will never be as good as Asik was on defense. Asik guarding the post and cleaning up the glass was a thing of beauty.
Yeah but rarely we had two-way performances from him. His offense is atrocious. Although he doesn't take a lot of Attempts, defenders ignore him and they are focused on AD.
