How in the sam hill has our offense gotten "a lot" worse? We lost Parsons, and his scoring average is a whopping two points higher than Ariza's this year.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. The thing is, Morey put us in a position to seize this opportunity, even though this "opportunity" wasn't planned.
Effeciency - ease of getting a basket, having competent shooters on the floor. Look at the shooting of our SF's...all around 37% - now we add Smith - about the same, Brewer also is not known as a shooter. So, once Harden goes out, who shoots? Where do we go for offense? More than anything this team can't miss Harden. DD
They'll play through Dmo at that point, like they'd been doing when Howard was out. As I mentioned in the other post you didn't respond to -- I also believe they're not done and we'll be getting a more offensive minded point guard that can create off the dribble (Dragic).
A heck of a lot more than Ariza, Brewer or Smith is.....you keep downplaying Parsons, you must have forgotten that he was a great defender in his early years, but he focused more on offense, he could have had the same impact defensively as Harden this year with focus. Either way - I am wondering where our offense is going to come from with all these 30% shooters out there.... DD
I can't get over how amazing our defense can be! Our starting five has four (4!) all NBA defenders with DWS league leading James Harden, who also happens to average over 2 steals and a block a game. Just picture Beverley pressure opposing PGs like he does with Harden and Ariza as ball hawks in the passing lane. If a mistake was made, good luck trying to get anything with Howard and Smith patrolling the paint. Our defense is even pretty good on the bench, too. We bring the league leader in steals off the bench in Brewer with solid team defenders in Pap and Dmo. Last game we had 12+ steals, which is a crazy number! With this team those types of steal numbers can become ordinary.
Pacers didn't have a James Harden. Harden has shown the ability to carry an offense without much problem. Also, our offensive philosophy is so much better than that Pacers team; much more explosive. Pacers were a half court team which would focus on West/Hibbert post ups with Lance/George isolations. Rockets, at their best, play with pace and converting turnovers and missed shots into fastbreak opportunities and three point shots.
Smith makes our offense better. He can create off the dribble better than anyone else on this team outside of Harden. DMo is very good at post ups, but Smith is better attacking the basket offensively. I don't see how you just look at FG% and assume our offense gets worse. There's more to it than that.
Literally nobody but Dallas thought Parsons was worth that much money. That's why Parsons is there now. I don't really understand how Morey supposedly (a) promised Howard we would strengthen the team and (b) promised Dan Fegan, as part of getting Howard, that we would release Parsons early to free agency. If both of those promises really happened, and the latter was demanded by Fegan, then Howard should sue Fegan for conflict of interest. However, once that happened, the risk Morey took in not matching Cuban's offer to Parsons was that we would not be able to exchange the leftover money/space for equivalent talent/output. I'd say Morey minimized the possible loss quickly, by signing Ariza, but we didn't certifiably come out ahead until now. For Morey it's always about the value of the contract. It's nice to have Jeremy Lin, but not if you have to cough up a draft pick to unload his contract. As Morey said at the time, the contract he would have had to sign to match Dallas was untradeable. Instead we now have contracts that can be dealt, or that leave us with cap space to add talent/value. So, yes, you can put Parsons' photo in the economics textbook next to "opportunity cost." And Bosh's too. The principle applies regardless of whether you're shrewd or lucky.
Parsons was never a great defender. I know you feel that way but no numbers back up the idea of Parsons ever being more than an average defender.
