I started that 'hated' thread that this team will have to rebuild. I never changed my mind, but I was hopeful for a hard run this season. But the odds are so long.... 1. The Rockets are not going to win a championship this season. 2. TMac's knee is really a serious concern and how much will he have in the tank next season. It's probably 50-50 he ever returns to a dominant form and plays 75-80 games completely healthy. 3. Has Yao neared 95% of his potential. He is playing at a very high level and it is doubtful he will make any substantial increase in production in the next 2 seasons. His numbers are already superstar stats. 4. Scola and Landry both look like potential pieces. They need playing time to develop. 5. Is Brooks really on par with Nash, Parker, Williams, and Paul? Maybe he will become an adequate starter? 6.OK so we get Adelman's offense down, do we really have the talent that his Sacramento teams had in their hey day? A big risk that we will sniff a championship any time soon. 7. Hayes, Rafer, Battier, Luther all contribute 'some' but they don't have the physical tools to match up against the top five teams in the league, and other teams are on the rise. Forget the coaching. Our roster is really hurting without a dynamic chemistry going on between a healthy McGrady and Yao. Remember the McGrady that scored about 13 points single handedly in the closing seconds to defeat San Antonio, and the McGrady that averaged over 30 pts while Yao was hurt last season? Well he will be another year older next season and he still looks very injury prone. Yao needs more talent around him to win 3 seven game playoff series and get a championship ring. I think Yao has a good 3-4 strong seasons ahead of him barring injury. Time to rebuild the roster around him. I really would like to see TMac be a part of that, but no one knows if he will be. Play the rookies more minutes. Bring Battier and Bonzi off the bench. Stop trying to play for the championship this season. It isn't going to happen. It is not a matter of how much of a fan you are, it should matter that you care enough about the Rockets that you would do whatever it takes for us to win the NBA championship even if it causes us some short term pain. Rebuild Les. Let's find out what Morey can do.
The more I hear this "Rockets can't win with Hayes and Battier" tripe I look at the Spurs, who have Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Tim Duncan on the floor for the majority of the games with a defensive specialist in Bruce Bowen and a guy who does little more than rebound in Fabricio Oberto. When they bring guys in off the bench, they are deadly shooters like Mike Finley or Brent Barry. Seems to me like the key to winning ball games is having somebody who can consistently go to the rack and either finish or distribute off the dribble. JVG used McGrady in this way and it won us a lot of games, but probably used up everything T-mac had in his tank and now he's more of a jump shooter / occasionally still takes it strong. The team has potential but fails to execute. Chuck Hayes is becoming more and more expendable with the emergence of Scola and now Landry. Yao is proving to be more durable this year, and the energy off the bench is why we are barely staying afloat in the playoff race right now. Shane Battier does too much for the team to be let go, you see him night in and night out harassing the opponent's scorer, blocking shots, taking charges, etc. In a perfect world, Shane can play with that kind of intensity and have enough left in the tank to shoot 40% from beyond the arc, but it just isn't happening that way.
I think this is going to happen whether the team plans it or not. The rookies will have to get more and more minutes to keep the boat afloat. TMac is so fragile that a return to a high level of play is doubtful. The next few games will tell us a good deal about where this team is headed. Rhester, keep up the good fight! Don't give in, give up, or get discouraged. The best is yet to come. (Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the Rockets!)
This team is going nowhere with Rafer getting as many shots as Yao or Tracy. The starting 5 has 3 guys that simply are not good at offense, and that is assuming TMac is healthy. With the current starting lineup and with the team having to rely so much on rookies, it is obvious this team is going nowhere this year.
Absolutely true. It's highly unlikely the Rockets make the playoffs this year. The next three years also look bleak, unless the roster is significantly changed. We need a penetrating point guard and a scoring wing to play off the post. I hope they can find that at the deadline. At the very least, the Rockets will have to dump Snyder or Deke for a TE and get under the lux tax. They may have to give up someone or something of value to do that.
Wow, the team is only 1 game out of the playoffs in the loss column has just finished the first HALF of the year and some of you have given up. Thank god you weren't around for that 6th seed run to the championship.....I am sure you all had jumped clean off the bandwagon by then, right? DD
Half the board would be dead if they were around for that run. All we need is a winning streak and we are back in the mix.
Some sanity prevails !!! Injuries, winning streaks, chemistry coming together, trades, Bonzi finally playing defense...all kinds of things can happen to make this right.... Don't jump ship. DD
Unfortunately that winning streak was meant to be right now. We should be on an 8 game winning streak if we hadnt blown our leads against NO and Philly. Now im not one to dwell on the past but that "streak" you are speaking of is the one we should currently be on. 24-17 would be our record and that is not a bad record to have. In saying that though, i havnt given up hope that this team can still make a late push and roll into the playoffs with a lot of momentum. I also think that guys like brooks, Landry and even Francis will have an impact on this team late in the season, while Rafer, Chuck and Head's minutes drop.
RA repeatedly said to the media we need to play consistantly which means, as a team, we need to play consistantly. When we break it down into fragments, it means our starting lineups need to perform consistantly. And two or three substitues need to do the same as well. I think our defense is ok. And now the offense is looking better with the ball movement, but we still lack of a third scorer other than Yao and T-mac. I think I would be happier if the third scorer is our third clutch-maker. Like Steve Kerr in 1997!!! Injury on the knees is likely to be chronic. But even if T-mac could play 80% out of his best, he is still a deadly threat to any other opponent. More importantly, at the clutch moment, he is also a good passer where the third clutch-maker steps up. Yao is a consistant and most reliable scorer in the team. He is a clutch-maker as well. He did but from my standpoint, a center can not be often used to play the clutch shots as Shaq is never quite a clutch-maker. He is even bigger than Shaq which means less agile(but, of course, he is more agile that Shap from my point of view) and at the endding moment, it is easy to hack him for the opponents. If he could be turning into Dream, that might be another story. I am still expecting a lot. We have three outstanding Rookies Scola, AB, Landry. But thery are rookies which means they will make quite a few mistakes, and are weak on the defensive end and etc. Scola is not a rookie since he played in a profession baketball league for quite a long time, but he still needs to adapt to the NBA rhythm and fit in RA's syetem. AB and landry might be our lottery pick. But do we have three years to wait till they grow up? Like what the op said, we need to rebuild. But if we do, we do need a third consistant scorer(he maybe is a PG or PF)
If u believe yao has 3 strong yrs, then u continue to build and ride it out. Mcgrady has 2yrs and @ the end they will have a shot @ lebron. That's why they they shouldn't take any contracts past yao and tracy. Can u imagine the maketing and the team with Yao, Lbj, and Tracy as a 3rd wheel?
sometimes i am wondering what this team would like look without our 3 rookies. They give us hopes even we cannot make the PO. If Tmac can be 80% for the next two or three years, we still have chances.
"Stop trying to play for the championship this season," you say. I think this is a terrible idea and I think you have overestimated your ability to predict the future. As DD pointed out, your logic suggests that the Rox should have tanked that championship season and just "rebuilt." And this could be accompanied by a thousand other similar examples throughout pro sports. In fact, one of the great things about sports is that people like you are ALWAYS wrong. But lets bear your reasoning out for a moment...I suppose that none of the teams with a worse record than the Rockets are going to win a championship either, so they should all play their rookies, focus on rebuilding, and shoot for the lottery, right? Who would watch that? Your version of the NBA is depressing and seems fundamentally flawed to me. And by the way, Tmac has health concerns, yes, but there is not an NBA player alive who lasts 75-80 games playing "completely healthy." Oh, and finally, in reference to "what Morey can do," see Carl Landry, Aaron Brooks, and Luis Scola.
For the good of the team, Rockets need to trade Tracy before the start of next season and get some durable help for Yao. Everytime Tracy got hurt we felt miserable, and when he comes back, we tend to forget the pain, all feel good. It could break again any time ... So far I counted, he got hurt to 6 or 7 different parts to his body, basically, it's a damaged goods.
I know it's been said by a ton of people a ton of times, but perhaps if i present it in the form a list one or two people might understand finally. The reasons we cannot trade McGrady are: 1. People were saying the EXACT SAME THING about Yao last year when we had a good run while he was injured. 2. T-Mac is playing injured, and his value could not be lower. You don't sell low. 3. With a 63 million dollar contract over the next three years and 19 million this year alone, we'd have to take on salary within 25% of that to even conceive of a trade. 4. Regardless of who we trade him for we are not going to be a better team initially. A talent dropoff is a given considering the team that gets the best player wins the trade in the NBA 90% of the time, but don't forget the dropoff we'll sustain in chemistry.
We've won 7 of our last 9 games, and could easily have a 9 game streak going (without McGrady most of the time) if we'd taken care of business, are 1 game back in the loss column behind Golden State and Utah, with an entire half a season to play, and people are ready to bury this team. Unbelievable. We've got 3 rookies earning (finally) serious time and improving, all playing positions that are the weakest we have, the 1 and the 4, and the trade deadline still looms. Frustration? That I can understand. Anger at blown games? That I can understand. Confusion as to what rotation Adelman will finally settle on? I can understand that, as well, although I like that, unlike Van Gundy, he's willing to mix it up to find the combinations he thinks will be successful. But blowing off the season with half of it still to play and one game, two if we don't have the tie-breaker, from the 8th spot is just nuts, with all due respect to rhester, one of my favorite fellows here, and anyone else saying we should hang it up and wait for next season.
I think that we need to give it another year or two before we start to think rebuilding. This is RA's first year as the coach and we had lots of roster changes. Tracy has also been injured. It's not a good indicator of how good this team can be. I still think that the Rockets will make the playoffs, although the chance of winning the championship is not high at the moment. Next year with everyone intergrated in the system, Scola, Brooks, Landry more experienced, and hopefully a couple more additions here and there, we will be in a better position of competiting. That will be the true indicator of how good the team can be. The way I see it, the Rockets' window of opportunity rough equals to Yao's prime years. Yao probably still has three to four good years left in his prime. This is the first year when Yao clearly takes leadership of the team. We'll see how far he can lead this team in the next couple of years. However, if it is 2010 and the Rockets still suck, then we will have to rebuild. And the first step of rebuilding is to trade Yao Ming, while he's still in his prime and has good trade values. TMac will probably be done by then with all his injuries and Yao is by far the most valuable trade asset on the Rockets. In today's NBA very few teams can get a superstar via free agency or trade (unless if you are the Celtics dealing with a team run by a former Celtic). A team has to rebuild from the draft. That said, I truly hope that it will not come down to that. The TMac/Yao era has been marked by what-could-have-been's. It would be a shame if it ends that way. The Rockets have never had two superstars in their primes like TMac and Yao have been in the team history, and it would be a shame to not have anything to show for this era except for a few first-round exits in the playoffs.
