Leon Smith was like a combination of everything that EG and MoT have done wrong + then some! Didn't he brandish a gun while high on something? What was his Rookie contract situation?
Leon Smith was picked in the first round, and DID have a guaranteed contract. The Mavs negotiated a buyout where it paid him money over several years. DD
Can the Rockets suspend Mo independently of the league for substance abuse? Seems to me this is just as detrimental as missing a preseason game. I have more sympathy for Eddie because I think he still deserves a second chance. Mo has had 3 already for this. Pitiful.
Still, slightly different situation to pay out a guy worth $3 million TOTAL over a few years and a guy worth $6 million PER YEAR for the next 4 years.
There's been a lot of "after the fact" Rudy bashing. I'm getting tired of it. As if we ALL weren't excited when we got Griffin. The problem with Mo-T's contract is that as an orginization, we're to honorable. Mo-T came here and signed a one year deal for far less then he could have gotten elsewhere. So we thanked him with a bigger contract than he deserved.
DIDn't Stanley Roberts get a lifetime after three strikes?. It remains to be seen how much difference between Taylor and Padgett. Padgett is certainly the luckiest SOB in the NBA. Likewise Amaechi. They now have a month to show they belong. Not bad for Amaechi. Gets a chance to showcase before we can trade his sorry A** again.
Obviously the CBA is a different animal then it used to be. (what else is different??) This really blows. We can't play Taylor for ten games. We can't play Griffin until god knows when... if ever, and our starter is Cato. If Cato hadn't turned out to be a pretty fair PF under JVG, we'd be in even deeper ****. Our backup 4 is the proverbial "man off the street". Man Boobs is, well... Man Boobs. Man, this really blows. What are we gonna do? Don't we at least have to get someone on a ten day? MacBeth has a speculative thread about it. I'm not sure what we should or can do. What a mess.
Everything else aside... voiding Mo's contract would make the Rockets a worse team. I'm against any moves that would hurt the team. And it's not like Houston'll have cap room anytime soon, anyway. If you've got O'Neal and Bryant... you can afford to say "screw the small pieces, let's just fill them in around our stars." With most teams, though, the "useful but not star" players are important, and shouldn't just be thrown away.
Guess who got us Mo in the first place? and how they did it? All things set aside, if Mo was promised an under-table deal for big money later when he first signed with the Rockets, as is possibly done with Shandon Anderson, I have to say this type of underground mentality hurts us in the long run more than it pays. The size of the contract and ill conduct make Mo a dead weight.
ZRB, He signed the contract KNOWING the drug laws before he signed on the dotted line. I know you believe in MJ, good for you, the majority of us don't. Democracy wins... DD
Fellas, why don't we wait and find out what the infraction is before we go crucifying Mo. I'm with everyone else here if he did get caught for doing more weed, but the truth is, we don' t know the facts yet. From the Chronicle: Nov. 8, 2003, 4:47AM Rockets' Taylor gets second suspension Ten-game penalty to be appealed By JONATHAN FEIGEN Rockets forward Maurice Taylor was hit Friday with his second suspension in the past three seasons for violating the NBA/National Basketball Players Association Anti-Drug Program. But Taylor immediately appealed the ruling and disputed the findings, an NBA players association spokesman said Friday. Taylor said he was not permitted to comment. National Basketball Players Association spokesman Dan Wasserman, when asked if Taylor was appealing the findings and 10-game suspension, said: "Oh absolutely. It's been filed. It's in the process of being filed immediately." An appeal of any kind, and especially one filed so quickly, is rare in such cases but will not allow Taylor to play while waiting for a hearing. The suspension begins with tonight's game against the Orlando Magic at Toyota Center. The NBA collective bargaining agreement allows the union to expedite no more than two suspension appeals per season. But even an expedited appeal would not be heard for 10 days, rather than the customary 30 days, keeping Taylor out for at least six games even if he wins his appeal. "The authority for this discipline does not exist in the collective bargaining agreement," Wasserman said. "We think it's a completely improper application of the drug program. We've asked for an expedited appeal to allow for an arbitrator to conduct a hearing as quickly as is possible." Asked what part of the ruling the players association considered "improper," Wasserman cited the ruling that Taylor was in "non-compliance" and that Taylor was given a 10-game suspension. "We don't discuss any part of our anti-drug program publicly," NBA vice president of basketball communications Tim Frank said. A typical suspension would be five games, and a repeat offense does not automatically merit a suspension twice as long. Test results and suspensions are determined by an independent medical director hired by the union and the league. The league's anti-drug policy states "a veteran player's failure to comply with his inpatient or aftercare treatment while in the program will result in substantial fines and suspensions, which will be imposed until that player fully complies with the requirements of the program." Taylor, 27, said he could not comment about whether he was ruled to have failed a league drug test, what substance he is accused of using or if he was in violation of another part of the league's substance-abuse program. Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson and Wasserman said they were not given that information. But there was speculation Taylor's appeal could maintain that a medicine he took while rehabilitating his dislocated left shoulder last month triggered the positive test results. The program bans: amphetamine and its "analogs;" cocaine; LSD; opiates (heroin, codeine and morphine); PCP; mar1juana; and steroids. Taylor's 10-game suspension could increase if he loses his appeal and fails to comply with the league and players association treatment program. Those steps are not made public. Taylor had previously been suspended for the first five games of last season for a violation of the league's substance-abuse policy in 2001-02 when he was out with a ruptured left Achilles' tendon. His suspension indicated it was his third violation of the anti-drug program. Dawson informed Taylor of the league's ruling but is not given information about how Taylor violated league policy. A suspension can be given out for failing a drug test, failing to take a scheduled test or other violations of aftercare programs. Taylor, the Rockets' second-highest paid player, signed a six-year, $48.75 million contract before the 2001-2002 season. He missed that entire season because of the Achilles' injury. Overweight and still battling that injury, he averaged a career-low 8.4 points per game last season. He is averaging 9.8 points and 4.5 rebounds, but was coming off his best game since coming back from the shoulder injury, scoring 14 points and grabbing seven rebounds against the Nets. The suspension, if upheld, will cost him $86,666 for each game he misses. When Taylor was found in violation of the league's substance policy in 2001, he insisted on holding a news conference to announce the suspension and said that he had "experimented with mar1juana." Though he was not obligated to provide details to the media or the Rockets, he told team officials he wanted to admit he had failed a drug test. Losing Taylor on the heels of the indefinite suspension given Eddie Griffin could be devastating. Without Taylor, the Rockets' top scorers off the bench are Moochie Norris and Bostjan Nachbar, each averaging 4.3 points per game. With Griffin out since Oct. 16, center Kelvin Cato has started at power forward. Rookie Torraye Braggs and Scott Padgett are the only power forwards on the active roster. The Rockets are permitted to place Taylor on a suspended list and replace him on the active roster. Dawson said he has not discussed a move with Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy. "It's tough," Dawson said. "It's very upsetting. You get a lot of anticipation going into this year, this building, new everything. Things are going well. Looking at it from a coach's perspective, anything that disrupts you when things are going well is not looked upon very well. "Those are two pretty good players we don't have right now. Things are rolling along pretty well. I could see progress on a lot of levels."
New arena, New coach, New uniforms and..... New attitude towards problem players? While I am not that crazy about Van Gundy, he has brought some semblance of discipline. The Rockets organization has been good to players but it is time that the organization stand firm about getting reciprocated. Mo T's irresponsibility regarding his conditioning and inability to stay ways from the weed is unprofessional and certainly he has failed to live up to his end of the bargain. I would like to see the Rockets send EG and Mo to the IR indefinitely (mentally injured). Since it is early in the season Van Gundy and the team can adjust to changes in personnel and truck on. Quite frankly they already have been playing without EG and Mo T was just starting to get his form back. Asa much as I like hi mid range shot I don’t think we need those two players. All we need form the four is defense and a glass eating (rebounds). Maybe around the trade deadline some borderline playoff team team will start salivating at the prospect of obtaining on our fresh potentially helpful players and make a halfway decent trade offer. I do not want to see us become Portland East but without the talent (hey Rasheed is nuts but he is considerably more talented than EG and Mo T combined)
That's not the way i remember it...Most on this board were wishing him well and seem to be happy that he's doing good in the East... Anyway, Taylor is an average player. Finding a replacement should not be that hard...
