C'mon now don't be so harsh....if ya look past the .07 assist/turnover ratio, you will find his stellar 42% fg and 71% ft shooting averages. I mean let's see you try making more than half your dunks.
What difference do divisions make? Since 96.....doesn't everyone in the West play everyone in the West 4 times? How can their schedule be any easier than ours? I hate the Suns but you have now conjused me.
All I know is that Amare is not making my high round fantasy selection of him look too sweet right now.
Phoeniux and Houston will be the best two teamsin the West in about 3 years. There should be some epic playoff series between the two. I can't wait.
We faced Phoenix 4 times last year. We also played Dallas 4 times. we played everybody in the West 4 times. Teams in the East, you only play twice. 13 other teams in the west *4 games = 52 games 15 teams in the east *2 games = 30 games For a total of 82 games. Division within a conference doesn't matter - except for the fact that if you win your division, you're automatically a top 2 seed, which has always seemed like a stupid rule to me...
Musta been thinking baseball then.. hmm.. I always thought we played our division more than the others.. oh well, I was conjused too never mind
i agree on the epic playoff future these two teams have..should be interesting anyone remember last years when marbury shouted "i am the real all star" to franchise we won though
I dont know why The Suns are so over-rated. All they have is Marbury. Marion can't shoot, Amare is all dunks, Penny is just another role player and the rest are just scrubs.
Chad Ford is one serious cat. He is worried about our depth! Yao and Steve. Fool, take the best two players on any team and you are in shiit! Jack donkey. How could he be worrying about our depth when we have four rotation players out now or does he expect them not to return. How many teams have a big 3 in their package? He has not yet taken a look at the rockets. It is as simple at that.
I think the epic playoff will be between the Rockets and the Spurs. The Spurs' core (Duncan, Parker, Ginobili) are still young. The Suns are young too. But they don't have as much upside as us talentwise.
If Ford had said, "I worry about their short-term depth, but they should be fine with the return of Mo Taylor, Adrian Griffin, and Eric Piatkowski," then that would have been OK. Which reminds me again that there could be some sort of trade when those players return: 1) Steve/Mooch 2) Cat/Pike/JJ/A-Griff/Steve 3) JJ/A-Griff/Nachbar/Pike 4) Cato/Mo/Padgett 5) Yao/Cato/Mo/Man-Boobs Better too much depth than not enough, but still....
The Grizz? No way! They are winning right now because of pure hustle and people do not take them seriously. I've been taking advantage of my NBA Pass and i'll tell you what, those guys do a lot of hacking. Bo Outlaw basically rides the point guards down the court. SLOWmile reminds me of Cato two years ago. Wright only hits shots if he is open by three feet. Make him move to shoot and he might break the backboard. Person and Battier are good role guys and Watson is taking minutes from a more composed but still erratic Williams (if that makes sense). Gasol is their best player but is soft. They do not have a franchise type player to go to. I expect a big trade involving the Grizz. They have to acquire a FRANCHISE type player.
I've been wondering the same thing. Even though the Suns made the playoffs last year and gave the Spurs a decent run, their seson record was about dead even with the Rockets (a one game difference), and their winning and losing streaks were just as connsistently inconsistent as the Rockets. Yet, all throughout last season, ESPN writers kept describing the Suns as up-and-coming while the Rockets were constantly described as perpetually struggling and stagnant. To be honest, both cases were true for both teams, but to split the aspects like to solely characterize each team showed a lot of bias--if you ask me. During the off-season, while other teams, including the Rockets, worked to revamp their teams with no players, the Suns did very, very, very little. And now that season has started, the Suns, so far, have been playing with about the same win-loss consistency as last season, while the Rockets, albeit playing sub-500 teams, have done an about-face and are leading the entire league with their win-loss ratio. Yet, still, the stupid idiots at ESPN are giving so much love to Phoenix and not enough to Houston. If Phoenix loses to a crappy team, if not a couple, no one bats an eye. If Houston loses (and so far only once) to a crappy team, ESPN writers go on and on about how the team is struggling and is miles away from being where they want to be. Phoenix lacks just as much depth, though not in the same areas, as Houston. Maybe it's a Yao and Amare thing. Yao may be the darling of the media in general, in comparison to Amare, but all last year and so far this year as well it seems that Amare is the darling of ESPN--in relative comparison to Yao. Then throw in the disfavorable bias that writers such as David Aldridge have against Francis, and the favorable bias that they have for Marbury and/or Marion and/or Hardaway. It's ESPN has an unspoken aversion to the Rockets that's being someone diminished by the acquisition of Jeff Van Gundy, because ESPN has always loved JVG. Chad Ford is a moron, in my opinion. Sports writers in general, but specifically, ESPN are morons. The only thing that differentiates them from geeky Star Trek fanatics is that the former use sports as their topic of discussion, whereas the latter use the Vulcans or Klingons or whatever. (But Bill Simmons rocks)
