I mean it does hinge on that SF play quite a lot. I kind of grew to hate Ariza (lol) and we all saw how it ended with Luc. Nonetheless, those guys ate up regular season minutes, didn't make many mistakes, and played to their averages in the regular season. Plus the defense. They are seemingly being replaced with James Ennis (all of a sudden a dude everyone's high on, even though half the board probably never heard of him before a month ago), Carmelo Anthony (super huge ?? marks) and MCW (really??). So it's not hard to see where that viewpoint is coming from, especially since Trevor was a 1 year deal (expensive, but just one year, and they're way over the cap anyway), and Luc went for super cheap again. When its all said and done, I think Melo is the swing item here more than anything - as the likelihood of him just being a neutral replacement type player is low, he'll either add a lot of value or be a detriment. So we'll see how that turns out.
Even if Melo does decent, every good game will be an outlier and every bad game will be "signs of things to come". I fully anticipate weekly Kellerman/SAS and Skip/Shannon threads. If we could just all agree to not post Mcyntire threads that would be amazing.
Thanks. If they don't find someone they like in the off-season then buyout candidates would be options. Doesn't the MLE lose value if you take it into the regular season though or am I just completely wrong?
This is silly the guy has no clue. I love Trevor, his team defense is still top notch even if his individual defense has slipped. His durability and endurance was big too for the Rockets. Up until this past season he was the guy most likely to be out on the court outside of Harden. Trevor's ability to hit the 3 though consistently definitely went down especially in the playoffs this past year. He isn't much of a threat offensively otherwise. His locker room leadership and team defense is extremely hard to replace but his offensive production will not be at all. Luc was far more versatile offensively speaking but after the first shoulder injury he was more passive when going to the rim and esp after the second one he pretty much didn't really even try and never recovered. I felt his individual defense was actually better than Trevor's last season. Ennis can be the low key signing to replace Luc's production. For as "amazing" as Luc is made out to be the guy has been a journey man since he left the Bucks. 5 different teams in 5 seasons. As a UCLA alum I really wanted both of these guys back on the team esp Trevor but they were able to get larger pay days and honestly more power to them for taking it. Their production on the court can be replace the stuff off the court though, esp in Trevor's case, most likely cannot be though it remains to be seen if the loss can be mitigated with the new guys and not made worse. its hard to say the Rockets are less talented this coming season (provided the Capela situation is resolved well) than they were last season. Will they be able to win 65 games again and be the #1 seed? Most likely not, but who knows? I didn't think they would do that last season and they did. I do think GS will try much harder to get the #1 seed though seeing how strange it was for them to not have home court definitely left an impact on the team. And by homecourt I dont mean having 4 games vs 3 games but more which games are at home (1,2,5,7) which IMO are the 4 biggest games in a series.
Media keeps saying if Melo accepts his role. Now in theory thats correct but no one knows how the Rockets plan to use him, Melo obviously does or he wouldn't even come here and Morey/MDA wouldn't explore it if he wasn't with it. So I really don't get them constantly repeating it.
That was always my concern with resigning him. Thr drop off was scary. He really looked emotionally scarred in the playoffs. I'm glad the Rockets didn't give him MLE money, I didn't think it would of been a good investment.
I will never trash Ariza or Luc based on basketball reasons. Those 2 were a huge reason why we won 65 games last year, and had the #1 seed. However, if you had told me it would cost $20M + taxes to retain both of them, I would have given you a hard pass.
Don't know bout everybody else, but for me, last year's 5 game losing streak (only one losing streak) came after Luc's first injury during the regular season showed how important he is. We were doing well even without CP3 but losing Luc (and CP3) had a huge effect on the team's effectiveness. Luc was not the same when he came back.
Narratives my friend. Lebron just got his azz swept while QUITTING in the finals. What was the narrative this offseason? Him leaving Cleveland to "join forces" with Kawhi. Certain players are met with positive narratives no matter the results. Some guys, like Melo (and Dwight Howard) are constantly hit with negative narratives. Melo hasn't even got here and they're already questioning if he'll accept coming off the bench, and he's not even a Rocket yet. I hate this about the media. Wish they'd focus more on the X's & O's
Even if he was Ryan Anderson, which I don't agree with, his ceiling is MUCH higher... he would still be Ryan Anderson at 1/10th the price... not sure why you would complain that either..
