Geez, we have a glaring need for a G/PG, an obvious redundancy at PF and no one has a hint of what talks are going behind the scenes? No insiders, no plausible speculators, hell , no dreamcasters. Did the Bud Light commercial scare everybody off?
I dont know about every1 else but im pretty happy with the team we have right now. I want to see how they do & if their producation isnt positive we should start the trade talk. BUT if we do trade i dont think we need anything big just a little more depth.
I agree with shawn. My vote (if I had one that counted) would be to stand pat through Christmas to see how well this team gels. If we develop anything even approaching chemistry, we will be very dangerous and may very well challenge SA for tops in our division.
Both Ward and Lue can handle the ball and both shoot tolerably well. The PG spot will get even better once Sura gets back. We do not have a glaring need for a PG right now. Better to wait until teams start to think about the trade deadline and what they are going to do next year. Then, we should be able to maximize our trade opportunities, particularly with regards to the trade exception.
There aren't any upgrades over the players we have right now that are readily available for trade. And we don't have a lot to give up either. Our most valuable asset is the trade exception, and by itself, I don't think it'll land us anything other than a cap albatross. Our draft pick wont be very good. We don't really have any good young talent to throw into a deal, so I don't see much happening until perhaps closer to the trading deadline when teams get desperate to fill holes due to injuries or get something - anything, for a player that has become a cancer or will walk at the end of the year. But just to make you happy ... I heard something about a MoT + TE + 1st rounder + Boki for SAR + cap fodder deal. Rox were ready to pull the trigger, but Yao doesn't want his best friend(boki) traded. And the blazers obviously wont do it w/o boki, so right now talks have stalled.
Ward and lue are below avg. This team needs a pg. give up Mo and a player. Do it now so the team can gell. If you wait till christmas to late. Sura will have back problems here on out. Payton is aging but still better than what we have.
Ward and Lue are ABOVE average jumpshooters. They are below average playmakers. The Rockets don't need playmakers at PG.
I would love to add Payton if we could only give up Tspoon and maybe a second rounder and/or throw in Boki and Walter Macarty but Taylor is over paying. If we could add Payton without giving up our two best pf we would be a more complete team then the Lakers were last year.
OK now we've got something! Seems like Yao would know a little something about conforming to the will of those in power though. Don't get me wrong, if we can go a full season with a healthy Yao and Tmac, we are competative. I like Dikembe, Jackson, Howard and Taylor as role players. Padget and Bowen are fine for the end of the bench. And, under JVG I guess we would never have a running team anyway but we seem to come up short at the guard positions compared to most teams that make some noise in the playoffs. You can't have everything and adding Tmac to Yao is more than about 8 teams in this league can even dream of so I don't want to sound too disappointed. But as Charlie Paulilo put it, we have an 'allocation imbalance' where we are overstocked in PF's and understocked at the G's. So isn't there a team that is overstocked at the G and understocked at the PF that also needs a balanced talent portfolio? I would consider any combination of MoT, the TE, Padgett, Bowen, Spoon and yes even Boki as tradeable commodities, though by talent and contract certainly not "blockbuster" valuable. So who has guards to spare? And would you trade your only bench sparK, Taylor, for any back up guards out there? ( Sura coulda been so valuable on this team..or he could have turned out to be another Piakowski)
I keep coming back to two teams: Indiana & Lakers Pacers have Tinsley, who has been in and out of the doghouse there and will be a free agent after the season. Thet a few mediocre big men with one of them, Foster, hurt for a couple months. They could use a scoring big man to come in for O'Neal. Lakers have A TON of SGs & SFs and could also use another quality bigman. Just some thoughts.
I hope you just made that up, because that is a terrible trade. 1. MoT/TE/1st/Boki for SAR? That is a terrible, terrible deal for us. 2. It doesn't help our PG problem at all. 3. The Rockets didn't pull the trigger because Boki is Yao's best friend? I truly hope that this isn't the way CD/Les are doing business.
It's a joke man. Did you catch the part about, "And the blazers obviously wont do it w/o boki, so right now talks have stalled."
