just heard on nba fastbreak that the rockets tried to get mike james from milwaukee but they declined, mark stein didnt go into any specifics but he was doing a "insider" thing for the show and he brought that up. He said the rockets have moved on and are looking for help elsewhere
EXACTLY! I mean WTF!??! We could have had James or even better, Damon Jones, but instead JVG went with "the player he knows" and signed Charlie Ward!!! I am all for not paying to sign Derek Fisher or Raefer Alston to those ridiculous FULL MLE contracts. But when guys like Mike James or Damon Jones are getting signed to 2.5M/yr contracts, the same as Ward, and we dont look their way. What the hell!?!?
here is the scariest part of the whole friggin thing.... to make the salaries match we would have to send either bob sura (would never happen), jj (would never happen), a combo of any two: ward, lue, boki, gaines. no one would trade for gaines unless its to make the cap work like we did. in this case i think offering a downgrade with a filler wouldn't get the deal done. JVG would never trade ward. that leaves lue and boki. alas they turned it down. NOW, what happens if we go back with our pick plus the TE? or ever make that offer to another team for a PG...maybe they do it maybe they don't. but if they do! we have 15 players on the roster. who will get the axe? definitely not: yao tmac ward (only because of JVG) jj sura howard mo deke spoon pad gaines (contract/pet) bowen (another coach's pet) that leaves lue, boki, and AB because all come off the books at the end of the season. lue and boki do have some trade value... our buddy AB will be left out in the cold if we trade for a PG. even if we trade boki and lue for a PG he won't get any more PT. IMO sura and barrett are a very nice tag team at the 1. together they give us all we need.
My basketball coach is related to Mike James. He was in town during the summer and the Rockets knew it, but at the time they may have been pursuing other options. Believe me, Mike would love to be here. He has lots of family here.
Brilliant move by the Rockets, sign Ward and Sura during the offseason while Mike James was still avaible and wanted to come here, then almost halfway into the season try to trade for him, i mean serisouly, WTF!? Meanwhile Ward is rotting on the Bench and Lue is almost as bad as Moochie.
