We had a string of good trades and or acquisitions. It looks like the Mike James for Rafer Allston was not one of them. Mike is blowing doors for the Raptors. I agree that on paper or in theory Rafer was a good fit. However, you have to take into account personality. Mike was a tough guy, something we are in short supply of. He was so tough that he played his game despite JVG or even T-Mac. He was capable of being the third scorer and had the ability and fire to step it up when T-Mac is out, which given his back problems, may well be a a recurrent problem. Doesn't look like anyone else has that ability. Can't win them all and that trade looks like a loser. I know it has only been 10 games, but that is my take at this point.
Thru 10 games I would say that it is evident that this was a bad trade. I still need more time to say for sure. Right now, someone like James is the spark this Rockets team needs.
Let's see what kind of contract James gets in the offseason before we really make a decision. Some team is probably going to severly overpay him, something that the Rockets probably wouldn't and shouldn't have done.
very true i like what you said mj would def. be a scoring threat that the Rockets could actually use right now. Speaking of Rafer step yo game up boy.
i agree that through 10 games mike james is better, but luckily for us the season is not ten games long, we wouldnt have been able to pay james, he said himself he wanted to get paid.. on a team with yao and a HEALTHY tmac, mike james would not have been getting as many shots as he is now in toronto, so he would not be producing like this, and without bob, we had to get a passing point... we should wait before we call this a bad trade
he claimed that he would sign with whoever paid him the most. that leaves you to believe that he is trying to get a big contract instead of trying to win. that isn't the kind of player we need. talent-wise it was a bad trade, but at least rafer (with all of his faults) is a pass first PG who wants to win.
It's not a good trade for us, it's a good trade for him actually. He would get thanks of 'f**kings' from T-Mac if stayed here.
Obviously we could use James right about now, but at the time of the trade, we weren't planning on having TMac miss all of these games. T-Mac and James can't be on the same team. Which one would you rather have?
We need Mike James' Who-Cares attitude right now. But when Tmac comes back,we'll have a NBA league of our own if we still have MJ.
It's too early to tell. Alston has played 3 games with our best player while Mike James had half a season with him.
and that was a pretty good half season for the rockets. I hope that T-Mac really didn't lobby to get James out of here, because I think that's a bad reflection on T-Mac rather than James. The guy was a good player and he brought a lot of what the rockets needed. if T-Mac was pissed because he missed out on a few shots, then the negative reports on him aren't as exaggerated, especially if it came to the point that they couldn't co-exist. But I think the Rockets made the trade because they felt Alston satified a more pressing need.
Is Rafer really as good as we thought he was when we first got him? When we came, I was just happy that we finally had a PG with a decent A/TO ratio. Given his rep as a street baller (I'd never seen him play), I figured he'd be a player who would at least be athletic and be able to create a spark, which is what I figured the Rockets needed. I have to say I've been pretty disappointed with his ability to push a fast break or find a hole for a layup when Yao/TMac are drawing a double team. I chalk up some of that to being on a new team. But I became a bit more concerned about him after seeing him blow so many open 3's and open layups in games, too. Unfortunately, it looks like that end is not going to improve that much. Here are his career shooting stats, and they are pretty unimpressive. Year FG FG% 3P 3P% 99-00 27-95 .284 3-14 .214 00-01 30-84 .357 8-30 .267 01-02 66-191 .346 27-71 .380 02-03 139-335 .415 51-130 .392 03-04 287-764 .376 161-434 .371 04-05 403-974 .414 139-389 .357 05-06 21-65 .323 7-25 .280 Career: 973-2508 .388 396-1093 .362 This is noticeably worse than other PGs who are roughly in his category: Player Career FG% Career 3P% Damon Jones .414 .390 Jeff McInnis .432 .336 Mike James .416 .360 Derek Fisher .398 .372 The closest comparison is Derek Fisher (who is actually a slightly better shooter), which isn't saying much. I believe that Rafer is going to improve, and I'm most hoping he'll get a feel for when to make a timely drive/dish/layup. On the other hand, from a shooting perspective, the truth is he's probably not going to get that much better. I am holding a small bit of hope that his shooting will benefit from having TMac and Yao around, the way Sura's shooting was slightly up last year over his career averages (.013 up in FG% and .030 up in 3P%), but even with such an improvement, we can't expect Rafer to shoot better than 40%.
When I was saying this was a bad trade everybody talked really bad about me.....I like rafer,but I knew what we where losing...you have your pass first point guard now be happy.
Well I'm sure we could use Mike James scoring ability right now, it's still very early in the season. Didn't MJ average like 21ppg the first 4 games w/ us last season?
how in the hell were we supposed to know that TMAC misses half the games, and alston frctures his fibula or tibula or whatever... i still take alston over james... nothin but a ball hog
There were exactly 8 of us. You, me and 6 others. I counted and have the thread bookmarked. But it appears I may have undervalued Luther Head. Man it would have been cool watching James and Head cut through the Dallas defense like they were cardboard figures. IMHO, you could play them simultaneously at guard w/o a PG or SG designation. With Sura out, we have too many catch and shoot players and not enough creators/slashers. Not to mention James and Head would have made it much easier to move Yao into the high post for some UCLA cuts. I've never understood the "we wouldn't be able to keep James" arguement. Alston currently only makes $1.2m less than the MLE. We'd have had James' Bird Rights, his wife is from Houston and almost every team in the NBA is set PG wise. Plus, we still had a full MLE for a FA PG if James did get an outrageous offer. I didn't fall of the Alston bandwagon...I was never on it.
Which is exactly why we should have traded him. When it comes down to crunch time, we do not need an undersized Steve Francis clone driving and jacking up shots when T-Mac and Yao should be working the pick and roll. If T-Mac is out of the line up, of course we'd prefer to have Mike James over Rafer. But if T-Mac is in the lineup, we don't want a black hole taking the ball out of our super star's hands. Sure, Mike James is gonna put up big numbers hogging the ball on the second worse team in the league, but he was only gonna prevent the Rockets from becoming the cohesive unit needed to win a championship.
