Our management no longer cares. (Being duped)

i still think its too early to panic. mike james is pretty old, i understand why they didn't give him the 4th year. at this point, i want to see them being active. today, i heard they are interested in ariza, which is a good move. i think we have to give some unproven players chances. We have no assets, seriously...

 

There is a draft every year for one reason-- to bring young talent on board. Look how we have not done that:

1. The boneheaded Barkley deal (Cassell and Horry)
2. The Tucksan-Drew Affair (Rashard Lewis)
3. The Eddie Griffin Disaster (Jefferson or Prince... pick one... plus the two others... or we actually could have had both of those guys)

 

Prince wasn't in that draft. He went the next year and we were seriously considering him but Nachbar shot lights out in his workout and showed much more athleticism than most of the other euros that Rudy thought he was a star in te making... and then 8 other teams proceeded to pass on Prince as well.

 

Are you serious? Dude, if you really want to see some Cowboys ... why don 't you watch a "Western Movie"? Maby John Wayne plays as a quarterback ... naaah probably as a wide receiver!

 

i will never understand why some people hate this deal so much. once hakeem dropped slightly off from his peak, we no longer had a championship team. we had a team that could be swept in the second round, and we definitely had a team that couldn't beat the sonics. while we still had a relatively in his prime hakeem and a falling but still good drexler, we had a championship window. it was clear horry and cassell was not enough. so we made a trade to upgrade in the immediate future to coincide with our window. we got a 20/10 barkley (who then decreased pts and increased rebs with hakeem already on the team and put up 19/13) who was a big time impact player still to upgrade the team. not surprisingly, phoenix actually asked us for some talent. so we gave them a nice young pg who became a really good pg in the future and a solid young pf. not exactly unreasonable. we then started the next season 21-2, were 32-8 when the big 3 all played, and got within 2 games of the finals. we took one last shot at glory and came close. somtimes that's how it works. and for people who think barkley was why we suddenly couldn't beat utah, he had very nice numbers in the series.

if we don't make the trade, seattle knocks us out in the 2nd round again, hakeem and drexler fall off like they did and we have a nice pg and average pf for the future. it's not like they were the core of a championship team to build around or something. without a tmac or yao type player they weren't going anywhere. better to take the chance of quickly upgrading around the proven hakeem/clyde core and going for it. and unless we held onto cassell and horry until tmac and yao came along, they wouldn't have saved us from much of the mediocrity we've suffered anyway.

it's like the randy johnson trade. in terms of value, we gave up 2 really good players who will be really good for many years for 3 months of randy johnson. but we had a really good team, he was a badass for those 3 months, and we might've been the best team entering the playoffs. we took a chance at a championship and had to mortgage some of the future for it. such is the price of trying to win. it didn't work out but i'm glad they tried. while you shouldn't sacrifice the future for the present every time, there are times it is called for and i think both of these were the right time.

 

You bring a good point that it takes future pieces to acquire win now player. In the case of Rockets we don't have any future good players so we can not eve acquire any good win now players.

 

Thats why the gay + swift trade is horrible. we gave up all our assets just to get a role player. they were banking on james to come here and provide that 3rd scorer and battier would strut his stuff as a maximum effecient role player. now ewe got no assets and a no 3 rd scorer.

 

You mean like Rudy gay?


And, please don't focus on my bringing up Rudy Gay... But, I just don't get it..

We gave up Rudy Gay for Battier because, we didn't want to take risks on 'unproven players'.. "Win now" mode etc...

And, now... it's understandable that we didn't want to have Mike James at 36 because we don't want to mortgage our future..?


mhm.




Uhm.....

 

i dont think they no longer cares. they definitely care but just too dumb. drafting yao was their only good move in recent years. without yao, there is no tmac. 4 years since yao came and 2 since tmac and they still haven't managed a solid group of guys around the two!

 

Incredible isn't it? Denver, Cleveland, and NO have just gotten themselves their stars recently but we're still more jacked than them.

 

It is the mentality of Gumby that is killing the Rockets. He wants good clean character guys like Ryan Bowen and Juwan Howard - "no knuckleheads". He also prefers players that are way over the hill (thus the reason for not even giving Rudy Gay a chance) to younger players. Gumby has no clue of how to adapt his coaching style to what he has on his team. And other players in the league have picked up on this. The sooner we get rid of this loser (and preferably CD who has made his fair share of dumb moves - even before Gumby came along), the better this organization will be. It is just sad that we have 2 great players, in their prime, who are going to have to "wallow in the mire" to speak until Gumby is ousted.

 

All the people that don't like the Gay for Battier trade I have a deal for you.

You give me $10 and I will give you a choice between...

1. 7 lottery tickets

2. $.50 a week for the rest of your life

If I could get all of you guys together I could get rich off this deal.

 

I applaud the Rocks for NOT signing MJ. How long have people on tis board complained about the bad contracts we gave to Maloney, Moochie, and Cato? The deals were too long, and for too much $$. Mike James had a GOOD year last year. Does one year mean you sign the guy to a 5 year deal?

This whole thing has actually made the Rocks look SMART. They traded MJ for RA because they felt they could not affored what MJ would want. Well, that has proven to be true. And had MJ stayed here, he would have wanted $6 mil/year, as we would have had his Early bird rights-bird rights. There would be another of those 5 yr/30 mill contracts we all hate.

In the end, he would have given the same "no love" speech (as we woudl not offer him the 5 year deal) he has given to everyone, and signed for the most money. At least with the trade we have RA, instead of nothing at the point. Of course, we prolly would have kept Moochie.....

 

EXACTLY. This is what is maddening about the situation. We have no direction.

Win Now? Well then, WAIT for Mike James to sign, and hold off on trading Rudy + Stro. Even if Shane got traded somewhere else, no one in their right minds would refuse the above trade and we could have gotten him from another team.

Build for the future? Well then, our best scenario is simply developing Rudy then.

We made the first mistake by trading away our draft picks too quickly. We made the second mistake by not making up for our first by throwing everything we have at Mike James.

This makes me conclude one thing. We probably traded away our draft pick before we saw that Rudy was available. We probably wanted Roy, and if we didn't get him, we figured at the 8th spot that we could do no worse than Battier. This would have been before Rudy slipped.

Then Portland, knowing that the Rockets were going to swap Roy for Foye take Foye to sabotage the deal. Perhaps to sabotage the Rockets (Patterson) or in some discussion with Jerry West or both.

So we have our deal in place with Memphis. No Roy, No Foye, then deal.

Okay, so we took a gamble and lost badly, it happens. However, as this move now handcuffs us to a "win now" mentality, then the logic behind not throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Mike James is stupid. We won't get better value than him, period. If we are going after a player like Trevor Ariza(who I like) or Marcus Banks, then we should have kept our draft pick, period, because we aren't going to "win now".

 

Not that I doubt the basketball knowledge of the savvy veterans on these boards, but it just gets hard to stomach the incessant complaining. The Battier deal was fine and has been lauded by nearly everyone in the league, organization, and media, but fans here are still upset because they are Mel Kiper-like in their approach to athletes: talent and upside outstrip balance and chemistry.

I can understand frustration with James situation and I too think that if James was indeed their key target in free agency, then they should have matched the offer and accepted the consequences. But I can at the same time grant that the deal James wanted is not smart, overpays him, and would not help us in the long run. Now we are on to the backup plan and I think that will determine just how smart the Rox organization is: sometimes you can't get exactly who you want, but a resourceful front office will make smart decisions to get what they need to help the team, not deal for the sake of dealing, and patiently wait for something to shake loose--which it inevitably does in this league.

The jury is still out on whether or not the front office can put together a solid enough team this offseason and before the deadline to at least prime us for competition in the playoffs, then a possible run the following year. But to suggest there is an effort to sabatoge or somehow they are destroying this team through a putred offseason is just nonsense. Not every team has cap space, not every team will have multiple max contract players, and not every team has lineup with few tradeable players. But it's not like we have wasted money bringing in players who are not worth it: the MLE, two TEs, and the expiring contract of Sura could net us the right players if we are both smart and patient.

 

After drafting Mirsad Turkcan in the '98 draft, Ive lost alot of respect for the Rox management. In addition to seeing Swift packaged with Gay for Battier, it made things worse. I believe its a bunch of BS that they chose a guy like Daryl Morey to run the team after CD retires. They're trying to turn into the Boston Red Sox of the NBA, where Daryl Morey is their Theo Epstein. You cant have a stats guy run a NBA team.

 

That is a load of BS and you know it. Did you not see the grade that Michael Murphy of the Chronicle gave the Rockets for their draft? And the few people that have lauded the deal are ones that will say anything to appease management.

Look the problem with that deal is not that the Rockets traded a great young talent in Gay away (although it wasn't a good thing). The problem is that the Rockets gave up entirely too much to get a role player in Battier. They didn't get the value they should have gotten in having a lottery pick.

Now add the fact that they can't sign their main FA and you have to wonder if this Front Office understands what direction they are going in. Many people on this board want to know what direction this team is going in. As fans, I think it is only fair that we have that right.

 

For me, I viewed the Battier trade to be good AS LONG AS we signed MJ to be a third scorer, and penetrator.

I hinged our hopes for next season on getting him. With him we are very dangerous now, without him, i really doubt anyone is shaking in their boots because of our lineup.

Since management obviously pinned their hopes on the guy, then I'm very angry that the hanging point was one year and a trade clause. 4 years for a guy like MJ is the kind of deal you want. 6 years of a guy like Juwan is the kind of deal you don't want.

Now the success of our season is heavily dependent on Luther Head. I'm a huge Luther supporter, and know he will improve a lot this year, but MJ is a better player and most likely will be for a few more years (about 4, perhaps?)