I agree with you rserina however the job of these professionals is to win basketball games and no matter how poor Alstons shooting statistcs are, as long as we win i dont care if he shoots 3/15.
Skip didn't shoot well, can't argue with that, but he did have a broken leg last year and NO one mentions that..... Let's hope he can come into this year stronger and healthier and get his stroke going, because right now he's it for point guards on this team. Lucas signing is great news, but he won't play heavy minutes....Spanikopita is a big unknown and likely will take some time to transition to the NBA.
Clutch, I really like the article on Rafer. I thought it was excellent. Common thinking on this board seems to be that Rafer sucked last year because we lost a lot of games. I personally believe that if Rafer's minutes come down and the team has stability from injuries, that Rafer will look more like what CD envisioned when he traded for him. All in all, good article and quite a surprise. The topic of Rafer is worth addressing. Did you write this piece because of the stories revolving around the pg position? (Sura back from injury, John Lucas III, Vassilis) Also, did Juwon Howard see similar results last year? His numbers went up overall, but I wonder how the numbers with and without Yao/with and without Tracy compared. I would have looked myself, but I don't know how you got those stats.
Clearly there is insufficient evidence to support his performance with Yao and Mcgrady. 2 important factors seem to not be included. On the rare occasions when he DID play with them at the same time there was always an issue. Yao trying to play on the bad toe, McGrady's various issues. Also don't forget Alston's injury. I did not see Clutch mention that either. He had the fracture that threw him off entirely. The -only- game where none of the three were either coming back from an injury or on the brink of going down with one was the first game of the season in which he scored 8 points on 33% shooting. One game does not seem to be a very reliable measure of someone's worth. I am not saying he will be good or bad... I am saying I think it is totally unfair to even attempt an evaluation based on what we saw last season. We constantly rotated the starting 5, never settling, something was screwed up nearly each and every game. It's clear a stable healthy rotation is as important as anything - and we never had that. It seems the logical path is to reserve judgement until we've seen some real evidence. just my 2c.
I was interested in this as well: Code: [COLOR=Navy] GP MPG pts/40 reb/40 ast/40 TS% GS/40[/COLOR] TMac,Yao 26 29.6 11.5 8.2 2.4 47.6% 8.5 only Tmac 19 33.4 15.4 7.6 1.8 52.7% 11.0 only Yao 25 30.4 14.6 9.3 1.6 50.0% 9.1 Neither 10 37.3 21.2 8.8 0.6 49.4% 11.4 Final column is a per-minute rating. Note that pts, reb, ast columns are all per 40 minutes. It is similar. For whatever reason, when Tmac and Yao were in the lineup, both Juwan and Alston struggled.
I posted about this in <a href="http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=115405">another thread</a>, but I don't think you can look at Rafer's performance and say he was the key to those wins - note that the Rockets were 6-3 with Yao and T-Mac and no Rafer Alston. Most importantly, I don't think that 15-7 record extrapolates out to 55 wins because the Rockets did not beat anyone significant last year. They were 11-29 against teams with better than .500 records last season ... 6-8 when Yao and T-Mac were in the lineup, with two of those wins coming early against the pre-Artest Kings and a very early win over the Nets before they got real hot later in the season. They were absolutely throttled by the Suns twice... shown to not even be in their class, and Phoenix won 54 games. In fact, the only win the Rockets had against a team with 50 wins or more at all last year was a win against Cleveland (50-32 record) ... they were 1-16 against teams with 50 wins or more. By comparison, with Yao and T-Mac in the lineup in 2004-05, the Rockets were 28-18 against above .500 teams. After January 9th, 2005, when the Rockets got hot, they were 21-11. After that point they also went 9-6 against teams with 50 wins or more. They beat the Suns (62 wins), Spurs (59 wins) and Mavericks (58 wins) twice a piece. You can argue that T-Mac was not the same player that he was in 2004-05, and you'd likely win that argument (we may never see that same player again) ... but you can't discredit the efficient three-point shooting of the Rockets' guards that season in having a large impact on their winning record. A healthy Yao and T-Mac will always make us an above .500 team I would assume ... but if we want to contend, we've got to get better shooting out of our guards, particularly from ones that play near 40 minutes a night. The bottom line: If Rafer Alston was simply added to the Houston Rockets in 2004-05, he'd be the third string point guard behind Bobby Sura and Mike James.
I disagree that Alston would be third string pg CLUTCH, because Alston can do someting the other guys can't. Which is feed Yao the ball in the right places which is more important than any of his weaknesses. I think Skip is one of those players that mentally suffers when his team is losing. Perhaps he tries to hard when his teams not at full strength and his unselfishness has affected his offensive game. The fact is he can get his shot going, but he doesn't have to practice distributing the ball and keeping his turnovers down, which makes him a pretty standard point guard. With the right players to create the right spacing he may become a better cutting target in the future, and a layup is always safer than a 20 foot jumpshot anyday.
Alston may not be the greatest but who is available that is any better? And please, let's not revisit MJ. We tried, it didn't work, it's history. So, who else is attainable that would be better than Rafer? I think Rafer is more than adequate for what JVG wants out of a pg. JVG doesn't want a scoring PG. He wants a ball handler that will make good decisions and get the ball in the hands of the scorers. Yeah, his shooting has gotten worse, and his defense on his best day is slightly below average. But who else could we get that would be as efficient, and be a better shooter and defender? I can't find them. You can come up with some whack hypothetical trade but when you keep it real, there isn't a lot to pick from. PGs that can make plays, are efficient, and can shoot make over $10 million per. I think we should go to war with what we've got and then make a serious run at Chauncey when his contract comes up.
Alston is fine as a PG. His job is to pass the ball, knock down enough 3s to keep opponents honest, and play some D. As long as he raises his 3 pt shooting % up to the 35.6% he averaged for his career, it'll be enough to keep the opposition honest. Sura did a fine job as PG, and his 3 pt % with the Rockets was 35.5% also. (Clutch, where did you get 38% in 64 games? Sura played 61 regular season games and 7 playoff games with HOU) http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/surabo01.html The question is if the Rockets have enough to relief him when he's either having a bad game or needs to rest. JL and VS are big question marks in my mind. I'm not sure if the Rockets should give these two a chance to prove themselves first or go for a veteran PG in the offseason just ot be safe. A guy like Dooling or Jaric (in a Juwan trade), can bring something to the table to chance the pace and give the opponent a different look with Alston out of the game.
Clutch, IMHO your sample games are far too tainted. Didn't anyone learn in science class that sample tainted = useless experiment. Rotating starting 5, lack of stability, returning from injuries and playing hurt for all players involved badly damage the credibility of this. We need to see this in action for at least a decent consecutive streak of untainted games. With the information we have there is -no way- we can guess how effective he might be.
I think that Clutch's analysis is slightly biased, but probably pretty brutally accurate anyway (other than the Mike James mention. It's your site man, but we just might be better off without the dude. We'll see...) At least up until present date. I do see that Rafer is the best of anyone we have had playing the point (other than when T-mac brings the ball up) at passing the ball into the post. Scary good at times. If we have a few guys on the perimeter that can keep a defense honest then I am hoping Rafer will be pretty good. That having been said, Clutch is dead on. He's got to make his shots. He has got to play better man defense. If he doesn't then V-span will be in quick education mode. I still haven't given up on Luther either, but have a feeling he's going to be playing for someone else. We are mediocre backcourt heavy at the moment. It isn't hard to see that some backcourt is gonna' be traded for some backup 4/5 and hopefully a real live starting 2 without any questions. If we have that in place I'm comfortable with Rafer. If we don't then we'll have to see if he's getting more than 20 to 25 minutes by the all-star break. This last season is quite unusual. It's a little hard to gauge exactly what happened because everything was so screwed up all year long. This guy isn't a great shooter anyway you look at it. We were down by twenty or something, but a lot of what I remember from that last game in the Dallas series was Mike James taking the ball in one on three and getting stuffed. With the team we had we shouldn't have really been where we were anyway, but cuddos to players and coaches for making it semi-competitive. It was a little embarrasing in Austin as a Rockets fan at the time. I think I mentioned that I got assaulted by a family of Spurs fans a little before the season ended. I could have taken Grandpa if it wasn't for the cane... It is hard to judge anything but the obvious from last season and unfortunately Rafer isn't one of those. If he comes in and is the great assist man and can just do average or above average in defense, free throws, shooting then we are allright. If we get below average defense, piss poor free throw shooting and brick after brick then I will be a sad, sad man.
I would not mind having him being a back up but I don't think he is what this team wants as a starter. His scoring percentage isn't that great as many have said and his defence is only mediocre. I don't mind having him set up the offence but that is all I would trust him in doing. I hope the Rockets are definitely still out there searching for a starting pg.
Hey, I feel ya...I'm also an Austinite who loves the Rockets. From what I have seen from Rafer, he is a "flow guy". When his teammates are having good games, he does too. It must be a mental thing because he seems to be a far better shooter when he is in an offensive flow and everyone around him is hitting their shots. Like one poster said - I think he tends to try too hard if others aren't hitting their shots. If the Rockets can ever get a few shooters out there to hit some shots along with Yao & Tmac, then I think Rafer's FG percentages will also rise. The thing I always wonder about is what bothers JVG more - turnovers or poor defense. Rafer doesn't turn the ball over much, but he doesn't play defense. JVG gets to pick his poison every game with Rafer. I don't know if he deserves to be a starting PG though...I like him more as a closer in games where the other team doesn't have an explosive offensive guard(no Nash, Billups, or Baron Davis). I think you put him in to nurse a lead since he will give your stars solid touches and won't turn the ball over. Unfortunately, he is the best we got this year(so far). Hopefully they can use him better if they rotate him with V-Span & JLIII this year but I might be giving too much credit to our new aquisitions... ....one last quick observation - Rafer rebounds much better than I would have thought a guy his size would.
I always wondered When Wade goes to the basket. . gets the foul but misses the shot does that count as a missed shot? Rocket River
I think it is only counted if you make it. If you miss it, then technically the foul occured before the shot attempt. However, if you make it then continuation allows for the shot to count........talk about the best of both worlds for the shooter...lol.
i give Alston a helluva lot of credit for working hard at bringing his game up to NBA level and modifying it from the street theatrics. and i also like him as a person - he seems like a genuine, good sprited guy. and if nothing better presents itself, we should hold onto him - But i just doubt he's the guy who leads this team to the next level.
Unfortunately while he might be feeding Yao the ball, Rafer's defensive man has so little respect for his ability to score he is doubling Yao almost before Rafer passes. In 04-05 when a definsive player cheated off of Sura, James, Wesley or Barry they made them pay with a trey. On top of all that all 4 of Sura, James, Wesley and Barry were much better in the transition game that Alston. Wesley, James, Sura and Barry were all exceptional finishers as well as good passers. Barry was one of the more accurate and creative bassers I have ever seen run the break in a Rockets uniform. Alston does not push the ball on the break or finish like a great point guard should. He also does not hit the open shot on the break when he is standing alone at the arc like Sura, James, Wesley or Barry could. So the question is....Does Alstons passing ALONE, out way all of the good things that our 04-05 back court could do? I say no. Not even close. Alston would have been riding at the end of the bench. I can't think of even one player he could have beet out in that group.
