The bottomline we do not have a starting quality PG. Rafer is at best a good Back up option. Rockets management rolled the dice and wanted Mike James on board- till he gave us the Royal Salute. The 4th point 3 point shooting heroics are overstated. The guy makes up for that with all the dumb floaters he tries to put up. If we want to get serious about a starting PG- we have to grow some balls and actually get one that can First Pass effortlessly, then shoot the open jumpers ( not necessarily 3 pointers). I can remember clearly how some untimely turnovers by Rafer cost us games. Andre Miller- would do it for me.
Yes, it is my question too. Why everyone continues to bring up Rafer freaking Alston? I think I almost get over the Rafer Alston & Mike James trade. I know Rafer sucks and I know most of ppl finally realize it was a bad bad trade. I just want to completely move on and just ignore him, ignore him as if he were playing for someone else's team. And yet almost every game a thread or two will bring him up. It's like a nightmare keep hunting you.
Tmac sucked. Rafer is good in the extreme clutch but TMac kept takin the ball and turned it over like 2 times in a row. That killed it for us. He gave up a lot of fastbreaks. Not his fault though.
i dont thin vspan is the awnser (yet) but really dude rafer sux....he seems like a nice guy but he has a terrible shooting touch and has not been consistent at all.
Only 173 minutes playing time, you already knew exactly what kind of player he is. Why not tell CD/Morey before signing him? Insider. Seriously you should tell Alexander to save him 5M dollars and he would be happy to give you the scout job. Screw Dennis Lindsey.
He sucks right now. He definitely has potential but still needs to adjust his game to the NBA. Its going to probably take the season. Yea he should get some minutes, but starting him is ridiculous.
Please answer these questions first. 1. Why you blame a role player in every game even when he did not play badly? 2. Why nobody starts a thread blaming TMAC when he had a terrible game? 3. Why TMac can shoot whatever he want and lot of them are bad shoots, while no one dare to point it out. On the contrary, when Rafer had a few bad decisions, almost everyone in this forum show up to show he is wiser than Rafer? 4. Why Rafer made clutch shoots is not worthy a mention, while Tmac often was treated as a hero when he made a clutch shoot in a game even he shot at very low percentage in the entire game? Superstars should receive credits when team win and blames when team lost. You're soft if you only dare to blame a role player. You're stupid if you still blame a role player even has does not had a bad game. You're fooled when you think V-Span is good player that can beat Team USA. Every dog has it's days. Don't just look one game, V-Span has 3+ years of professional experience, and he was never a starter.
So it's Rafer's fault that we're playing bad. It's Rafer's fault when Tmac is shooting sub-33% It's Rafer's fault that Battier is being paid 6million to be a Ryan Bowen with a corner-shot. It's Rafer's faul that our PFs are mediocre And I guess it's Rafer's fault that Yao and Tracy got injured too huh. Time to get off biting on his balls man. It's getting old. Rafer can do no right in H-town, but Mike James and Bob Sura can. Mike James and Bob Sura, who thought himself "The Man" and doesn't know the simple virtue of waiting for your big man to establish position respectively. Who's it gonna take to appease you Rafer-haters? Chauncey Billups? AI? Jason Kidd? If AI came here, then he'd be "damn why the hell is he shooting and dribbling the ball so much". If Kidd comes here it'd be "damn, he got no jumpshot!". I swear it gets no end.
are you sure about unconfident player? seems to me that one of his strong points is his confidence. i also think he's actually a good passer who makes bad passes because he's a poor decision maker. anyways, yeah he doesn't need to be starting. i don't have a lot of confidence in steve and cuttino (alston and head) manning the point but you throw billy in there for 30+ minutes right now and you're asking for trouble. ultimately if t-mac can stay healthy and get his stamina back he'll handle the ball when it matters most.
Well no one on this thread is blaming Rafer for tonights game, they are bashing him for the entire season. 38.6% FG and 35.7% 3FG are terrible and his assist to TO ratio (1.9:1) isn't great, either. He has made a lot of boneheaded plays and missed a lot of shots wide open shots. I personally like Rafer as I understand he's not the player to carry the team on his shoulders and score 40+ on good shooting and make fancy passes and rack up 10+ assists nightly with few turnovers. He's out there trying and he's not the only one not playing at an All-Star level. T-Mac has gotten his fair share of bashing on this board lately. Tonight he was rusty and out of shape. It's naturally going to take him some time to adjust and get back into shape so the blame shouldn't fly fast yet but I don't think anyone denies the loss was due in part to Tracy McGrady's terrible clutch play. The shots T-Mac took tonight were actually not that bad. He drove in and tried to get contact and finish around the hoop. He just missed a lot of easy ones and that's because he hasn't played in a while. That will come back to him naturally and he will get better and better in the next couple games. His J wasn't that bad tonight UNTIL the clutch where, when you are out of shape or tired, your legs start to fail on you. That conditioning will come back. He actually was on fire early. He did give that late 3 up to Rafer who drilled it. Agreed T-Mac's shot selection/play in the clutch was terrible this game. That's a good question, but, for the most part, Rafer, when he is not hitting shots, is PRETTY MUCH useless. However, T-Mac, even though he misses his fair share of shots, has an amazing play making ability making his team better and helping take defense of his team, and T-Mac does pass the ball around. Rafer can't offer that. But that's no reason to blame him. So when it comes to the end, T-Mac's heroics aren't often the only thing he did right that entire game, with Rafer, it is. Personally, I like Rafer, I appreciate what he does even though he isn't AI, Nash, Billups, Davis, Tony Parker, Wade, Etc. He's not the only one on the team who has problems, so he shouldn't get all the blame, which he often does, and I agree that it isn't fair. Blaming Rafer is probably easier because he's the PG. He has the most control of the ball most of the time. That's probably the reason. Rafer actually only averages 36 MPG and he only played 34 tonight so that means Head/Wells are getting minutes instead of Lucas/Spanoulis. So for everyone who says that playing Rafer less will give Lucas/Spanoulis more minutes is wrong by the JVG is doing it. Rafer's minutes go to Head or Wells looks like. That's on JVG. So instead of Rafer, to give minutes to Lucas and Spanoulis you'd be eating out of Bonzi and Head's minutes, and Snyder when he gets back. It's worth a shot but Spanoulis/Novak/Lucas have not proved to be better than Rafer/Head/Wells/Snyder at everything they do, so JVG has no incentive to play them in close games. They are rookies afterall. Who would you rather have handle the ball at the end of games: Rafer, JL3, or V-Span???? I'm going with Rafer.
Very nice objectivity there ShadyMcGrady. But it seems like many here are just content lumping the blame all on Rafer, and expecting him to be the Messianic PG or something. The team lost because they, as a team, played bad. The whole team was just shut down by the Pacers, no questions there. As for his overall season play, Rafer has been shooting the 3-ball acceptably well when Yao and Tracy were both healthy. It's only when he's been asked to create more offense when Tracy went out, did his 3-point percentage start to dip. And the simple reason for that is that he simply is not a guy who can generate good offense for himself all the time. He's a role player, and he's being payed like one, and expected to play like one when everybody's healthy. So what's there to complain?
A lot of good opinions here, on both sides of the issue. I fall on the, "enough with the hate" side. There is plenty of blame to be thrown around at the team. Everyone is making mistakes (20+? turnovers in the game vs. Indiana). As you all know, that's 20+ shots we didn't even get to take. Last night's game was just ugly, but we still had a chance to pull it out. Sure I'm getting concerned, but as JVG's quote said, they have the tools to win. They need to execute, and we need Tracy at his semi-best. Hopefully he'll get that back very...VERY soon. Basically, Rafer (along with everyone on the team) has their good and bad points. As the saying goes, you take the good with the bad. People sound like we should have a star PG starting...not so easy when you already have and are paying two superstars, and overpaying some of the rest of the roster.
how about having a pg that can post entry pass to juwan without telegraphing it? 2 turnovers in 2 attempts how about giving the ball up early in the shot clock with the opportunity to get it back after a double team, which is where he is at his best?
