I feel good about our future as well. We are doing so well right now, imagine how much further we can go with Yao coming back healthy next year. All of our key players besides Landry are locked up for next couple years , and we have Landry's bird right, so he won't go anywhere. We also have Bobby Jackson's expiring contract to play with this summer. It's a good time to be a Rockets fan.
I want to remind those who said Scola won't be able to rebound with NBA PF's that he is doing it well. He is averaging over 10 rebounds per 40 minutes. He is pretty much with Antwan Jamison, who is averaging 10.3 rebounds in 39 minutes. On a per minute basis, he is outperforming Rasheed Wallace, Brendan Haywood, Josh Smith, Pau Gasol, David West, Dirk Nowitzki, Mehmet Okur and Chris Wilcox. That is a list of the PF's that have traditionally been average rebounders, and Scola sits above them all. Take into consideration that this is Scola's first season, and if you remove his first 10-15 games, he is having a terriffic rebounding season. Is there any doubt this guy will hit his NBA prime next season? I can see him bringing 16 and 9 to this team, more assists than TO's, good defense and great teamwork. This guy's prime is going to be next season, which fits in perfectly with our window. In Yao, Mac, Scola, Battier, Alston, Brooks, Landry and Head, we hae the makings of a good team, with two big additions next season (Brooks and Green). Not to mention Bobby Jackson's contract (expiring), the MLE and a first rounder. If you imagine for a second acquiring a piece (PG/SG) with BJaxx+#1pick, then signing another (backup C?) to the MLE we are probably the most talented team in the NBA next season. I really think Brooks, Gerald Green, Justin Williams and Carl Landry are going to give us tremendous depth next season assuming they all work hard in the offseason.
Kobe was very young and still developing his game. Tmac came to the team a polished all star and we were expected to do something big immediately. Big difference, our stars have underacheived but our role players have been far worse in seasons past than any champions, let alone dynasties.
T-Mac was in his prime but Yao was definitely still developing (to some degree, he still is developing). And as you say, the role players have generally been bad before this season. Honestly, I cheered for the guys but I never really expected anything serious out of them until this season, after they announced the Scola deal. Landry's impact and Rafer's improvement have been nice bonuses.
obviously they were both still developing their games (remember yao is only a year younger than tracy) and so was kobe. Kobe and Shaq started winning championships when Kobe was nowhere near his full potential ( i think he was like 21). Yao may have gotten better since then but so has Kobe, my point is that they started early enough to do something really special. If the rockets won a championship next year tmac would be pushing 30 already, it would be hard for him to sustain his level of play with his already fragile body.
Yep, clearly we'd better trade Yao. I mean look, he's only #8 in the league in PER: http://www.nba.com/statistics/player/Efficiency.jsp ...and 13th in points, and 8th in rebounds, and 7th in blocked shots.
You'd think with gaudy stats like that we'd be leading the league in offensive efficiency, when actually we have a higher offensive rating without him. 7th in blocked shots is nice, but too bad it didnt help much when he was getting torched by Boozer. Yao is good at defending slow bigs he can match up with (Duncan, Kaman) but Deke is better AND he can defend faster bigs.
LOL. Do you actually watch Rockets games? I love Deke but if you think Deke can keep up with 20 year olds for 38 minutes a game then you need to pull your head out of your @ss. Our coach, our former coach, and our GM all called people like you clueless. And I think they know what they are talking about.
LOL, a rofflesaurholz post starts with the word 'honestly'. Can it get even more hypocritical than that? So between you and ekim, who's more honest? Or say... who's more hypocritical? Or say...who's a bigger liar? Oh, I forgot you two are actually just one and the same hater who waste your life hating a basketball player on the cyber space when hiding bebind the firewall of your PC. How sad.
How about we win a friggin playoff series before we start talking about this team being a dynasty to come. Stay humble.
how about we at least trying getting out of the first round, maybe second...or maybe even get one ring before talking about a dynasty?
Well, he was demoted already, I guess. Enough about that. There seems to be so many Yao haters and Yao lovers that even this thread is hi-jacked for that purpose. C'mon, cheer up, be optimistic, shoot for the moon, whatever. It is an awesome time!!!
Why ban him? We need to trade him for a bag of peanuts to the Lakers board. Then he can start raggin' on Bynum.
