he's a restricted free agent best described as Monta Ellis light. He is a tweener who needs to develop better point guard skills unless he can become more of a Monta Ellis full on. He is so young and has tons of potential. You'd expect Philly to match any offer the Rockets could make.
its not a rafer blast....thats what people seem to think whenever u point out somebodies weaknesses........ i love rafe....i think the bbs for the most part appreciate whats hes done in his time here.....and he is head and shoulders our best point guard......... but the fact remains...hes a glorified bench player.....and a stopgap until we get a real startin caliber guard........... its proven true facts that rafer: 1) Is a true point guard 2)Is our best point guard 3) Can Run a offense, get us in sets 4)decent defender....all this "rafe is a tremendous defender" crap has me sick.....hes DECENT but he also 1) Is a terrible 3pt shooter.......or even a regular jumper for that matter.......35% field goal percentage is not startin material in this league......PERIOD......... 2) Cant finish at the rim if his life depended on it.........those teardrops in the lane are stuff of legend on this board............. 3)He is a terrible penetrator.......which would make up for alot of his inconsistencies if he had this trait...which would lead to a ton of easy baskets.... In this day and age u need these traits from your point.....and on a rocks team that has superstars that demand a double team....its really a no brainer that a point who can make teams pay would put us in another bracket possibly take us out of the category of good team........and possible put us in the elite status that we can alll taste right now bottomline rafe is to inconsistent......when hes on hes great...but when hes off............its bad and we get blown out cuz we are to easy to defense if morey rolls out this startin 5 again this season............who can honestly say we are gonna be better and become elite???? forget makin playoffs....its time for rocks to take next step to greatness...our window is definately on the down slide...not the upslide
Team's let Rafer shoot the ball for a reason..... Until we close that glaring hole in our lineup, whom do you think is going to be wide open in the playoffs, or in a crucial game? And do you want the Rockets success to come down to a guy who has shot below 40% for his career? I certainly do not. DD
exactly DD.....rafe is great for the time being.......if u want to be good....but if its a title run we are after...............u get the picture I REPEAT....WE ARE NOT DOGGIN RAFER.......HE IS A GOOD POINT GUARD FOR US THE PAST 2 YEARS.............AND HE HAS HELD IT DOWN ADMIRABLY but if we want to take that next step..........he cant be our starttin point guard..........we are just to easy to defense with him in the line up the scoutin report is out on us people..............help defender is gonna be rafers man.........everytime..........if he can hit let the rockets win...thats the wrap on us yao and tmac are gonna get doubled...its a given.......... if u gotta leave a player in our startin 5...........its gonna be rafer guys......not scola or battier......and we gotta fix that......if we want to become ELITE.........PERIOD
battier or rafer have to go...to reach the second round battier and rafer have to go.... to be legit contenders.
Hard for most fans to see because both appear to be nice guys, but IMO you are correct. Yao and TMac cannot compensate for the offensive liability that Battier and Rafer represent, especially since TMac is now "volume" shooting in the 30% range. In the West you have to reach a ridiculous level of efficiency to advance in the playoffs. For regular season success we are apparently just fine.
I agree that Rafer can not be on the floor during crunch time, but I think Battier can.....if we can upgrade his position great, but the PG position is the one that is shooting below 40%....and that is the main problem. DD
Rafer shoots at .351% at 3p , which is good enough to rank 17th among PGs. Rafer shot .395%, considering that almost 50% shot attempt is at the 3p line, his tear-drops, jumper etc gets him around .428%. Not that shabby if you ask me. About his inability to penetrate, its not that big of an issue if yao and tmac is playing. As for spacing, you need someone that shoots the 3p, not someone that will drive in for a basket. His a decent player, but a player that rox could improve. The only thing is, there is a number of players that shoots better than him, set up the offense, play defense, but there is no one definite upgrade that is better than him in everything and not earning max contract. Only way to improve on the PG is by meants of the draft/europeans, which is always a gamble.
So far the biggest knock against trading for Hinrich is his salary. When you look at the contract a little closer, it is not as bad as it seems. He has a decreasing dollar value over the next four years: 10 MIL, 9.5, 9, then 8 mil. I think this contract is reasonable for a proven winner. It is my opinion of watching both players for many years, that Hinrich is a slight improvement over Alston in almost every category. Hinrich has never had the chance to play with a true post presence and I would love to see him receiving kick out passes from Yao for the open three. Plus he is five years younger than Alston, you never know when age will hit a player and his skills will decrease. I think if we included Alston in deal to Chicago, he would be more willing to take a backup role/mentor to Rose than Hinrich would be. BJax expiring contract will have some value to Chicago too, since they are going to have to do some additional trading this offseason. Here is the trade: Alston, BJax, and 2nd rounder pick for Hinrich.
Alston, BJax, 2nd rounder for Hinrich... I would do it too, until I think about how good of a defender Alston is. It's a whole other side to his game we forget about. How good is Hinrich (I really don't know)? I like Alston a lot, and I am usually attached to players, but this deal wouldn't seem so bad if Hinrich can play defense.
Hinrich made 2nd team all NBA on defense last year I think....he is better than Rafer in every aspect... DD
Oh please stop it. It's hard to rack up the assists when your job is mostly to dump it off to Yao and T-Mac more than half the time and let them create.
The hard part is if you trade Rafer, you don't put yourself in a much better position. You haven't made a such an upgrade in a point guard to justify the salary you are taking on. You still don't have a decent back up, unless AB has some miracle improvement over last season. If you can pull the trade without losing Rafer, then I'm all in. Rafer with all of his horride shooting would still be a good back up point guard for this team. I think Kirk's status will be determined more once Chicago deals with Deng and Gordon. If they are able to sign both of them, then Hinrich seems more likely to be gone. However if Chris Duhon goes to New York, then we would have a hard time making a good trade with Chicago.
He made it the year before last. He took last year off on defense and that's why he caught a lot of heat. You can look at it and just say he had an off year if he had kept up his defensive prowess. However, he didn't. That's a huge red flag. We know he was/is a good defensive player so the fact that he was at best average last year is simply a lack of effort. His contract isn't appealing either. No way to tell if a change of scenery could get him back but I'm not enthused about taking on that contract to find out. In terms of Mo Williams I like the guy but not for our team. He is definitely a shoot first pg. Having seen him play I don't think he would fit in with Yao and TMac. Despite the need to address the pg position we can't just go after names. I want to bring in someone solid who's a great fit here. Not just do it for the sake of making a change. We need a third scorer. That is clearly our primary need and some solid guys off the bench. Some of the guys already mentioned in the thread ( Mo Evans, James Jones , and lastly Jarvis Hayes) are good options. If we don't sign Landry then Pietrus or Childress would be great (I'm not sure the Hawks will match Smith and Childress) additions. If Posey comes to his senses then he would be a great fit too.
It is serious considering that short of trading T-Mac or Yao (and even then) a GM would have to be smoking some serious crack to trade them, thus they are unavailable.
Season before last, Miami won the championship with Jason Williams as the starting point guard and they only have two stars, so your argument makes no sense either. Or perhaps you're just using a straw man argument that isn't a good manner of reasoning.
