[SI.com] Who made the right moves in southwest?

You obviously know Alston. You should know that his shot is very streaky, whatever the percentage may be. Teams have dared him to shoot, and for the first two years he was unable to make them pay for it. He's shot us out of games just as often as he's stretched the defense. If teams start cheating off him in the playoffs are you confident in his ability to make the shots?

 

Yup, some nights he'll be on and some nights he'll be off. If his shot is severly off, I imagine that Rick Adelman will try to get away with Barry or TMAC at the point, substituting Barry. I think last year's Rafer was acceptable.

We won with Kenny Smith. He was streaky as hell too.

There's a number of guards I would rather have over him. We just can't afford it. But I still think we can win a championship with him.

 

full of ****...brain damaged!

 

Yeah, but that guy drove me crazy too. I'm not gonna put Kenny Smith on a pedestal here.

 

I thought the analysis of the Rockets were pretty fair and it pretty much summarized what we've been talking about all along.

We need a youthful backup C and a point guard to run the offense when Raefer/Tmac are on the bench/injured. As for the dentures in our bench part, who cares!? We have so many great shooters that they can't ALL go cold!

 

Rules of being bias:
1.Make no sense
Example: Warriors lost Baron Davis to the clippers, however this allows their bench and the role players to improve. Not to mention the warriors gave theirs players a good contract deal. If all goes right, the warriors have a shot of winning the championship against celtics by 4-0.

Grade: A+

Rockets aquire Ron Artest and Barry. However, Artest is known for his problems off and on court, and Barry is a 36 year old veteran. If all goes wrong, the rockets will end up below 8th seed. Compared the last year's record, the rockets have improved a little.

Grade: C because the rockets have yet to aquire Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and Dwight Howard as starters and backup. So far, they are still inferior to the Warriors, who without a doubt, made the biggest moves in the off seasons.

 

The reason we won the 93/94 championship with Kenny Smith at PG is because we also had Sam Cassell. Kenny stunk against the Knicks. But we had a rookie with some guts, who hit cold-blooded shots and wasn't intimidated by Derek Fisher. The next year against the Magic, Kenny completely shrank and disappeared after a great game 1.

Kenny doesn't deserve to be put on a pedestal.

 

I don't think he got it right analyzing our bench. We don't have a weak bench! We have a pretty good bench! This dude definitely didn't watch Rockets games. Probably switched channels when Yao or Tracy weren't on the court. A bench consisting of Scola, Landry, Hayes, and Mutombo is a really good bench. Now we got Barry, Dorsey, and Artest to complement an already good bench.

 

Who's putting Kenny on a pedastal? We won in spite of his streakiness.

 

and if RA doesnt sub him out who fault is it really? Its the coaches job to see whats going and if its not good for the team do something.

 

I was responding to his specific comment, as in agreeing with it.

 

The coach has to have the personal to do something. RA and JVG had to play Head at PG ...

It is GM's job to get the person, someone can backup Rafer.

that's why Morey is graded a B.

 

Hornet is one injury (CP) from lottery. We can miss any player for a chunk of the season and still make the playoff. Hornets is quickly becoming the most overrated team in the entire league.

 

Ok, but if a GM is rated based on what they DIDN'T do, then no one else in the league would get more than a B. Every team has holes to fill and choices to make.

I think you should rate a GM based on who they were able to add to the team based on the resources they have at their disposal. DM turned 2 draft picks and an expiring into Ron Artest and Brent Barry... that wins in my book.

We needed a 3rd scorer MUCH more than we needed to resolve our PG situation.

 

Hey j, Kenny was a different player from Alston. He was a career 40% 3 point shooter which puts him on par with Glen Rice, Ray Allen, Peja, and Reggie. But, other than that, he was pretty one-dimensional. Not very skilled at attacking the basket, and not known for great court vision. But definitely a right piece to the puzzle.

Alston's skill set, on the other hand, is his reliability in bringing the ball up, and being a better and more creative passer than Kenny was. Whereas Kenny was defined by his ability to knock down the 3 (other than some cold streaks during playoffs), Alston has managed to knock down 35/36% despite having a shot that really looks like it came from the playground.

Both have their strengths and weaknesses but I don't think their skill sets overlap that much. Hopefully Rafer's strengths will fit the puzzle just as Kenny's did in the championship run, and his weaknesses will be minimized and compensated for by the team and offensive scheme.

 

(more offtopic)
On that note, who has which career 3-point percentage?

35.7%
32.0%

Vernon Maxwell or Rafer Alston? Just something interesting ... the statistics versus our perception.

 

Don't even bring up Max. In the 94 playoffs, he had the one game where he went off on the Suns in the 2nd half. After that, he was a dud. We kept hoping Max would go off again but it never happened.

 

max has the worse percentage. he was just clutch.

 

I left out the game 7 three-pointer against the Knicks with 90 seconds left that put us up by 7. That is my favorite shot in NBA history.

 

Don't really agree with that article....I feel people often overvalue New Orleans because they are entertaining to watch - just like Phoenix of the last several years. Look I like Paul just as much as the next guy and he makes it fun to watch New Orleans, but ask Steve Nash how far being a fun team to watch gets you in the playoffs.

Adding Posey from a personnel standpoint was a positive move but they spent way too much on him and his skills are only going to decline at this point which is not what you want when you have him locked up to long term contract along with your rising young star. The other downside is he plays the same position of one of the few bright spots on their bench last year - Julian Wright. What does this do to his development? This was a team that's biggest weakness was the bench and they signed a guy who has averaged less than 10pts a game and ironically plays the same position and does many of the same things as one of their young developing talents. Plus they lost Pargo meaning Mike James is the new backup at the PG spot - and this guy gives them an A- for that?

I guess that score is heavily weighted on them resigning Chris Paul but that's kind of like giving a passing score on a test for writing your name at the top of the paper(Paul wasn't going anywhere)....