I didn't realize Tmac did it all himself. In fact if i remember correctly a lot of praise went to the Scolandry addition, remember the one that was discovered mid way through the season. When Scola started to start. And its not exactly like Yao left right away. He was part of 16 wins of the 22. I wouldn't exactly say Rockets had low talent lineup after Yao sat down for the rest of the year. Maybe not enough to help Tmac make it past the 1st round but not a low talent line up none thee less. If Dwayne wasn't hurt this season there is a very good chance that the Heat would have done better this year putting them at 50+. We already know PP had 50 plus
Who knows what could have been done with 31 games, not 50+ but still. Rockets did a lot with 22 games.
the fact remains that once yao went down, it was t-mac and a bunch of role players. and NO, yao was not there for 16 of the 22 wins. the rockets went on a 10 game win streak AFTER yao went out. lol @ the heat getting 50+ if wade was healthy...what a ****in joke.
T-Mac 75% career FT Lebron 73% career FT Good point. T-Mac is a better all around player than Wade and the self-proclaimed greatest player Pierce, but I agree he is not quite on the same level with Lebron and Kobe.
You said there was a smaller gap between McGrady and Butler. Caron is good, Artest is good. T-Mac is great. The gap between Mac and Caron is much larger than you assumed. If you still think Caron is better than Artest, please read AsianSensation's post. I love how quickly you backtracked out of this argument. Nice try, fella. Here, look at their stats, they are so close. Hey, they are just stats. I didn't mean anything by them. It is laughable to compare them. And saying we are all blind Rockets who overrate our players is not an argument. GTFO with that with that bull****.
obviously, tmac did not do it all by himself. nobody can. but he was our best player and the guy who touches the ball on every play and the guy who carried most of our workload. you gotta remember in 2 of the games after yao went out, tmac played 48 minutes (full games) TWO TIMES. that's him playing INJURED too. so tmac did lead us. he kinda ran out of gas after the winning streak but regained it for the playoffs. but make no mistake, tmac was the catalyst. but obviously, you can't do it without your team b/c it's a team game. tmac made that clear. it was a team effort, led by tracy. yao was part of 10 of hte wins. and i admit, we started play well WELL before the winning streak. the team was def. getting into its rhythm. so i'm sure we would have won with yao too. but again, the fact that we are winning last yr wasn't just ONE YEAR. we did well without yao the past few yrs. we won 60% of our games without yao 2 yrs ago too. it's a testament to tmac's ability to raise his game and the team's ability to raise its game. it's not a coincidence juwan howard played great the yr before, and then scola and landry played well last yr. tmac made those guys better. he got them open shots and layups. i can't say that for scola b/c he's vastly talented and would have gotten his pts regardless. but tmac made howard and landry much better than they really are. and your argument has zero credibility when you said the heat would win 50+ games. you do know with wade last yr when he was still playing, they SUCKED worse than orlando with tmac in his last yr right? i'm sure they'll be better. and if he's really as good, they would at least make the 7/8 seed. paul pierce had kg and ray allen and SQUEAKED by atlanta (a sub 500 team) in the first round. we had our starting center out, 3 starters injured, and we took a 50+ win team to 6 games. when yao returns this yr, we'll be ready to go.
How has TMac been pulled into this debate? Back to topic, I think a lot of people here are Artest drunk. I think Artest is a tad better than Butler, not "hands down" like a lot of your guys think. This board is seriously overrating Artest. I never liked Caron because of his draft day arrogance. But I think he is a very good player, efficient offensively, decent defensively. Artest is great defensively. On offense, he is talented individually but not always on. And he is not a good team offense kind of guy. But with Artest, you always have to factor in his instability. The risk of him exploding the season is very real. With Butler, you know you are pretty safe.
Honestly, I like Burler's offense more than I do Artests'. He's really grown into his own since coming Washington.
He played well in his sole All-Star game appearance, unlike Caron. like all star games really matter, we all know its just for show. > >
i take butler over artest. Artest better player than butler. But, at least we know what we be getting from butler, while artest may be a head case, demanding minutes etc etc
