Sign Artest! His toughness fits with yao's softness sometimes. I can not see any reasonable trade which can get us a better player than Artest. Biby? What's the point of trading Alston for Kal lowery? Miller? Do you guys really believe that he is better than Artest?
He has behaved so far. But I am not totally convinced that he has changed yet. (Clutch did say that he had locker room problem and they were shopping him hard until TMac announced his season-ending surgery.) Even if he does become a choir boy, his game is still not good enough as our #2 option. So you'll have to bring in another star caliber player in order to contend. The dilemma is, does Artest like being #3?
I'm betting the majority of the locker room issue was between artest and t-mac, particularly when mcgrady did not like being called out publicly for effort. Secondly, I disagree that Artest isn't good enough as a second banana. Look at his play on both ends since t-mac announced he was out for the year. Artest and Scola with Brooks and Yao is plenty of offensive firepower. if it wasn't they couldn't play battier for his defense. Guys who can defend an opponents best player and score 20 a game are very special. Ron is one of them, a souped up Shane Battier. You don't let them get away when you have them.
I think their offer was C.Billups+T.Prince or R.Wallace. Rip will be a good fit for Adelman's system but Pistons won't trade him unless we give them more.
As long as Artest continues to play as a good asset, there's no way Morey will let him walk ... if nothing else, purely on a business basis. Morey is shrewd. He won't sign Artest to a long term contract ... probably a 3 or at most a 4 year deal. Then, Morey has an asset he can trade, if he's not convinced Artest fits here. But, Morey is not going to let a good asset walk, unless he becomes major poison, which I seriously doubt with his contract coming up. Even then, he might just match what the market says he's worth ... and then trade him for someone he likes better. But, I'm really glad we have Artest, and hope the team keeps him. Artest is emotional, but I think he's done a lot of growing up, and brings toughness our team needs. We just need to be sure he doesn't do what he did at the end of the CHI game, and I think Adelman has the ability to get through to him, so even if Ron gets a bit off-track, the coach can pull him back in. So, yes, I expect us to re-sign him.
I really hope he is. Ron has been the heart of our team. He has not done anything crazy like starting fights. I haven't even seen him get a technical foul. He plays hard every night. Defense + Heart + Offense. keep Artest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
if we could i would sign him for a one year contract and let him go in 2010 cuz my hopes are WADE AND YAO on the rockets together!! and Trade T-mac next year somewhere i don't care where...but if we could keep artest and have Wade and Yao that would be amazing
Who exactly are we planning to replace him with? Remember, Tracy McGrady is NOT expected to play for us again.
we have to re-sign artest because him and yao will give us a good contending team for players in the 2010 free agency, i dont know if lebron could be brought here but d wade could use the help of a big man and a 3rd scorer like artest. our team would have a good chance of getting one of those guys on bad teams. I know the heat are trying hard to re-sign dwade but i think he most likely will leave. we just need to make sure we pick up someone mature with leadership qualities. we will prolly let tmacs contract expire next season for this to happen unless we can get a win now bad ass player at next seasons trade deadline for his contract.
Artest is winning games for us. On offense and defense. His shots late and timely steals won that game last night against PHO as much as Brooks shots did. The Rox have to sign him - at least for one more year. I'd like him to take Shanes place in the starting line up next year 'cause I think Battier has had it.
I like Artest because when he plays "unselfishly" he becomes a spot up 3pt shooter who occasionally cuts, which works in our system. He is hitting a high%, while still giving us a tough defender and a guy who can still be an impact player in the clutch time. As opposed to Tracy who shoots outside at a terrible % and is always injured which leads to bad defense and no movement. These last few weeks have really shown me a lot and I would of loved to have seen this lineup from the get go. We could easily have been a runaway #2 seed without all the injuries and lineup shuffles. Furthermore, after watching the Cleveland game I am a renewed subscriber to a strong defense. The Battier/Artest combo is fantastic, even Lowry is a huge effect as being a pest on defense. With that in mind I would love to go after a strong defensive 4 who brings more post defense and shot blocking, etc. while still having a strong offensive game. Hayes is nice, but is just way too bad offense to be anything more than a situational defender. I hope we keep Artest and turn McGrady into a Bosh, Joe Johnson or Gordon/Hinrich package. Overall if Morey plays his cards right, and he has always been dynamite in the FO, I think we can look forward to another 3-4 years of elite level basketball in Houston. I for one am looking forward to it.
I don't see us keeping Artest if he is determined to get a bank breaking deal. But short of that, given McGrady's recovery time about 12 months, I don't see us letting him go, unless he really dislikes Houston and has been hiding it. Dude costs us our first round pick for this season, if he does leave, Wafer (if he resign him) and Barry will have to step up something fierce.
