he wants him badly, but not THAT badly lol. and let's stop talking about the battier trade. we all know we should have gotten more for that pick. anyone who says otherwise is just plain ignorant. battier is not worth that much. he's a ROLE PLAYER (a great one, but that's all he is).
ok then i am ignorant i guess. i think you all VASTLY overrate rudy gay, and neglect a ton of important aspects about that trade. how about tmac asking for a defensive wing to take the pressure off of him so he wouldnt be so tired in the 4th quarter? was that supposed to be rudy gay? how about the money you saved by sending stromile over enabling you to get guys like Scola and Landry? You wouldnt have the salary room for either of them otherwise. there are about ten other things that flowed out of that trade which were almost all positives for our team. that trade (and just about all trades) had a lot more implications than just whatever happens with rudy gay or shane battier. three years later, the rockets are a solid team with high performing intelligent players, reasonable contracts, fantastic team character, great defense, great effort, that has been to the playoffs and succeeded. memphis has done jack squat. obviously it wasn't such a great trade for them, if you like good basketball, and winning. now come on. explain to me why it was so bad. how much are we suffering with shane battier?
rudy gay is in a bad situation in memphis. players' potential isn't realized if the teams they play on isn't a good team. i've seen rudy play. i thought he had an ego, but he let mayo and his hype (which he mostly fulfilled) took center stage. and he has the tools to become an all-star. and we wouldn't suffer with rudy gay either if he developed with this team. a rudy gay under JVG would have developed pretty good considering his work ethic that i've seen from him in the NBA (which i didn't think he had watching him at uconn). we might not be searching for a scoring wing so badly now with tmac out. like i have always said, again, we can't predict trades/money situations in the future most of the time. we don't know what else would have happened if we took rudy or kept that pick and how all the cards pan out.
ok, so you yourself say "we dont know" and so the answer is be thankful that your team is in such a great situation whereas the people who supposedly got such an awesome trade are in a terrible situation. quit making excuses for rudy and understand that dwade took a terrible miami team this year to the playoffs, lebron did the same with cleveland, brandon roy did a lot with portland in his rookie and sophomore seasons, chris paul had a mediocre new orleans team on top of the southwest division two seasons ago, etc. if rudy were so great he would have had at least some semblance of success. fact is that he just isn't. part of the reason that memphis is in such a terrible situation is because of decisions like that one. if everyone can't see that, then maybe i'm not the only ignorant person on this bbs.
Perhaps the reason behind dangling Battier in these talks for Rubio was a confidence in acquiring Prince?
I think Gay on the rockets would have been nothing more than a Travis Outlaw, but you would have had to wait several years for Gay to get to that level. When the rockets made the Battier for Gay trade, it was basically to win now and take the defensive heat off of Tracy. I love Battier, but I still believe that Memphis should have at least thrown in the Lowry pick during that draft, I think the rockets should have recieved alittle more than Battier for #8 and Swift.
Guys........ Talk is NOT about Gay and Battier........... It is just that #8 pick in ANY draft is worth more then the skill set Battier brings to the table (of course players like Battier are needed in a championship type of team, but not at that price) I don't remember, but what did it cost SA to get Bruce Bowen?? and he is much better defender and shooter then battier! Anyway, that aside, a three way trade that could net us Prince and THEN Rubio would be sweet, Otherwise by just picking Rubio, IMO, we have given up on the chances of winning with YAO era. I don't know who we have on our team to catch his(Rubio) passes, Yao?? Yeah right. So it would be a few years wait for him to learn shooting and settle, .................................................,use your imagination to figure the rest.
Imagine if the tmac for hamilton/prince went down. We get a starting player who can drive and shoot, and another one who can shoot the 3, drive, and is always in contention for dpoy...plus he is also detroits "kobe stopper"(prince). 3 kobe stoppers on our roster? I dont see how we cant get any better defensively if this trade went though. Plus look at the depth Starters: Yao Scola Hamilton Artest Brooks Bench: Battier Prince Lowry Landry Hayes Dorsey White Budinger Taylor
Rudy Gay has more opportunity to reach his potential on a bad team than on a good team where he has to share the ball. This actually gives them the opportunity to make their mark in the league. Chris Paul(New Orleans), Kevin Garnett(Timberwolves), Elton Brand(Bulls and Clippers) had more free reign. They became the Go-To-Player in their first year, so they got to handle the ball all the time.
also regarding the #8 pick for battier, memphis took a lengthy Stromile Swift contract off of our hands which has given us additional flexibility.
You cant say that for any draft, maybe most, maybe half, but even some top 3 picks in the last decade aren't worth more than Battier. And my comment has nothing to do with Gay's value or comparison to shane, so before people jump at my statement, i'm talking about the poster's specific comment.
i can't believe no one has mentioned, and rarely has mentioned, one of the biggest reasons why they wanted shane so badly and didn't think gay was worth trading for. This was around the time when LA was winning rings with the big 2 and nothing but role players. It was shaq and kobe scoring, then there was a drop to fisher, who scored like 10 a game, and they were getting it done this way. They were trying to build a similar team because they assumed tmac would still healthy and continue to be tmac, and that Yao would reach superstar status, therefore being our big 2 and shane being that derek fisher type to go along with the other role players. I dont think it's ever been confirmed that shane was brought in to be the "third scorer" like some fans claim. Technically he would have been the third highest scorer on the team, maybe even third best, but not the third scorer, like part of a trio of scorers like manu, td, and tony, or tmac, yao, and ron.........i think what created that view is that this was around the time that other teams started acquiring that third scorer and soon after that it was no longer enough to just have a big 2, so fans saw shane as our third guy, I dont think Morey saw that trend coming, at least not as quickly as it spread around the league. That was the main "mistake" he made, followed by believing Yao would blow up and tmac and Yao would be comparable to Shaq and kobe, or even shaq and wade.
Shane was the glue guy we needed for what exactly? Getting kicked outta the first round a few more years??? You've gotta be kidding me.
yes, clearly that was because of shane. you saw it this year with cleveland/orlando, why you dont want the rockets to play the jazz. there are teams you just dont match up with. rudy gay obviously would have changed everything about that matchup, right? he would have guarded okur, wait, no. he could have guarded deron, wait, he cant do that either. he could have guarded a lamp post? actually, probably not.
That's true RV6 the trade was made b4 Yao was going down with broken bones every year and Mac's heart condition wasn't such a big question. I love what Shane brings to the Rockets I watched him lead this team and I watched him put on a defensive clinic against Kobe in this years playoffs. If the Magic want Shane now in a trade they must have watched the Rockets Lakers series pretty closely as well because if they had anyone half of what Battier is that series would have been much closer than 4-1. I feel Shane is the heart and soul of this Rockets team even with Yao and Ron on the floor. His type of play has become the identity of this Rockets team. Now if we traded him for Rudy I'd say our talent level would be improved but we might be searching once again for our leader and identity. I felt at the time of the trade that we just got robbed, but now I feel differently about the trade.
As far as Battier being a 'winner' and Gay a 'loser,' I'll say this. I don't think Rudy Gay is incapable of playing on a team that wins. I do think Battier is incapable of being a 20ppg guy with a FG% as good as Gay's has been the last two years.
No ones blaming Shane for that FYI. Wasn't he brought here to bring us some rings? Um, so that's a grand total of..... ZERO! and counting. Of coure he would've changed those match ups. The main way would have been him being able to make them guard HIM. Yes Shane is a great defender but come on dude to actually have teams doubling off of you and you being the starting SF on a "Championship Contending Team" is ludicirous. Just because Rudy doesn't play defense in Memphis doesn't mean we would have never been able to learn to play D. If you look at the whole Grizz team, who actually DOES play at least mediocre D??? Gay had raw talent and he could and still can learn some defense so for everyone saying that he can't or didn't play defense who knows if he joined a team with a coach that put time in to teaching D to the players, obviously Memphis doesn't.
