last time houston went into lottery they got rudy gay for battier, but if this happens again, houston can try sign lebron, wade, or bosh and pick a decent big man
Interesting to see 37 wins but also the 9th spot in the West. It looks like he's really expecting a large gap between the haves and the have-nots.
it sucks but i have predicted all along that we will struggle to 30 wins. may not even touch it. no big man...too easy to attack the basket. barring a big man trade rockets are sitting ducks until yao or a legit scoring center/shot changer is back. i don't think mcgrady will make a whole season (and prob shouldn't with the type of season we will be having).
You mean like how he "forecasted" the Jazz to be the #1 seed last year? Or the Rockets to be the #1 seed two years ago?
Sounds about spot on, if you just go based on our players' talent level last year. The problem is that: 1. We have a TON of improvement to make with the increased minutes for everyone. Scola, Landry, Brooks, Battier, Ariza, and Lowry should ALL improve their PER's from last year out of sheer necessity. And 2. We may have lost a lot of height just from the absence of Yao, but Hollinger is underestimating the heights of just about every forward on our team. From DraftExpress.com's pre-draft measurements, we've got Ariza measured at 6'8.25, Landry at 6'8.5 (which was actually less than he was listed in college hence the bargain pick-up), Mensah-Bonsu at 6'9, and Battier at 6'9.5. Have Andersen as a rotating help defender in the paint and whatever we lose with Yao's size we will gain in speed and shotblocking. I fully expect heavy, built big-men like Dwight, Bynum, or Al Jefferson to wreck havok on us, but honestly how many true centers are left in the league? The majority of teams have already been using floor-spacing Euro-style big men for years, and now the Rockets get knocked so hard for following suit? I agree that paint defense will be our team's biggest weakness, but it's going to be such a detriment that it costs us that many wins. It will be a matchup-based issue, but there will also be added benefits on the offensive end to finally getting the chance to have a fully agile team from top-to-bottom for the first time since Hakeem. It's going to be fun to see what happens. This team without Yao or T-Mac still took half the remaining games from the World Champs remember.
Wrong. Hollinger has said it many times in the past. When players get more minutes they tend to improve their PER, in essence you can chalk it up to the "rhythm effect". I don't know how else to say it than to say that Hollinger has testified to this as a statistical finding--when you give players more and more consistent minutes, they will increase their efficiency. As an aside, the players' ages with the exceptions of Scola and Battier also provide statistical evidence that they are bound to keep improving.
We were the 2nd best team last year. I believe we were better than the nuggets. NO WAY we fall to 9th ! with a healthy McGrady and the rest of the squad we are a 7th seed, possibly a 6th seed if Mcgrady comes back half decent. We play awsome team defense and I believe Brooks will emerge as a stronger scorer to help the team make us for some of the lost offense. we have a strong backcourt in Lowry,Brooks, McGrady, Ariza. well... strong enough to be higher than 9th that's for sure. But guys... defensivley... we r really really good. That's why I believe we make the playoffs as a 7th seed.
He predicted 37 wins, but also said if McGrady shows up they could make the playoffs, which means much more than 37 wins. This also didn't take into account McCants or some other bench scoring option developing. He makes some strong points about frontcourt size. But I think with all the changes on the Rockets, no team's season will be harder to predict than the Rockets. I think the experts, knowing that under the circumstances, predicting this team is near impossible, are going to be conservative with their predictions. But I'd rather look at it this way: He says Artest-Ariza is a wash, so if you take into account that this is the team that gave the Lakers a run for their money in the playoffs, and that we're adding McGrady to that team, and that the Rockets have so many young, developing players who will have a chance to break out, it's easy to think they'll do better than 37 wins.
Hayes has an incredible ability to handle really big guys. Remember as long as he could hold off the Laker bigs is as long as we could hang with the Lakers. It was exactly when he got into foul trouble we started falling apart. Just pray Dorsey has a break out season defensively and we will be better than fine this year.
You've got it completely backwards. More playing time doesn't lead to improved PER, improved PER leads to more playing time. It's that whole cause vs correlation thing. "When players commit more turnovers they tend to improve their PER." That's basically the same sort of argument as the one you're making.
