This thread is painful for me to make but here goes. Our rotation is pretty clearly set: Brooks/Lowry Ariza Battier/Buddinger Scola/Landry Hayes/Andersen All the other folks are pretty much not ready to/can't contribute/are garbage .. Dorsey, Taylor, Cook, Pops. We have a gaaaping hole at SG. Deep down inside, I can't stand Tmac. He completely pissed me off last year. But some time has passed, and I root for the Rockets more than I boo Tmac. So.... its hard to say this but we need a SG badly. Nevermind, I can't bring myself to say it. But you get the idea.
I think when or if Mcgrady comes back, Budinger would be our backup SG, and Trevor would be starting SF. So our depth chart would look like this: Brooks / Lowry Mcgrady / Budinger Ariza / Battier Scola / Landry Hayes / Andersen Nice balance of offense and defense in both lineups.
I don't think the hole at SG is that gaping. You have 3 wings, and Lowry is strong enough to guard some opposing 2's as well, so we'll see him and Brooks on the floor together. That should be good enough to tide us over until McGrady returns. Nothing wrong with a 9-man rotation. I am worried with Ariza's inability to create good shots for himself in the half-court. The Rockets need to abandon "featuring" Ariza in the offense when the games count, if he continues to play as he has.
How do you not include tmac at the sg?? By now there's a better chance he will play than not, and early in the season too. And most of the guys you mentioned as "garbage" got their first PT tonight...chances are they won't crack the rotation, but we haven't seen enough of pops to close the door on him, maybe even cook..possbily dorsey....Dorsey is still raw, but he'd be better in running situations than chuck. We'll have to wait and see what the first team will be first.
McGrady doesn't make us a contender. If healthy, he just adds a few more wins and hurts our 2010 draft position. We're rebuilding, people.
I'm not sure how some people didn't realize he would struggle going from the 4th or 5th option on offense playing off of Kobe, Gasol, Odom and Bynum to suddenly becoming a "main weapon" for the Rockets and playing off of guys who are not exactly All Stars.
Not only that but after watching this team move the ball and run(!) I'm not interested in seeing Mr. Walk-the-ball-up-the-court come back and turn everything back into the "watch Tracy go 1 on 5" show. He is going to add some wins, hurt our draft position AND slow the growth and possibly sabotage the confidence of our young players.
How old is Yao....I agree we're trying to acquire younger pieces, but i don't believe we're in complete rebuilding mode. As long as we have Yao we're still going to be trying to win now and therefore won't completely start looking at a draft in that way. The front office is building this team with young guys who can be solid role guys now in hopes that they'll take on bigger roles once the Yao experiment is over. And if T-mac comes back as Tmac of old, the rockets' best move is still re-signing him.
I agree--we need a legit SG to score until Mcgrady comes back...if he comes back. We also need Brad Miller. That is all.
You can say that now, but when has it ever happened? Having Yao on your team means you can throw out the whole 'fastbreak' thing.
Tracy could definitely help us win some more games, but I hate to see him take the ball out of AB's hand for the majority of time. AB is developing fast into an all-star and playing as a spot-up shooter alongside Tracy doesn't help much with AB's confidence.
Think about why tMac had to play that way. He's rarely had teammates who can make plays and score, especially here in Houston. Yao was inconsistent when he was younger and once Yao started to be a threat consistently and in big ways our role guys were no longer the type that could produce offensively on their own. If we play faster then there's no reason why Tmac can't co-exist. It's going to be easier for him most of the time, either you pass to the open man or you are the open man, simple basketball. In the halfcourt he may still need to create some, but those situations won't be as numerous as in the past when we always played slowly..and now he's got guys like AB and Scola who can do their own thing almost every time, guys like Landry and Chase who can do it from game to game, and guys like Ariza, Hayes, andersen, and shane (which resemble the kind of role guys we use to have) who won't have as much offensive responsibility, but can still come true if put in the right situation.
I do expect Pops to make the team and see a few minutes in a limited role. Hopefully Tracy gets traded and he brings in someone with ability to get to the basket.
actually we are rebuilding. we dont have yao next year, and when we do get him back, its unrealistic to expect we will be able to "win now". and theres still a very VERY small chance that yao opts out, which we can only pray he does.
