Team ball trumps any other ball all day long. Keep your superstars and give us the high bball IQ second round talent that understands how to play offense, defense, and hard every night.
NBA marketing is what has identified each team with its best player, its superstar, the thinking being that people associated more with their hero and would want to root for an individual superstar, then they would want to root for a team concept, and that this would expand the popularity of the game, i.e. market share. This would be for expanding the popularity of the game to casual fans, and would be an embellishment that existing fans of the game of basketball wouldn't necessarily need. (This is seen in the GARM in the self declared conflict between TOFs vs Rocket fans). To support this marketing strategy (of hyping the superstars), the officiating is so weighted to create outcomes where fans can successfully celebrate their hero, their teams star player, their superstar, and this would need to happen especially at home games so fans would be satisfied with their ever increasing ticket price. Hence, we have the universal understanding and acknowledgment of, superstar calls. So, as far as I can see, rooting for the Rockets is much more than just liking a team. This team, is bucking the system. Playing w/o a superstar, we are fighting other teams, but also fighting against the tendency of the league to favor such superstars (who we have yet to have one named). It is totally predictable that someone on our team will get the superstar label, if we continue to achieve. Barkley just said that it will be either AB or Landry, or possibly both. I'm okay with the media labelling whoever they want our superstars, I just hope we don't "upgrade" our team, and ditch players like Hayes and Scola and Battier, only to find that we kill our chemistry and team concept and our rate of winning. I'd like to keep adding players who respect what we are doing here, and want to be a part of our "new approach". A word about what this "new approach" might be, because I'm not entirely clear on it myself, except to repeat something that AB said a while back -- 'that we play true TEAM basketball, we play the game the way it was meant to be played'. The genius of Morey's system, or the system we perceive him to have, exploits the difference between individual stats and team stats, having found that that a player (and this would include superstars) who plays for their individual stats can actually hurt the team, so entirely new categories of stats would need to be created in order to find the true value of a player to a team. What these categories are are largely still a mystery. To give an example: calculating how often a players team gets a rebound when that player is on the court, might be more valuable than how many rebounds that player gets, because it might include tiping the ball to a teammate, or proper boxing out, etc etc. Blah, blah, blah, this is getting silly long and cumbersome, but these are some of my thoughts. Bottom line being, that being a Rocket fan this year might be more about reclaiming the game of basketball from this ridiculously thick superstar marketing overlay, than it is about simply rooting for your home town team.
I love our team and the way we play. I just know, it is going to really tick me off come playoff time and the team with the superstars are getting all the calls from the refs. No way Joey Craford is going to give "the little Rockets that could" calls over the likes of Kobe, Mello, Duncan, etc... I don't see this team as over-achievers but that is how they are looked at nationally. I've seen some posters say they are comfortable with, and even prefer the underdog role, but at some point they need to "Give them some f***ing credit. I mean for real" as PJ has said. If not the refs are only going to get worse with their calls come playoff time...
That's why I only expect them to offer Yao Ming 4 years 48 mil. When the Yao team explains it to him I believe he will accept it!
Despite all of this newfound appreciation of team play, and how important it is to find guys who fit in the "team" concept as opposed to fit well as support pieces to a superstar, the GARM is still full of people who insist Shane Battier sucks, that he's a liability to his team and he isn't worth the attention he gets as an "intangibles" player or glue guy. And many of the ones saying that claim the Shane-supporters can't see it because we obviously don't know enough about basketball.
We ARE overachieving in a fiscal sense, as the article talks fiscal stuff. A mere $20 million salary team sittin in the thick of playoff contention against teams with players getting 60-70 million. So yeah, that's fiscally overachieving.
LOL the concept of "superstars" is just something the media made up. A superstar is essentially just a good player. Separating NBA players into "superstars" and "roleplayers" and saying you can win without superstars doesn't make sense, because to be a superstar you need to be a good player, and if your team doesn't have good players there's no way you're gonna win the championship. The article is talking about fiscal responsibility, and not about superstars. Basically they're guys like the Rockets who are tight-wad about spending the $$$ is the new trend, whereas the old trend was NY Knicks spending ways. Fiscally speaking, we're a playoff team despite only spending 30% of the cap. That's pretty much overachieving in a big way already.
No we're not. That pistons team didn't have a clear cut super star, but it had 4 guys who were on the cusp of being superstars: *Billups-is already a superstar IMHO: clutch, can run team, can shoot, play D *Prince-really good defender *Rasheed-in his prime, played his heart out resulting in superstar production *Ben Wallace-in his prime, really good defensive player *Rip Hamilton-in his prime also almost a superstar Awesome bench: *mike James *okur Anyway the point I'm saying is that pistons team is pretty much complete: it had a deep bench, good D,can post up, hit 3's at a decent clip. We're nothing like that. Landry and Scola are good but we need an elite post player, and despite how it looks we're 90% dependant on AB and Lowry because none of our starting wings can handle the ball. The only thing we have in common is we both play good D.
so what? maybe the rockets can play pretty good in regular season (at least so far is), but in playoff, it's totally different. Just call back what happen to rockets play against the Lakers in last year playoff. So, just back to the old statment: A team can not win a champ with a great player(superstar). It's also state the different between a good player and great play.
