I agree that his role should be changed but that doesnt mean he is any less valuable to the team. Playing with a traditional point guard sure does open up alot for the offense, and Ish's & Lowry's play on the defensive end sure could help. If I am Adelman I might experiment with a 6th man type of role when Brooks comes back for his injury and see how it goes but the starting job is still his to lose. If you trade Brooks then a 3rd PG should still be added to the team and an All-Star calliber player needs to be involved in the trade or Morey is not doing it. Right now, there just isnt alot of teams that would have an interest in Brooks even though he puts up all-star calliber numbers because of the depth of point guards in the league right now. Brooks is most likely here to stay at least until the trade deadline, but even then he still will most likely be the starter this year until he looks to move on for a bigger contract and role in the summer.
Good point. Ish looks good but as noted it was against the T-Puppies and while he looked good against the Spurs lets consider that the end result was still the same as the other Rox losses, Rox lose a close one. Ish is still a rookie and as we should remember with Brooks and Head rookies PG's are very streaky. Lets give Ish a few more times before we decide to start him over Brooks who has proven what he can do in the NBA.
We played well tonight due to our short rotation (we only gave 9 players significant minutes). I am little worried about what happens when both Brooks and Lowry come back, and we have Dampier joining the team too. We are going to continue having minute distribution problems. No way to build team chemistry...
I agree with having AB come off the bench going forward. I think the main problem with the team is that an AB / K-Mart backcourt simply doesn't work due to their combined lack of defense and similar scoring mentality. That also takes away touches from Yao for the limited minutes he is in the game. Having AB come off the bench would even out the scoring throughout the entire game because you would have K-Mart and Yao do the scoring when the starters are in and then have AB and C-Bud take up the scoring when they come off the bench. None of this is AB's fault. I really enjoy watching him play. However, it isn't always about starting the top 5 players on your team. The goal is to maximize chemistry, offensive flow, and team defense throughout the entire rotation. I think AB going to the bench would significantly improve the team's odds of doing that.
Could we have really obtained Collison in that trade? It was a 4 team deal, with the Hornets also moving Posey's contract as part of it. I wondered about it at the time and am not at all sure we could have pulled that off. Comparisons of Ismael to Rafer are unsurprising, but off base. Ish is much quicker than Rafer and a better passer, in my opinion. He's a better man defender, from the small sample size I've seen, with Rafer's defensive strength being team defense, something Smith isn't bad at, either. Where Alston has him beat, and it's certainly debateable, is his ability to score and shooting from behind the arc. I'd argue that Rafer's own opinion of his ability to score was far higher than the reality, and that he was incredibly streaky. As often as not, in my opinion, he cost us games by hoisting shots, when Smith would have been making the pass. Advantage Smith, again only from a small sample. (no way I want Rafer back, regardless!) Smith's ability to slice through traffic amongst the trees in a nano-second and still make the pass for the assist is pretty freakin' remarkable. AB simply isn't nearly as good at it, not as a point looking to get the ball to his teammates where they'll have success scoring. AB is good at it when he's trying to score, which is a great asset if that's what we expect him to be doing. The next few weeks are going to tell us a lot. Assuming we get Lowry back soon and healthy, we'll get a good sample of what he's like as a starting point guard. We'll get large doses of Ishmael against higher quality opposition to see what he can do on a consistent basis. And we'll get some answers. The ultimate answer just might be Aaron Brooks following up Most Improved Player with Sixth Man of the Year. Nice, thought provoking OP, Old Man Rock.
I disagree slightly with this part. I'm not sure Ish needs to be a dangerous shooter from beyond the arc, but he definitely needs to become a dangerous shooter from somewhere on the court to make a difference. If he is not a good 3 pt shooter but is hitting those dribble drives and shots in the paint that he is getting, then that is just as effective since it means his man cannot leave him and free roam on defense. But the fact that right now he isn't shooting well from outside or inside makes him candidate number 1,2 and 3 to double off of.
Look, Correlation does not equal causation. Fact 1: Brooks is out Fact 2: We won. By a lot. It doesn't mean those two are related. At all. We were playing the T-wolves, aka one of the most pathetic teams in the league. In fact, their team offense/defense is probably 2x more dysfunctional as ours now. Any other team would look good like that, and in fact guys like Martin, Yao and Scola would be highly expected to score at will against such lousy opponents, probably the reason why it looks like the team has chemistry. Brooks has indeed look lost out there at times. However (as I keep on saying) this is 100% the coaching's fault. Brooks doesn't have a retarted bball IQ, if he hasn't learned how to run the offense after 3 years then obviously the teacher's the one at fault.
That isn't the right question, though fortunately it's easy to answer. He is playing almost exactly the same as last year, though taking 3 fewer shots (partly due to missing half of the Spurs game): FG%: .432/.433, 3PT: .398/.393, APG: 5.3/5.4, TO: 2.8/2.4, rebounds: 2.7/2.2 The real question is "How do we maximize the talents (and minimize the liabilities) of Aaron Brooks?" As above, I say "play him with Yao" (his 3-point shooting and entry passes match up well with Yao, and he can create his own shot when Yao is denied) and "play Smith/Lowry with Scola/Martin" (both of whom require good passes to set them up and neither of whom kicks out frequently). The result is fewer minutes for AB and more for Lowry (and eventually Smith).
Funny how people keep forgetting how he gave Tony Parker hell when he was thrown in the game. He all but shut Parker down for the entire 4th quarter. Give props where they are due.
Fair enough. I should have said it was a good first question, but given that the answer is clearly "yes," we have to ask the follow-up question...
Without AB, everyone can get a tough, Scola is better and Battier is scoring lots, where is the thread of Battier? So far only two games, but our defense is much better, we will see in the next four or five games, and get much better idea.
Didn't Parker steal the ball from an unsuspecting Hayes and take it all the way for an uncontested layup? I guess you think Ish played bad defense on that play?
Ish played horrible vs. the Spurs he missed tons of shots.... this is one game against the Wolves... this is just ridiculous. Terrible thread.
THIS. Everyone disliked Rafer for his bad offense but he was a good defensive pg. Now we trade Rafer for a more potent offensive guard now everyone just in love with a rafer 2.0..lol Just crazy crazy crazy
And the former game against the Spurs? wasn't Rockets game instatnly improved after the forced leave of AB? And hey, I consider AB a pretty useful player, for a non- contending team or great for being a sparkplug from the bench.... But, you can't have your STARTING PG with so lousy D and so lousy Basketball IQ..... I'm not saying Ish is tha man....what I'm suggesting that if there's still trade value on Brooks, he should be traded ASAP....MIP award is still in memory... IF Morey collected a ton of assets....what good are the assets for if you can;t reallistically have a 12 men rotation or your future draft picks can't help right now? TRADE ASAP, what is the FO waiting for?
