Of course no one wants Shaq away from the basket on either end of the court if he is on your team. Ideally, he should stay close to the basket for high percentage shots and to clog the land. If only basketball was that simple. Unfortunately, sometimes you are forced to move Shaq out of the paint and towards the perimeter, because BOTH bigs can shoot. Look at the old Kings and the Jazz from a couple of years ago. For the Kings it was Miller and Webber and for Jazz it was Okur and Boozer. Both of these players have good mid range games. Shaq would have no choice but to go out and defend rather than letting them get wide open looks. OK... so we agree here. I know that DM will eventually find a star, it is simply a matter of the opportunity unfolding. Only haters and idiots think that DM is not doing good. These are the same posters who also believe stars grow on trees like apples and that DM should be able to find one at any given time and simply does not want to. Howard and Paul have no reason at all for coming to Houston. Howard may consider us due to Hakeem being from here and the fact that Carroll is here as well, but Paul seems like he will either stay in NOLA or bolt for NYC. There is no way we can sign a coach like Pops or Sloan, especially if we began rebuilding. Our best chance is to sign an up and coming coach and have him work with whatever new roster we end up with and mold it to his vision.
Paul won't end up in NY, they simply don't have enough space, nor will theyr eally be capable of even creating the space if Melo goes there. The Miami trio all did it at once and took salary cuts to make it work, by the time Paul if a FA, both Amare and Melo will be on 5m or so more than any of those Miami players signed for.
And if Melo and Paul both agree privately to take a paycut? It can work if the players are willing to make sacrifices. I would think they would if it meant a shot at a dynasty.
Whilst the NBA owns the NOH, there's absolutely no way they'd get away with that sort of tampering, or all hell would break loose, again Miami could do it because ALL the players were out of contract.
