Back in December, the Rockets had to make a choice for who they wanted to keep for their last roster spot. For most teams, that choice shouldn't make or break your team. That's especially true for a team like the Rockets, who already had a very deep roster (if not in terms of elite talent, in terms of players who were capable of being immediate contributors in the rotation). But still you need to make the right choice, and Morey's choice was to take Adrien over Lin. Simplifying it down a bit, I think for 15th man you can go in one of 3 ways: (1) best player right now (2) "best fit" and favored by coaches (3) player with the most upside (e.g. best athlete, best raw talent) Not going with (1), you run the risk of another team picking him up and benefiting immediately, and that team being exactly the team you don't want to benefit. Not going with (2), you run the risk of having an imbalanced roster, possibly less chemistry, and possibly losing more games in the short term. Not going with (3), the player might get picked up by another team and develop into a stud a few years down the road. You may regret it in the long run. Surmising what the Rockets probably should have known in December: If it was (1), then the choice should have been Lin. If it was (2), then the choice was I think Adrien. If it was (3), then the choice was perhaps Greg Smith Morey went with (2), and it looks like a costly blunder since our nemesis on the East Coast is now taking full advantage of his services. In general, which strategy do you think makes the most sense for that 15th man?
Even if we kept lin, he would not have seen the floor. He would not play ahead of dragic and definitely not over lowry. The only reason adrien played was because we were/are weak at center. That is not the case with our pg position.
Oops. Lets try again. I think part of the reason we took Jeff Adrian was because 1) We had hopes of him turning into a Hayes type player. 2) He left Europe to join training camp. For a guy that can't score, he certainly shot alot of contested shots. We should have kept Lin or Smith...end of story.
Needs to be really good at bench cheerleading. Must be off the bench celebrating every time the Rockets make a big play.
Then Adrien is probably your man. Good point, Seven, about Adrien also leaving Europe to join training camp. There is probably a "human" element to this as well, especially if the player has a prior relationship with people on the staff already like in this case.
Pick the player who will have a performance that 100% of the NBA will never see coming, and who will also so happen to do it for a rival team whose pick we own and who is about to cut this very same player for Mike James a few days before. But in all seriousness, Adrien seemed to have been more than just best fit but also an immediate need that we are lacking. After the departure of Chuck Hayes (as a result of a veto'd deal) and the injury to Patterson. We are left with Scola, Hill and Thabeet. None of these three are capable of defending adequately (Hill improved recently but he was terrible coming into the training camp). It seemed more like Morey was aiming to acquire a Hayes-est player in order to compensate for our lack of defense in the front court.
Yeah, that's why I said "Simplifying it down a bit". Though, between Lin, Adrien, and Smith, was there a significant difference? I wasn't aware of that.
I thought Adrien showed he could play in this league in his last game. Don't resend keeping Adrien, would rather get rid of one of the 09 busts, but see that a reasonable deal was likely hard to make on short notice.
NY PG's were black holes before Lin. Not just replacement level bad, but in Schumphert's case, barely NCAA starter quality bad. As in, if you had to rank PG's in the world, NY's would have come out somewhere between 200 and 250. I'm just using all this as a foreword to the point, which is that Jeremy Lin or something like him was inevitable. The Knicks were never going to have this bad PG play for the duration of their season. They were going to get demonstrably better with a replacement-level PG at SOME point. It was just a matter of who and when. In Lin's case, he has proven to be better than replacement level, but not quite the upgrade that everyone's made him out to be because of this fact, because New York was going to make the jump from awful to mediocre eventually, and now instead of that they have an above average PG. As a half Asian, I have been spammed to high hell by all my mom of all people about basketball now. Jeremy Lin is not a good thing for the NBA; he is an incredible Godsend to the NBA for getting average people worked up about sports again. But as a Rocket fan and a hopefully more objective fan, I would say this. I am waiting for the following things to happen: 1. For Amare and Melo to come back and find some way to work a chemistry with Lin where they are each able to coexist without taking nearly as many shots as they used to. 2. For the schedule to get tougher (which it has a bit in the past two games to the Knicks' credit). 3. For teams to start taking away his driving lanes and forcing him to pass the ball in a manner that won't be a kickout to Steve Novak (good luck finding playing time when Melo's back Steve). 4. For the d'Antoni system of all-offense no-defense to be tested in situations where that mentality simply won't work anymore. Namely, the playoffs. Until then, it is way to early to proclaim anything about Jeremy Lin. He's probably got a multiple-year NBA career guaranteed for him now, my guess is five, solely on the back of his work during these last few starts. But what people are saying he's doing has never been done in the history of basketball, and unfortunately he's not going to be the one to break all the rules. So yes I would still have kept Smith or Adrien as a valuable big man over Lin. New York would simply have picked up another guard. Asian-American thing notwithstanding, this all could have happened to Ish Smith last year, and I would have taken the same position; we have Lowry and Dragic at point. It's our strongest spot. We're set. Stop worrying about bogarting players from other teams. It's unfair to the other players, and there's just no way to predict who in the NBA will be in need of what position at what time.
But was the fact that they already had three PGs under contract so Lin would not likely get playing time a factor in this?
I read a McHale quote somewhere after Adrien was waived that he'd love to get him back someday and how he really contributed to the chemistry and attitude.
We also had (and still have) 5 bigs under contract Dalembert, Scola, Hill, Patterson and Thabeet. In the end, I think the team probably viewed both Lin and Adrien as young players with some potential to be productive rotation guys and would have kept both if they could have. Remember there was a delay, lasting a couple days I think, between the initial media report of the Dalembert agreement and the actual official announcement. The team was probably exploring a roster-clearing trade that would have made sense, but didn't find one (probably could have traded, say, Flynn for an expiring contract or even a TPE, but that would have made little-sense contract/trade flexibility-wise). Turned out Lin is looking like something significantly better than a solid rotation player (his level of play might come back to earth yet, but who knows?) and the catalyst for a Knicks turnaround. However, I don't think anyone, even Lin himself, saw this coming. I mean, if Disney made a movie with this plot, critics would laugh at it as corny and implausible.
Think about this, if when the Knicks showed interest in Flynn, they went ahead & traded for him... Would Lin have played the minutes he has? Would we talking about Flynn-sanity? Just saying. I liked him when he was here, thought he had potential to be a scoring guard, that said the D'Antoni offense, injuries and his role in NY have played a part in this explosion. Perfect storm conditions. The same could've been said about Flynn if he was put in the same circumstances.
Simplifying is good, but in this case, the contracts were the PRIMARY consideration -- the big, all-encompassing factor -- regarding this choice. If Flynn had a non-guaranteed contract, I have no doubt we'd have kept Lin instead.
