never really loved j.lin but thought it was a good signing. Now with the howard acquisition I love it because it gives us something we didn't have in the yao/mcgrady era. Another developing player who can penetrate and score and create for others. hoping that this takes the pressure off him and allows him to truly thrive. although if he isn't practicing 1000 three pointers a day I will be dissapoint
Dwight is a better defender but worse/more limited offensive player than Yao. Harden is not as offensively skilled/talented as TMac but the nature of his game is more efficient. We're going to surround them with shooters and play as a SuperMagic from '09. Health is the key. TMac/Yao is probably the better duo on paper. In real life they were horribly injury plagued, of course. D12's only injury in his entire history is his back, and last year he came back a bit early and still played virtually the entire season. Harden has no injury history at all. At the very least the chances of BOTH of them being horribly injury plagued is very very low.
Tmac and Yao even while healthy weren't title contenders. We were 2nd tier and still the 3rd best team in Texas. Harden/Howard duo is significantly better imo
I thought we were contenders then. We choked on the the Jazz series in 07 but if we got through that hump, I truly believe we would have won the whole thing.
The main difference is Morey doing the building instead of CD. By the time Morey got to build around Yao/TMAC the injury issues were already upon us.
I was thinking that... but if Lin can continue to develop and get a deep jump shot his penetrating ability gives us some flexibility. Is there any chance Brooks will be resigned? I know they declined the option but hed be great next to Harden.
T-Mac and Yao were much better skill wise, but Howard and Harden are considerably younger, much less injury prone, and surround already by a much better support cast. Not to mention, this is MOREY we are talking about. He is not going to be handing out mad checks to idiots like Swift. When he got on board, he created a pretty good cast for Yao and Mac, but unfortunately it was too late by then. I trust in Morey and his ability to find good solid players for cheap. Getting a star was the problem and with Harden and Dwight, he proved he has the ability now to do both!
this. i think a good case study is beverly last year. I thought it was a cute move to replace douglas as a lin rester, but the rockets seem to have an awesome international scouting program (despite being headed by ben stein).
main dif between yao/mac harden/howard is that this team was hand picked by morey instead of dawson. morey is chess to dawson's checkers.
