I wonder what we could get for McGrady. His 19 million escalates to 21 and 23. If we trade him, we need an explosive scorer and a passer. I assume we do not get back an equal star, but two good players. Perhaps we could get Chicago to part with Hinrich at 10mil, Luol Deng at 4, and then a contract - like Joe Smith for 5. They could start Duhon like they've announced, and they still have all those young 4s, Gorden, Big Ben, and Nocioni. We would have an all-around talent in Deng, and an perfect pass-first fit for Yao. It would be his team. I could think of a package with Sacramento, with Artest plus X, but I don't know that they would want Tmac, esp if they are going to tank and re-build. I think it will be hard to get value for Tmac. It's likely we are stuck with him jacking up bad shots at a huge price. Coach has to get to him.
I read your whole post, and I respect everything you said, albeit I disagree with most of it. But this sentence is just completely wrong IMO. T-mac is a player who does what the coach tells him...he almost never goes outside of the gameplan (except for the occasional heat check pullup 3). In 04-05, when he first arrived, he tried his very best to adapt to what he thought JVG wanted him to do, and thus he was a sub-20PPG player, and the team was losing. JVG wanted him to turn it on, and from January on he was averaging over 28PPG. Last year he knew his back was bad, and before Yao's injury he was a 19PPG scorer. JVG wanted Yao as the focal point, T-Mac willfully accepted, and it worked until Yao went down, when JVG told T-Mac to be like the orlando T-Mac, and thus he averaged 30PPG during the stretch Yao was injured. When Yao came back he tried damn hard to get him as involved as possible, thus his scoring numbers went way down in March and assists went up. Then in the playoffs he basically did everything for the Rockets (in game 5 and 7 he literally did do EVERYTHING). Now, this year, Adelman wants to use him more off ball and less as a passer. Whether people think this is the best decision is not meaningful....T-Mac does what he is told, and has looked to score more often this year than last year (last year he had 3 total 40pt games...he has 3 40pt games already, and could have gone for 40+ on a few other occasions like against Nuggets and Nets). Instead of looking to pass, Adelman has used him a lot on the elbow in iso positions, great position to score. Then in recent games he has been used in a lot of pick and rolls, and outside of the Raptors game, his assist numbers have been up as of late. T-Mac is NOT a selfish player...he is a very willing passer and always plays within the confines of the offense. That is the biggest problem with the team...offensive gameplan and playcalling, not the superstars, who have carried the team through a ridiculously tough schedule thus far (yes, they had some bad losses, but they also beat Phx/LA/Utah away, SA at home, etc...).
Let me make this perfectly clear I AM NOT A YOF..I AM A ROCKETS..OF.... No one is blaming Tmac for global warming or the Housing Market collapse so stop with the dramatics! What a great deal of us has a problem with is inconsistency, his inconsistency to be more specific brought on mostly by ill advised shots and a constant desire to be a long range outside shooter! He is by far the most talented player on our team but if the shots aren't falling it's time to drive to the basket and keep driving to the basket or at the very least give the impression that you are willing to drive to the basket. By the way it's ironic that you mention that it is not Tmac's job to feed the ball to Yao after all isn't he the self appointed "Creator" on this team! Talk about actions speaking louder than words?
So what's the plan though? Ship T-Mac out of here but what we going to get for him that's going to be better than him?
I think Dallas is a good template to look at. Even though Dirk is as soft as they get. They put together a great team without a dominating super star. I admit that Yao isn't and won't ever becoming as dominating as we want him to be, but if we emulate the Mavs... I think we can put together a pretty successful team.
Two superstar definitely should work, but the problem is we don't have two superstars. We have one former superstar, and another want be. Superstars are the players who can dominating night in and night out, not just have a few good games together. At this time in his career, TMac is no longer capable of playing at the superstar level consistently. Yao is only a superstar on this BBS, and other Chinese sites. The guy's game just has too many flaws for him to dominating consistently, the opposite team can easily take him out of the game by exploring his flaws. The Jazz did it with Boozer, and the Warrior did it with Harrington; even the Suns exposed him with Kurt Thomas last year, and the Mavs with Howard as well. The Rockets/Yao can get away in the regular season, but come playoff time when teams get all the time they need to exam Yao's game, the Rockets will be exposed. BTW, the Lakers had ONE superstar in Shaq in their championship seasons, especially the first two. Bryant was not good enough to be called superstar then. Once Bryant reached that level, Shaq started decline, so the Lakers have never had TWO true superstars at the same time.
