It happens.. frustrating going back and forth with people that don't see eye-to-eye, as we both know. As far as your Lowry charting, I do appreciate the time you spent on it but I feel it's incomplete without a full game recap of him (which I'm not expecting you to do, a lot of work for a silly post). For instance, at the end of the game we weren't running set plays or motion offense. Lowry ran down the clock, went off Scola's pick, got double-teamed and immediately found Scola wide open for the 15-footer (which has been almost automatic for Luis this year). Next play down, Lowry goes off the screen and scores + the foul (missed the FT though). You mentioned that the time past the 8-minute mark was irrelevant.. I don't really think so. The starting unit started the second half, as well as finished the game for us. Those should all be a part of any analysis that's done. If Brooks shot poorly in the first eight minutes but was great from then on, I think people would object to me calling anything past the 8 minute mark insigifnicant. As far as the reason you did the logging, to show that our offense doesn't lean on a PG to create shots for us every time down the floor: why would this lead you to believe that Lowry shouldn't be starting with them? He's able to push the ball in transition, but when he doesn't, the Rockets run their high-post offense. Lowry is knocking down 39% of his three-pointers this year, so it's not like we're playing 4 on 5 running the high post offensive set. If he was shooting his usual 29-30%, you'd have a strong point: but until he reverts to that, I can't really just assume it. All summer we heard about him working out and how much better he looked in summer games (I believe @DraftExpress had tweeted about him a few times). Lowry is an active part of the offense and contributing, whether that be creating off pick and rolls or running the high post offense. But at the same time, he's also contributing to the game via rebounding (especially offensive), getting out in transition and defending better than his counterpart would be. Brooks is clearly the better shooter.. you won't get any argument for me. But the main reason for having Brooks starting over Lowry to me was that Lowry's poor shooting would hurt us when teams took away our other offensive options. It was a valid criticism... until Lowry shot lights out this year. It still might be -- but I don't really want to go away from Kyle right now when he's in such a groove offensively and the team is 9-3 in the month of December. We haven't even been a complete team in December -- we've missed Brooks' 3PT shooting and ability to get off his own shot. He should make us an even better team.. but I'm just not ready to hand him his starting spot back just yet.
This I can get behind, and I've been defending Aaron for what seems like ages now. I think with the way Lowry is playing it makes it tougher for Brooks to get the job back. I know this, with a healthy Aaron Brooks we might even see a BETTER Kyle Lowry. You gotta think those 40ish minute nights were killing him. Probably a reason it took so long for him to get back to form.
Thankfully most fans agree we should keep both of them. At least we are only debating what role they should play as opposed to whether or not to keep one of them. This shows that no matter what, at least supporters of each side still value Brooks and appreciate his scoring contributions.
^Ehhh thats questionable. Lots of Lowry supporters are dying to get Brooks traded (not saying you are, but there are tons). When you hear things like "trade Brooks for Gallinari" it gets tiresome.
i'd be fine with Brooks if he didn't dribble so much. he can't make the post entry passes Lowry can make, or the pick and roll passes. he dribbles way too much at the top of the arc to set something up. i say we stick with lowry.
There are fans and there are fanboys. I would trade either Lowry or Brooks in a heartbeat if it got us Griffin or Melo for instance. I won't trade either for the sake of trading them though. That is just flat out r****ded.
Once again, Scola is not a more efficient scorer than Brooks. Why keep lying like that? People that support only Lowry and hate Brooks (not saying this is you) spout this lie all the time and it's really frustrating. Another lie is that Lowry makes Scola more efficient than Brooks does/did. It's simply not true. Scola was more efficient last year when Brooks started all year than he is this year, and even more efficient than that the year before (probably b/c of Yao). In fact, this is Scola's LEAST efficient year scoring the ball since he's been in the NBA. Another lie that keeps getting thrown around.
No doubt there are some who at least appear to want one to do better than the other for reasons unknown. All I care about is Rocket wins. Both guys contribute to that. Pot shot: How many wins in December would the Rockets have with Lowry shooting his career averages from the field??? I would venture to guess a couple less. Of course, I can't compare that to say if Brooks only averaged his career 5 APG instead of 7 like he was to start the year because when shots don't go down the next play may be different. It's a whole space-time continuum thing that makes even guessing what would have happened the next play impossible much less the entire game.
Those are simply your opinions that you prefer to attempt to portray as fact. Scola has higher FG, TS, and Per than Brooks. All statistical evidence points to Scola as being more "efficient" than Brooks. You like to argue about 3PT% and how Scola doesn't take any. My answer is who the **** cares? Points are points and when his usage increased this year, he got more points with minimal decline in efficiency. This doesn't mean that Brooks isn't as good a shooter or that he should stop shooting 3's, it just means Scola is more efficient at scoring. Lowry makes the entire team offense flow more efficiently. He has a high A/TO ratio and gets others involved, which helps establish their individual rhythm. On the other end, Lowry can be counted on for at least a solid attempt at D, while AB gets burned despite his speed. AB dominates the ball until he scores or is forced to give it up. Besides, there are plenty of successful passing PG's who are not great shooters. How many ball dominating, pure shooting PG's do you see successful?
