After watching Pau Gasol these 1st 2 games maybe the Rockets lucked out ?

it was a lateral move. We don't have a good enough wing to couple him with to be a great team.

 

I don't think a lot of people are realizing that this move was not necessarily a move to just acquire Pau Gasol. This move added substantial cap flexibility that could have benefited the Rockets in multiple ways. Pau's contract wasn't as long as Scola's and if he didn't perform up to par then it allowed the Rockets to just wait until his contract expired and see what they could get on the open market. I also think that Morey believes that Lee is a more efficient player in McHale's system than Martin and viewed him as expendable. This also would have opened up playing time for some of the youth of the roster. Just like Kurt Vonnegut smoked cigarettes as his "classy" way of committing suicide, potentially Morey very well could have taken the route of "classy" tanking.

 

Yep well said, our roster is too crowded now, and has little hope for either development or winning.

DD

 

Actually, Pau Gasol's contract is so prohibitive, particularly after his trade kicker was factored in, with the move the Rockets were cashing in all of their flexibility to build a front line that could compete for the next 3 years. With Nene and Chuck likely combining for another $16M per year over four years, the Rockets would have a core of Gasol/Nene/Chuck/Lowry making $42M, making it all but impossible to sign another free agent above the mid-level, considering Lee will probably get a substantial raise next year, and Budinger the year after that.

That being said, I think it's clear that the team would have been much better; you'd have 3 bigs that could act as the high post passer, and the rotations would have been much cleaner; you could even run T-Will as the backup PG if Flynn couldn't cut it, and allow for Morris to run at the 3 full-time. The Rockets also could have kept Jeremy Lin on the roster as the 3rd PG, and we're not even talking about Jordan Hill yet.

Heck, Samuel Dalembert made a huge difference in the Rockets play against Orlando, with zero practice and zero conditioning; add in Pau/Nene/Chuck and take away Martin, and you're talking about a 15pt blowout for the good guys and everyone starts thinking about playoff matchups.

 

This is it right here. Specially if we had signed Nene and Chuck we would have been a strong playoff team at the very least, one player away from Championship contention. Or at worst, classy tanking indeed.

 

I was against the trade. Even if Nene followed, I'm glad it didn't happen.

The team would have regressed and been horrible to watch.

 

Dude Nene looked like a beast yesterday. Him and Pau would have been a great front court combo... But it's in the past, now we bank on our twin towers of Dalembert and Scola...

 

Yes and now we are stuck with Martin and Scola!

Brilliant!

Nene/Gasol/Chuck <Martin/Scola/Dragic!!!

Hell yeah!