How do you know that? For years Drexler was going to the playoffs and going to the Finals and the Bulls did little of nothing. Then the Bulls started winning championships and people started saying that Jordan was better then Drexler. I'd say that McDyess is on the level with Dirk and Garnett. The only reason people say he isn't on their level is that McDyess hasn't had a chance to be on a stable organization.
Sorry, I always love every aelliott post, but in this thread I have to disagree. I, personally, would rather take Ming with the pick than have McDyess. McDyess is a great player, but for me, he is not in the same league as Garnett, Duncan or Nowitzki. While it might be argued that McDyess is worth as much as or more than the No. 1 pick, I definitely think Griffin has shown enough promise that we should not trade him for a No. 5 pick(provided that we believe he can get his fg % up). Yes, getting rid of Mo's contract might be a good thing - but perhaps it might not be one. If anything, I think Mo Taylor, Rice, No. 15, our second rounder and our second rounder next year for McDyess would be fair. You can say they would laugh at us, but after all, they did the Howard for Van Exel and LaFrentz trade. Then Griffin should play SF and we would have PG Francis SG Mobley SF Griffin PF McDyess C Ming Not too bad. (By the way, aelliott, just a sidenote, it's GriffIn.)
No way I would do this trade if we have to throw in Griff. I would love to have Dice, but we're talking about the #1 pick, people! To toss in Griff for this deal is nuts (IMHO!).
I'm sure Denver is glad that you're not their GM. Where to begin? First Denver is a terrible team. The basically need help at every position. The houston trade would get them: Jason Williams: The biggest "sure-thing" in the draft as there has been in years. A better pro-prospect than either davis or miller had been coming out of college. Plus is younger and will cost MUCH less. Eddie Griffin: If he was in the draft this year, would be a top-3 pick maybe even the first pick in the draft. Only 19yrs old now and still on the rookie pay scale for 3 more years. Taylor: Lost of question mark comes off an injuy but, more than likely, will still be an above average scoring forward. Big contract, but still very young (24) with improvements to come. Could be a nice role starter for a championship caliber team. OR Davis/Miller: both all-star caliber points, somewhere in the middle of the top ten in the league. In mid-20's about to reach their primes, and in both in a contract year. Neither is assured of wanting to resign with denver, and if they do it will take the max to do it. (Consider denver is gonig to have to do a massive rebuilding project and is years away from the playoffs, jwill looks more attractive to me.) Bulter: Nice prospect. Will by most accounts be a solid player in the league for years to come. Is however, 3 years older than griffin already. Yeah denver would laugh at this trade proposal. Laugh all the way to the bank at how stupid we would be. That said, no way houston does this trade. Rebuilding is aways tough and aways takes tremendous luck. In getting griffin and the #1(ming) this year, houston had tremendous luck and now we just need patience. You might gut the rebuilding process for a garnett(might!), but you don't gut it for mcdyess.
The Rockets would be out of their mind to make that idiotic trade. 1.) McDyess is not a franchsie type player. You can compare him to KG but he is not even in the same class. Those statistics that Rocks Millenium compiled did not include assists (how convenient) which wouldve showed that Garnett wouldve averaged more assists than the rest of our starting 4 COMBINED save Francis. Garnett is a very good passer and is amuch more fluid player than McDyess. 2.) McDyess is no iron man. In the past 5 years he's only played 70+ games twice. He was injured in 98/99, missed 12 games in 00/01, and had to sit out almost the entire season due to that injury. McDyess' athleticism is his strength. 97-98 Pho 81 98-99 Den 50 99-00 Den 81 00-01 Den 70 01-02 Den 10 3.) Where would we be with McDyess and Butler. 1st Round and out? 2nd round and out? These days you need 2 tier 1 superstars to carry you to a championship. McDyess is NOT a tier 1 superstar. I'd rather keep Griffin and his 7 years of less wear and tear than to be a good playoff team with no shot in hell of winning a championship.
Originally posted by RIET The Rockets would be out of their mind to make that idiotic trade. 1.) McDyess is not a franchsie type player. You can compare him to KG but he is not even in the same class. Those statistics that Rocks Millenium compiled did not include assists (how convenient) which wouldve showed that Garnett wouldve averaged more assists than the rest of our starting 4 COMBINED save Francis. Garnett is a very good passer and is amuch more fluid player than McDyess. He's probably more of a franchise talent than anyone in this draft will be in the next 5 years. McDyess is entering his prime right now and had his best season ever prior to the injury, getting 21pts/12rebs a game. I think it's safe to say the only possible 20/10 guy in this draft is Ming, and that's definitely no sure thing. 2.) McDyess is no iron man. In the past 5 years he's only played 70+ games twice. He was injured in 98/99, missed 12 games in 00/01, and had to sit out almost the entire season due to that injury. McDyess' athleticism is his strength. 97-98 Pho 81 98-99 Den 50 99-00 Den 81 00-01 Den 70 01-02 Den 10 98-99 was the strike year so he couldn't possibly play 70 games. He's basically had one injury in his career. There have been a lot of great players, HOF'ers who've had a serious injury at some point in their career. 3.) Where would we be with McDyess and Butler. 1st Round and out? 2nd round and out? These days you need 2 tier 1 superstars to carry you to a championship. McDyess is NOT a tier 1 superstar. Actually these days you don't beat the Lakers with 2 tier 1 superstars because they have two of the top 3/4 players in the league. You beat them with 4/5 really good players on the floor at one time with your best players at their weakest positions which are point guard (Francis), power forward (McDyess), and small forward (Butler). See the Kings. Incidentally, the combo that wins you a title today isn't necessarily what wins you a title tomorrow so I don't know how important that stuff is. Sometimes it's Pistons style depth, sometimes it's a Lakers 2 star system, and sometimes it's the Rockets chuck it to Dream and spot up. I'd rather keep Griffin and his 7 years of less wear and tear than to be a good playoff team with no shot in hell of winning a championship. A McDyess in the hand is worth two Griffins in the bush? LOL
Like I said before. McDyess is not on the same level, nor has he ever been on the same level that Garnett is on now. And most likely he probably never will be. Garnett obvioulsy had a lot more potential to fill entering the NBA. Antonio's improvement has paled in comparison to Garnett's over the years. In fact, I don't even think Dice will ever be able to produce the same numbers he did in the 2000-2001 season. I don't think its that far-fetched to believe Dice has lost some athleticism after having knee surgery, and his athleticism was the best thing he had going for him. Trading a perfectly good, young prospect for someone who is coming off a serious injury? No way! And I don't care what anyone says. If you only play ten games during a season you had a serious injury. And yes, it probably won't affect his game, but it might. That's too big of a risk for me to trade a prospect like Eddie Griffin. If Dice had a chance to prove himself in the regular season after the injury, I wouldn't be quite as much against this trade, but he hasn't. I'm not going to say that Dice is damaged goods, because we really don't know yet. And that's exactly it...WE DON'T KNOW! And I don't think some lousy physical the Rockets would give could really prove that he's A-okay. I would want to see if he can still produce like he did the season before he got injured, and unfortunately that's not something the Rockets would be able to foresee if they made this trade.
"2.) McDyess is no iron man. In the past 5 years he's only played 70+ games twice. He was injured in 98/99, missed 12 games in 00/01, and had to sit out almost the entire season due to that injury. McDyess' athleticism is his strength. 97-98 Pho 81 98-99 Den 50 99-00 Den 81 00-01 Den 70 01-02 Den 10 " What a load of garbage! 98-99 was the strike-shortened year, he played EVERY GAME that year. He actually had 70+ games thrice the past five years(you have to count 70, too), 5 times in his career (strike shortened year made it impossible for him to get it, so it might as well be 6). He missed a grand total of 2 games the past 5 years that didn't have anything to do with the knee injury. He had missed a grand total of 28 games his whole career before his knee injury (6 seasons--4.5 per year). If I remember correctly, he was hurt at the tail end of 00-01. So yes, he was an iron man before his injury.
<i> 1.) McDyess is not a franchsie type player. You can compare him to KG but he is not even in the same class. Those statistics that Rocks Millenium compiled did not include assists (how convenient) which wouldve showed that Garnett wouldve averaged more assists than the rest of our starting 4 COMBINED save Francis. Garnett is a very good passer and is amuch more fluid player than McDyess. </i> I agree that Garnett is a better player than McDyess. I've never said othewise, but guess what, we're not going to get Garnett, Kobe, Shaq or Duncan for the #1 pick. Yao Ming isn't going to be a Shaq, Kobe, Garnett, etc.. So either way you don't get a top 5 player with the pick. <i> 2.) McDyess is no iron man. In the past 5 years he's only played 70+ games twice. He was injured in 98/99, missed 12 games in 00/01, and had to sit out almost the entire season due to that injury. McDyess' athleticism is his strength. 97-98 Pho 81 98-99 Den 50 99-00 Den 81 00-01 Den 70 01-02 Den 10 </i> Nice spin on those statistics. You might want to point out that '99 was the strike-shortened year and Denver played only 50 games. He played 81 of 82 games in 98, 50 of 50 in '99, 81 of 82 in '2000, 70 of 82 in '2001. So, prior to last season's injury he'd missed a total of 14 games in 4 years. Yeah, he sounds pretty brittle. </I> 3.) Where would we be with McDyess and Butler. 1st Round and out? 2nd round and out? </i> You might want to include Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, Kenny Thomas and the #15 pick into that equation. Supposedly the Rockets really like Butler. If that is a smokescreen, then they'd have lots of options with #5 and #15. They could go big at #5 with Tskitishvili or Wilcox and then come back for a SF at #15 (Jefferies or Nachbar). Or go SF at #5 (if they like Woods or Butler or Dunleavy slides to 5) and then go big at #15 (Marcus, Ely, Stoudamier). <i> These days you need 2 tier 1 superstars to carry you to a championship. McDyess is NOT a tier 1 superstar. </i> I guess that depends on how you are defining a tier 1 superstar. To me the term superstar gets used way too much. Other than the Lakers, nobody truely has two superstars on the same team. The only real superstars in the league are Shaq, Kobe, Duncan, Garnett and maybe Webber,Iverson or Kidd. There's some other good players such as Nowitzki, Pierce, R. Wallace, but they're aren't in the same class as those other guys. If you really believe that you have to have two superstars on a team, then you're going to be disappointed by this draft no matter what happens. We're not going to end up with a top 5 player by either keeping the pick or trading it.
He was on a stable organization w/Jason Kidd as his point, but instead decided to go to Denver. I don't know if we should want anyone that stupid.
If the Nugz trade Andre Miller for McDyess they would also have to take on Zydrunas Illgauskas @ $12.4m plus Wesley Person @ $7m to match salaries. They get Miller + Zman + Person and keep #5 (Wilcox?) for Dice. So in your opinion, this is better than than Jay Williams (or Ming) + KT + Rice + choice of MoT/Cato? I'd say that was a close call. Especially given that they will have to Max Miller and Jay Williams will be cheap for 4 years. But I do see your point...now if only Cleveland does.
Huh? People were actually saying that Drexler was better than Jordan for the first six years of their career? Can someone else verify this because that seem's completely ridiculous to me. There might have been a few that thought that, but I have a very hard time believing that the majority of people did. Statwise, Jordan dominated Drexler throughout his entire career. Jordan's production was always the same, the pieces just all fell into place, which is when they started winning championships. And you're right. I don't know that for sure, just like you don't know how Dice will bounce back from his injury, or just like you don't know if Eddie Griffin will end up being a better player than McDyess. After seven years, its hard to believe Antonio's going to get a whole lot better. He's going to somehow have to develop a lot of basketball skills to be as good as Garnett and Nowitzki, and I don't see Antonio as being THAT skilled of a basketball player. He relies more on athleticism than skill.
Z's contract is larger than McDyess's contract. It would be something like McDyess+McCloud for Person+Miller+Hill. The Nuggets would not take on Z's 3 year, 12 million dollar per contract. To DCkid: A man that gets 20/10 on athleticism is better than a man that gets 7/7 with athleticism. That said, trading Griffin in a package to Denver would be absolutely stupid. Griffin is about 7 years younger than him.
Your right. I was looking at the wrong line on my spreadsheet and quoted the contract for Juwan Howard. Unless the Nugz are salivating for Ming (they have Bateer) or think more highly of Cato than the rest of us, Cleveland (if they'd do it) appears to be a better value. OK, I'm convinced...we can't get Dice so let's keep Eddie.
<<i>Jason Williams: The biggest "sure-thing" in the draft as there has been in years. A better pro-prospect than either davis or miller had been coming out of college. Plus is younger and will cost MUCH less. </i> Jay Williams isn't a sure thing, He's got to make the switch to PG in the NBA. It's not a given that he will be a great PG. If he can't play PG, then he's an undersized 2 guard and he's not Allen Iverson. Sure, Williams himself will cost MUCH less than a veteran, but how does making this trade save Denver substantial money overall? They'd have to take back at least 85% of McDyess' money, so they're still taking back at least $10.2M in salary. Now factor in that the salary of the #1 pick would be just over $1M higher than the salary of the #5 pick. So, now Denver's salary savings are less than $1M. So, you are correct that Williams would be making less money, but overall Denver pretty much spends the same amount. Of course, this is pretty insignificant because Denver is going to have a ton of cap space in '03. <i> Eddie Griffin: If he was in the draft this year, would be a top-3 pick maybe even the first pick in the draft. Only 19yrs old now and still on the rookie pay scale for 3 more years. </i> Let me get this straight. Griffin went #7 in a fairly weak draft last year, but he's going to go top 3 in a pretty strong draft this year? Uh..no. Griffin is a nice player with great potential, but he's got to improve in several major areas before you can start talking about him as a star. <i> Taylor: Lost of question mark comes off an injuy but, more than likely, will still be an above average scoring forward. Big contract, but still very young (24) with improvements to come. Could be a nice role starter for a championship caliber team. </i> He is coming off an injury and he will more than likely be an average scoring forward (12 to 14 per game), he will still play no defense,he still won't rebound and he's way overpaid for what he brings. Why do you assume that Taylor will improve? He hasn't really improved much since he's been in the NBA. You've mentioned salary as a consideration for Denver a couple of times. Do you think that they would be anxious to take on a big money long term deal for a 300lb underachieving PF coming off a blown achilles? <i> Davis/Miller: both all-star caliber points, somewhere in the middle of the top ten in the league. In mid-20's about to reach their primes, and in both in a contract year. Neither is assured of wanting to resign with denver, and if they do it will take the max to do it. (Consider denver is gonig to have to do a massive rebuilding project and is years away from the playoffs, jwill looks more attractive to me.) </i> If Denver were to make a deal for one of these guys, they'd have to first have to reach an agreement on an extention. As I said above, why would Denver care if they had to pay them the max? If they are trading for them, then they are giving away similary salary. This just redistributes that money to different players. The other reason to favor one of these two is that they are proven NBA commodities. Jay Williams has potential, but he's not a lock to be a great NBA point guard. <i> That said, no way houston does this trade. Rebuilding is aways tough and aways takes tremendous luck. In getting griffin and the #1(ming) this year, houston had tremendous luck and now we just need patience. You might gut the rebuilding process for a garnett(might!), but you don't gut it for mcdyess. </i> You're not gutting the team. You have exactly the same team as you did last year. All you are exchanging is McDyess and #5 for #1 and Griffin and you get rid of a bad contract in the process. To be fair, you can't call ending up with Francis, Mobley, an All-Star PF and the #5 and #15 pick "gutting the team". McDyess is a known quantity, who is still young and fills alot of our needs along with a player with very good potential (#5). What you are exchanging it for a couple of good young players with potential. The reason that the Rockets would do a deal like this is to get rid of some of the uncertainty. Right now, we can become a contender if Yao turns out to be a good/great center, if Griffin improves alot and if we can get a good SF at #15. Can Griffin develop any ballhandling skills? Can he develop a low post game? Can Yao develop a low post game? Can Yao stay in the game without getting into foul trouble? Can Taylor learn to rebound? Can Yao and Eddie get strong enough to bang inside? The answer to all of these is "yes, it's possible". But, that being said, none of those are sure things. Going with a proven commodity, removes some of those questions. I do agree that there's no way Houston does this deal, but for different reasons. Yao brings too much media attention and marketing opportunities for the Rockets to pass up. Every team's fan's love their young players and expect them to develop. That's great, but it doesn't always happen. We can project Griffin as an annual All-Star and top player, but you know what? Fans of every other team think the same way about their players. Fans in chicago think that Curry and Chandler are going to be great. Fans in Vancouver think the same of Gasol and Battier. GS fans think Richardson is the next greate shooting guard. The reason we would consider McDyess is because he is a know quantity and he gives us a low post presence. Nobody we draft with #1 or #15 will give us that.
I don't get it. Are you suggesting that Griffin will suddenly be on the level of McDyess in a year? Or are you suggesting that we sign McDyess when his contract is up? As aelliot told you, we wouldn't be able to sign him as we would have no cap space. Now, if you are suggesting the former, then that is a lot of assumptions to make. First of all, you are assuming Griffin will be able to put on the mass that McDyess has (there is a 25 pound difference...most of it muscle mass). That is highly possible if Griffin works hard. Secondly, it is assuming that Griffin develops the inside quickness and good post moves that McDyess has. This is also possible, but far from a given. I love Griffin too, and I think he will be a very good player, but you have to face the possibility that he will never develop like we all want him to. If he never figures out how to score in the post outside of his little turn around jumper, he will never come close to the kind of player that McDyess is right now.
