If we have any reasonable opportunity to grab Miller, I'm wholeheartedly for it. He's been my top choice this summer for a PG, allowing Steve to move to the 2. As has been stated and IMO, his down year in LA was a product of the hopelessness that surrounds that organization. He wanted to be anywhere but LA, and it showed in his performance. I feel that his last 2 years in Cleveland are a better indication of who Andre Miller is as a player, so with that in mind, here are the stats. Per Game Stats for Andre's last 2 years in Cleveland: <table border=2 bordercolor="black" style="border-style: solid;"><tr bgcolor="gray"><td>PTS</td><td>AST</td><td>RBS</td><td>STL</td><td>TO</td><td>FG %</td><td>FT %</td><td>Shots</td><td>MIN</td></tr><tr><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">16</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;"><b>9.5</b></td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">4.5</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">1.5</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">3</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">45%</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">82%</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">12</td><td align="center" style="border: 0px;">36</td></tr></table> One observation I had from these stats is that if Andre Miller was ever going to be a PG with a shoot first mentality, he would have shown that in Cleveland. He had almost no supporting cast there, and yet he only averaged 12 shots a game. We all know that the last thing we need in Houston is another player who wants to shoot, so it would seem to me to be a good fit in that department. From an overall look at his stats, he seems to perform like a poor man's Jason Kidd. I had him on my fantasy team a couple of years ago and kept my eye on him throughout the year. He really impressed me with his ability to be a poised floor general for as young as he was. His passing ability was impressive and he had a good little jumper from the 17ft-and-in range. He seemed to know his limitations, seeing as did not shoot too often from 3-pt range, where he is somewhat weak. As far as I know, he's never been in any trouble off the court or in the locker room, so another plus there. I think he overwhelmingly satisfies our needs in a PG, so much so that he could easily win the comeback player of the year with us if they consider last season a big failure. He would be a wonderful piece in our quest for another championship, having a team first mindset.
Why would we want the 3rd best point gaurd from the 1999 draft class when we already have the best one?
I thought I read awhile back that Steve would most likely move to the 2 guard as long as we could get a servicable point guard. Has there been a change in that line of thinking since JVG arrived?
It's pretty descent stats,but the most interesting stats is the assist. Moving Wink to 2 spots he might drop 28 pts per game. that will be nice!!
The fact remains that even if we do get Miller, we'd have Steve at the 2 guarding players like Kobe and T-Mac, Pierce, etc. JVG likes D; Miller isn't too good on defense and JVG sure as hell doesn't want to see Stevie get torched for 40 every game.
I think that incident was due to the heat of battle between 2 highly competitive opponents. Magic and Issiaw(sp) were best of friends. They all but got into a fight during a finals game 1 year. I think Steve and Andre would get along just fine as team mates. I would also like to get Andre without giving up Cat. Steve, Andre and Cat would make a fine rotation for the 1 & 2 spots. However, Andre will probably go home to Utah!
andre miller is such an overrated player in the nba. dont get me wrong though, he is a good point guard but i wouldnt trade mobley for him.
So if the guy averages the lowests assists per year since his rookie season and is labeled ineffective yet that is still 1/2 a game more than Steve then what does that make Steve?
It makes him a guy with the nearly the same assists who goes for 22 a game and who who can drop 35 on you any given night who is nearly impossible to stop going to the hole with a knack for hitting clutch three's late in games and who is, inch for inch, among the best rebounders in the game. But other than that they were almost the same this year.
I don't get the defense argument either. Mobley isn't a particularly good defender either (though not as bad as Steve). They're both short for a 2 and can get muscled in the paint. The key is to put a good defense 3 (Posey) on the other guys best 2 or 3. Few teams have a great 2 and 3 so we shouldn't have to worry about that. EG's development could help greatly here as well. Basically we would go from a bad defensive backcourt to a slightly worse defensive backcourt. However, we'd go from a bad distributing backcourt to a very good distributing backcourt. Imagine Steve AND Miller throwing dunks to Yao and Cato or running the court with Posey. Sounds too good to pass up to me. Too bad LA wouldn't do the trade (don't think for a second that the Rockets wouldn't).
So if Steve is such a great scorer and rebounder (which you have listed as his best attributes) then why not try to move him to a position that best utilizes those skills and leave some of the monotonous PG duties to someone else? Why not increase the frequency of those 35 point nights by moving a shot-happy SG for a pass friendly PG? Why not get him inside more where his rebounding can be better utilized? I like Cat and I like Steve, I just don't think they're as effective together as they would be apart. Redundancy in many areas on the offensive end.
1. Because he's the best point guard the Rockets have 2. Andre Miller is not coming to the Rockets 3. This debate has been had a thousand times over on this board and accomplishes nothing.
I think today already took care of it for me. But, I'd say the biggest reason for his performance is that he played for the Clippers and that that team was unusually horrendous because of the FA uncertainty that half the team faced. With so many players putting their own contracts above the team's welfare, they couldn't play as a cohesive unit, which is especially damaging for a team-oriented, pass-first point guard like Miller. Miller wasn't the only player to play worse in '03 than in '02. The Clippers as a whole scored 1.9 ppg less than the year before and allowed opponents to score 1.8 ppg more. The Clips FG% went down 0.8%; 3P% went down 2.5%. Offensive rebounds were down .9; defensive .2, assists 1.3, blocks 1. Turnovers went up by 0.9 and fouls went up by 2. To their credit, FT% and steals did improve. Individually, most of their established guys (mostly FAs-to-be) scored more ppg than the year before, except Quentin Richardson. But, the average for the team still went down. Players that saw their FG% go down were Brand, Olowakandi, and Richardson, while Maggette, Dooling and Rooks stayed about even. Only Piatkowksi, Odom, and Fowlkes saw an improvement in their shooting. That suggests to me an increased desire team-wide to shoot instead of to pass, at the expense of FG%. But, I think the most telling statistic is assists, since Miller is getting bashed for distributing the ball poorly. The team as a whole dropped 1.3 assists per game. Miller still had a half assist better performance than Jeff McInnis. Meanwhile, point forward Lamar Odom dropped in assists by 2.3 from 5.9 to 3.6. Dooling and Rooks saw the best improvements in assist averages at .7 and .6, respectively. Others stayed basically even -- Brand (.1), Maggette (.1), Olowokandi (.2), Fowlkes (-.2) -- or got worse -- Piatkowksi (-.5), Richardson (-.7), and the aforementioned Odom (-2.3). (I should mention in this evaluation that MPG for the guys who played both seasons changed only slightly. The biggest changes were for Rooks (+7.3 mpg), Dooling (+6.5), Olowokandi (+5.9), Maggette (+5.7), Piatkowski (-2.3), and Richardson (-3.4).) And, though you may not think this is to Miller's credit, it wasn't only his assists that went down. His entire game (without exception) was worse than the year before. Not only his assists, but his ppg, his FG%, his assists to turnover ratio, everything. I don't think it is common for a man's talent to decrease across the board. Or, for a man to have a bubble year where he plays above his head not just in assists but in every statistical category. The best explanation for Miller's across-the-board recession is that the enviroment that he was in in LA matched him much more poorly than the environment he had in Cleveland. Evaluating what aspect of the environment was the cause is hard to do statistically, but I do think the statistics do suggest that the focus moved that year away from passing for the whole team.
True Juan, LA sucked, but what's his excuse for Cleveland? Yeah, the players sucked, but it was the EAST, he didn't even get them close to .500. Jason Kidd as a point guard led a renaissance in NJ, the least the Cavs could do would be to finish near the back half of the Lotto on Andre's watch, but he never was able to take them anywhere . Then you move him to a team that was "on the cusp" in the CLippers and they don't go anywhere either Yeah, Steve's teams sucked, but at least, with the exception of his rookie year and the injury season, he was able to get them in contention in 01 and 03. Miller's a good player. But he's never been a great player, even for short stretches and probably never will be. That's the difference between he and steve, who has some runs both in games and of consecutive games where he is just unstoppable. But it's all moot; the Rockets are NOT getting Andre MIller or Elton Brand. Let's just accept it and move on.
1. So if we didn't have Steve then Mooch would be our best PG, does that mean its an acceptable situation? I hope not. This is a message board for conversation about the Rockets, which would seem to include fans talking about players they want to see here regardless of the probability of that occurring. 2. Who can we get? Who do we have a high enough probability of attaining that makes it worthwhile to converse about? Should we just have 35 threads about the exciting resigning of James Posey? 3. Does anything discussed on this board accomplish anything? Has someone given you good stock tips on here? Does CD read the board and make moves based on theoretical arguments about players? If you're looking for proactive change then maybe you should interview with the Rockets because a message board ain't gonna get it done.
Sam, his excuse in Cleveland is this: most point guards don't put a team on their back and carry them to the Finals. There are exceptions (Kidd, Magic, Payton somewhat). Big-time centers and power forwards can do that much more easily than a guard can. And besides that, I'm not suggesting we need to replace Francis with Miller, just add him alongside. He doesn't need to be a superstar, just a good PG. Yao and Steve are and always will be our heavy lifters. In Cleveland, Miller was the best player on the roster. He's good but he's not a franchise player. No one should expect him to carry a team. I don't expect him to carry the Rockets. As for the Clippers being on the cusp, it was the popular wisdom a year ago. I knew it wasn't true and it wasn't true. They were still a young and inexperienced team and still had Sterling as an owner. They will never know more than short-term success while he owns the team. Do you really think the team wouldn't have fallen as badly with Jeff McInniss back at the point? It's beside the point whether the Rockets will get Miller. I'm just arguing we should get Miller, or at least try. Everyone assumes he wants to return to Utah, but I'd have to think the Rockets should be attractive to him when he'd looking down the barrell of a franchise that has to completely rebuild and won't be in the playoffs again for a while, where they have O'Connor in charge of said rebuilding, and where he will constantly be compared to John Stockton. Maybe he isn't interested in the Rockets, but he should be.
bsb, rather than rehashing it for the 9000th time, and having it degenerate into a steve and cuttino bashing fest of piling on, I'm just saying this "Steve is not a pg" argument has reached the point of diminishing returns, as have the pipedream fantasies of obtaining Andre Miler and Elton Brand and Jason Kidd and Jermaine O'Neal. You made a comment about Francis and Miller, I responded as to why Francis was better. That's enough I think, especially given the improbability of the rockets obtaining Miller anytime soon. Face it everybody, the team that was out there last year will, in all likelihood be the team that is out there in November, with minor tweaking here and there, so let's just accept this reality and move on.
No, but they would have fared much better with Jason Kidd, Stephon Marbury, or Steve Francis at the point. MUCH better.
