This team is better with Yao without a doubt. A better question though, is would the rockets be better with a different max contract level player instead of Yao?
I wouldn't say the team is better without Yao but it is easier to pick up the tempo. But if you lose Yao, you lose a player that can consistently score as well as a good defensive determent against teams with "true big men". Scola isn't a center and Mutumbo while great in short bursts can't/shouldn't be in the game for 30 minutes. Despite how fun it is to watch a faster team, you merely have to look at Golden State, Phoenix and other teams to see what not having a big man gets you in the playoffs.
1. Yao does not have a max contract. He makes 15M 2. Here is a small sample of the people who make more than Yao: Jason Kidd(21M), Jermaine O'Neal(21M), Stephon Marbury(20M), Steve Francis(20M), Michael Redd(15M), Kirilenko(15M). Trade Yao for Kirilenko I say, can you say championship.
Anyone who thinks as what this thread starter does or who agrees with him is dellusional to put it mildly. Some racist bigots id say. Without Yao there would be no open looks for the rest and as its clear for anyone to see that noone can shoot anything. Yao might get tripled teamed and stopped but once you take Yao out, teams will figure way to shut down the rest. Hell all they need to do is play zone and noone could hit anything. You force Brooks to make tough passes shut down the lane for wafer and its over. Artest will jack 20 shots that quarter trying to go 1v1, Battier will have build another london bridge, Scola will have established himself the best flopper in nba. Guys like this should be banned or should never be allowed to create a thread that stinks all the way to Japan.
A conclusion does not have to be stated; it can be implied. Your provision of fallacious statistical comparison is highly misleading under a thread titled "Are we better without Yao?" You asking ppl to draw their own conclusions? Come on! You are using numbers to distort and dictate, like those Wall St. crooks or shameless lawyers. Admit it or not, the only conclusion you expect ppl to draw is the one you own. As Hydhypedplaya stated your mind: "As you can see the Rockets are almost the same with or w/o him and would probably not be stupid to trade Yao for a few Adelman type players and let Adelman do his thing. We have seen Yao's ceiling and IMO it is just not that impressive. We focus too damn much trying to run an offense around him. While it can be pretty effective a lot of the times, it can also be a liability because its too easy to get Yao out of his offensive game. And you can expect for teams to try their hardest to get Yao out of his game come playoff time."
I'm pretty sure all the guys you listed (except Redd) were the grandfathered guys who were able to make more money. I'm reasonably confident that Yao does in fact have the max contract available to players who came in after a certain point.
I found out why Yao is so slow. http://www.chron.com/databases/athl...evPageID=2&cpipage=1&CPIsortType=&CPIorderBy= Check out his age. P
Backed in the corner, without a real argument to fall on, this is what people must resort to. Making wild claims about what the other person is thinking regardless of what he says. If my goal was to "distort and dictate" against Yao, why would I have written: "Draw your own conclusions, keeping in mind who else was on the team. For example, I believe McGrady missed a greater percentage of his games when Yao was playing." You said that I committed a fallacy in not recognizing the differences in the samples. In fact, I did point out a very key difference. All I wanted to do was post the win-loss record with and without Yao to add to the discussion. It's not my fault it didn't make Yao look like the savior of the franchise. Expecting people might jump on those numbers and draw unfair conclusions about Yao, I cautioned that they should keep in mind who was and wasn't playing. In particular, McGrady missed a lot of games while Yao was playing. Others brought up valid points as well, such as Dikembe stepping up in place of Yao. You're so enraged by the idea that someone would think differently than you, that you became hostile and used language like, "use some f'ing logic" without bothering to read and understand what it is you're responding to.
I agree. This could have been a very good discussion of the way our offense and defense plays without the big man. Clearly we are a better team with Yao Ming. But, this team has played well without Yao in the past. That does not mean that Yao is a bad player. I think it is more of a compliment to our role players, particularly Scola, Landry, Brooks, and Wafer. I feel all of them could put up bigger numbers on a different team in which they didn't have to defer so often. Maybe someone should make a thread analyzing the differences in how the team plays without Yao...
when we get going, like our second unit when we yao is on the bench, we look a lot looser, but without yao, until we get some amazing spark we look lost as hell, scared almost. no one else really has any good moves to score
It looked like the Rockets wanted to rely on Scola as their primary post up option in place of Yao in the 1st and 3rd quarter. That strategy didn't work so well. I like Scola a lot, and he'll pull off some impressive post moves from time to time, but he is not a go to guy against good teams IMO.
Without Yao, we are probably not in the playoff contention right now... We are probably counting balls and talking about lottery pick instead of a playoff...
My argument is as simple as a Neandertal man could understand - a 65% win ratio in 165 games should not be equaled with a 65% in 65 games. Again, like several other posters have suggested, your stats might appear appropriate under a different thread title, but is very misleading here. Part of my initial irritation was directed at the OP, and yes, I could have given you credit for mentioning T-Mac absences. But your invitation of "draw your own conclusions" came off so ostensible in this context that I couldn't help but slap it down.
There was no attempt by me to "equal" them, whatever that means. I don't give a damn about the thread title. I care about taking part in and contributing to legitimate discussion. What this team is capable of with and without Yao is a legitimate topic. This is what I did not post: with Yao 65% and without Yao 63%. What I did is I counted up all the wins and all the losses in each of the last 3 years, and that's what I put in the post. I didn't hide anything. It's just information. If people wanted other information, all they had to do was ask, and I'd be happy to try to dig it up. And I'm irritated at people like you who can't get over a bad thread title, and have decided to stuff any legitimate discussion that could be carried out in this thread as a result. FYI, not a single person in this thread, including the original poster, has argued that the Rockets are better without Yao. And BTW, "draw your conclusions" simply means I'm not concluding anything based on that information myself, but others are free to take from it what they will while also remembering to take into account who else was on the floor with and without Yao.
Lock this thread up! seriously i'm tired of seeing people arguing about these things. Losing Yao doesn't make us better. Yao got us 3rd place in the West and gotten us in the playoffs each year! I'm tired of threads like 1. We are better without T-Mac 2. We are better without Alston 3. We are better without Rick Aldeman 4. We are better without Yao Whenever someone does poorly or sits out, they are being picked on
