Yup. Battier may not shut down his opponent but he'll always work to do things to take him out of his comfort zone and take tougher shots. Plus, it allowed Budinger to save his energy for the offensive side of the court.
I'm looking at this in a big picture type of way. To me, just me, the rockets can get a guy like gortat as great insurance for Yao in case he doesn't comeback or they can get other young bigs (jordan,amir johnson) as cheap backups for yao or get the vet guys like camby or foster as older vet backups. It doesn't seem sexy, but jordan or johnson would be great routes to me. Both are young bigs with upside and cheap. Amir's contract expires after this year and almost fits perfect in the 25% range of take back which would drop the rox under lux tax. Jordan and butler for battier will also give the team the lux tax relief and give the rox a small moveable contract in rasual for shane. Camby for shane and cook would give the rox the needed bithe expiring contract. Foster's deal is pretty much the same as shanes, but would give the rockets a big to start in case yao goes down. Gortat is another situation because making a move for him would basically say yao might not come back. Or if yao comes back and they need to restrict his minutes to say 25, gortat would also be a logical choice. Alll those deals really are designed to get chase more minutes for development. Right now, he's probably our most complete wing. He plays within the offense effortless, his defense is respectable, and he can score more than a few ways inside the offense. He needs minutes because we are not winning the title this year plus we need to evaluate whether or not we need to get another wing.
Gortat is overpaid in Morey's eyes imo. Why not just go after Mbenga for min in the offseason or Camby with the 7 million from Tracy's expiring?
The primary ballhandlers on this team should be Brooks, Lowry, and Budinger.......................not Brooks, Ariza, and Lowry.
yeah, one quarter of 4... Even you have to admit that's not exactly torching a guy in one game, unless he went off for 15-20 pts that qrtr or something high like that, but he didnt. Rip got the best of him in the first, but the rest of the way battier did a solid job on him.
Shane wore him down.....he was playing possum in the first quarter. Still.....Budinger needs to start...we can not have Battriza, it doesn't work. DD
Exactly....such poor wing play between the two......... And Trevor....I know we signed him as a role player for the MLE, but he is looking like a bad investment. Should have kept Von instead. DD
But we couldn't sign Gortat, as they would have matched. Moot point. But yeah, this was a seriously irritating game on Ariza's behalf.
If the rockets signed Gortat, the magic might not matched because they don't see the rockets as a contender.
Nice figure. Maybe the opponents' defense started to focus on him? Adelman needs to adjust Ariza's games.
Let's just say I wouldn't bet on it. At all. The Magic were going to keep Gortat, period, and going after him would have been a waste of time. I've defended Ariza quite a bit, but yeah, Adelman needs to sit him down and have a talk.
