I'm sick of wasting minutes on Glen Rice every game. Face it - he sucks!!! EVeryone is blaming it on his injury, but he averaged 12 points a game last year coming off the bench WITH the injury. This year, he's averaging under 9 points a game while starting. He's over the hill. Let's at least give the minutes to some of the young guys and let them develop. We're losing every game, so what do we have to lose?
I agree. Rice needs to come from the bench for a while (perhaps a LOOOONG while). If his legs are the problem like so many of his supporters say, then he needs to be conditioning them. When Glen's out there I feel like it is 5 on 4. There are so many times where he just gets blown by for an easy layup, and his offense - even when he hits shots - seems to slow us down even more. Start Walt and give Tmo some minutes. I mean, Tmo is going to get over the rookie jitters a lot faster than Rice will get over being slow.
If Rice is benched, I hope it is in favor of Willis. Slide KT over to the 3 spot and we have a big team out there. Griffin and KT can spell Willis at the 4. Willis and Collier can back up the five. Rice, T-Rock and Torres can back up the 3. 1 - (Francis)/Moochie/Brown 2 - (Mobley)/Torres/Williams/(Langhi) 3 - Thomas/Rice/Morris/Torres/(Langhi) 4 - Willis/Griffin/Thomas 5 - Cato/Willis/Collier/Griffin
My position on acquiring Rice is on record, but I would like to disagree with you on benching him. I was TOTALLY against getting him, but now that he's here, I feel we are in the unfortunate position of having to use him. Allow me to explain my position... Rice is eating up a substantial portion of our cap-room. He is not playing up to his salary in any way, but to bench him would set that situation in cement. As he contributes NOTHING on defense, the boards, or near the basket, I feel that if we are going to receive any value for the money, we HAVE to use him. What is more, with Francis, Taylor, and Mobley injured, I feel Rice should be either option 1 or 1a in our set offense. This is not merely to justify his contract, however...If we are ever going to unload this albatros, he will have to show SOME value first...His days of scoring 25 pts a game are long gone, but were he to find his stroke, playoff teams might just envision him in the Dale Ellis, Dell Curry role. This is, granted, a long shot, but it would be impossible if we were to give up on him now...Shooters don't just need PT, they need shots...Rice is getting a lot of minutes, but relatively few shots. He cannot create his own shot anymore, ( he could learn from other pure shooters like Curry and Miller and perfect a pump-fake) but if we are ever to get anything from him, either for us, or in the ability to dump him on someone else, we need to start running plays for him. Again, I was against getting him from the start, and probably have as much reason to be frustrated with him as any fan, but you cheer with your heart and make decisions with your head, and the smart thing, in my opinion, is to try and get something back from this guy. Bench him now, and he's a weight around our necks for as long as his contract runs...He very well might be anyway, but I think it's worth giving it more than 25 games before we write it in stone...
maybe rice should come off the bench but not rightnow. we need a scorer while francis and mobley are out and maybe hes the guys. fr now the sarting line up should be............... 1-norris, torres 2-torres, walt 3-rice, thomas,walt 4-griffin, thomas, willis 5-cato, willis
Well Jag, I'm on record too and i was against it totally and now I can't even put into words the way i'm thinking. I thought from the outset that after we made the trade for Griffin and we had the bulk of free agents, the only one i wanted to keep was Hakeem. I would have let Moochie,Anderson,Taylor, and Bullard hit the road. I thought we could have gave Hakeem his due, 2 yrs 14mil, give langhi and morris time at the 3 spot behind walt if i couldn't trade him and go with that. If the Rockets needed backups they had Torres, Morris, Langhi , Colson, or someone to play backup minutes. I just didn't see when this team started where we improved ourselves against the west. The thing is, either you rebuild or contend. The worst thing to be is mediocre which is what we are even with Francis and Mobley. Our weakness last yr is still our weakness this yr which is lack of speed at the 3 mostly. Rice would be good on a team like SA similar to what steve smith is, veteran shooter that can take the pressure off the inside game. He does nothing or bring nothing to the table for us other than satisfying the itch Rudy has always had for him. The thing is that was 4 or 5 yrs ago and he's been in a steady decline since. People didn't believe me then , but now you can really see what i'm talking about. I know RM will blast me and say he doesn't have his legs yet, but its not like he's like Jordan, the guy did play last yr.
While I agree with giving the young guys as much playing time as possible, I think it is too early in the season to judge whether Rice should be benched or not. We should look at his production around the All-Star break and determine whether or not we still have a chance to make the playoffs and wether or not he'll help us.
I started posting recently so I am not on this site as on record of being vs. getting Rice, but I did tell my friends that I did not want the Rockets to get Rice. He does stink and he will probably be consistently bad(even Quitten had 1 good game while he was here). However I think benching him would have mixed results. It would be good of course because we would be able to give more time to the younger guys and the Rockets could subtract his horrible shooting percentage. The bad thing about benching him(and I knew this would happen before we got him) is that as he showed in LA and NY the last 2 years he still has a big ego and benching him or giving him less time/touches would likely lead to him moaning and groaning and demanding a trade(I had predicted this by mid-season). If he pulls a Quitten and starts slamming the team then his trade value(as low as it is now) gets cut in half. Really no good way out of this except to pray that they start using him closer to the bucket(post) where he doesn't have to shoot everytime.
Someone hit it on the head. Rice would be perfect in a Steve Smith role where you have dominating inside prescence and he just sits out there waiting for the kick out (see our sat night versus the rox). Mobes and Francis are not kick out type players....When they are going to the rack, it is not kicking out! Rice can still hit it when he gets 12-15 shots per game, but these 3/9, 1/8, 2/7 games hurt us. We need him to hit wide open jumpers at 40-45%, not 30%. So, what to do? 1) Get a big man who can be more of a prescence inside. I doubt this can happen soon, because who is available...R. Wallace??? Free agent next year, we do not have much, but they may lose him anyway and I will take his 30 techs per year! 2) Run some picks for Rice. 3) Move him closer to the basket and have him post up more. This would be a nice change. Other than that, benching him would give us what? He is basically giving us what shandon did for 5 mil more, so we are stuck. Just need to hope his shot starts falling more often. I would be happy with 12 pts per game......an occassional 20 pt game.
Rice can't even get his shot off. He needs to be benched until he can become effective. He has one of the lowest Field Goals Per 48 minute average of anyone in the rockets roster. Field goals per 48 min FGM FGA S. Francis 8.4 19.1 T. Brown 8.3 18.8 Williams 7.5 18.7 K. Willis 7.8 18.0 E. Griffin 5.0 17.3 C. Mobley 7.5 17.2 K. T. 7.7 16.2 O. Torres 6.1 14.0 M. Norris 5.2 13.1 G. Rice 4.7 12.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< T. Morris 0.7 10.9 D. Langhi 5.3 10.7 K. Cato 4.1 9.0
I think last nite's game vs. NY shows that he can still contribute if he posts up 90% of the time. As far as his 3 point shot goes, Bullard's is 10 times better. He needs to stop shooting 3's for right now.
