I think you may be right. I look for us to go after Lee/Turiaf through a trade to get into the 2nd round.
RASHAD McCANTS!!!!!!!!! According to Steven A.... 63 of 72 from beyond the arc in his latest workout.
I find this irritating. We are looking at a very deep PF draft. Veteran PF's are quite expensive. We have an opportunity to get both younger, better, and cheaper. Why all the resistance?
1) Big men take longer to develop. 2) There are only 4 teams with significant cap space. The other 25 have an MLE just like Houston. 3) There are at least 5 unrestricted PF's available....Swift, SAR, Marshall, A. Walker and CWebb. None of them will get max $. The most expensive of the group will get a SnT worth about $7m. $2m more than the MLE. 4) The odds of any available FA PF positively impacting the Rockets is substantially greater than a drafted PF. SAR is my least favorite of the FA PF's and he's a marked improvement over the gamble of the #24 PF pick.
Maybe the resistence is a ploy. Make everyone think you are going in one direction, when in fact you are really going the opposite way. Honestly, I think they will take the best athlete (whether a SG, SF, or PF), who that will be is going to be determined by the 23 other picks that are taken before ours. Unless CD works a deal to get us a higher pick, but then you never know.
I didnt know we had to give NY a second round pick to sign JVG because he was still under contract with NY... crazy stuff, I guess I'm always the last to know...
Perhaps offensively, big men may take longer to develop their game. But the main thing the Rockets are looking for at the 4 is someone who can rebound and play defense. That doesn't require a lot of time for development. A player either knows how to defend and rebound or they don't. For example, Dwight Howard is still very raw offensively, but on defense and rebounding, it took hardly any time for him to develop. Same with Okafor. I don't expect someone like Simien or Diogu to be as good as those 2, but if they can come here and play d, rebound, and bring energy for 20-25 minutes a game, I would much rather have them than some of the big name power forwards out there that are soft offensive minded players who are not going to do the dirty work for this team.
I expect CD's responses to be open-ended and sketchy. You can't possibly believe that he would reveal his plans do you?
Concur. Yet I also tend to agree with Tdogg - they'll take the best they can get. Nevertheless, the whole "don't trust a rookie" thing is frustrating.
Unless you think Philly is going to keep him and take the LTax hit for 3 more seasons. It seems a whole lot more plausible to me than Finley@ DAL.
If you want to break the game to that level...what all does a perimeter player have to do to contribute? Play defense and hit open shots. Most of the ones available to us in the draft can easily do that. I named 4 (5 with Webber) possible FA PF's. Assuming we would draft a PF, can you name 4 unrestricted SG's? It baffles me why people here don't see the hand-writing on the wall...we're going perimeter 1st and if we trade down we'll be getting a perimeter player in trade and then gambling on a big.
You named 5 FA PF's, 4 of which are terrible fits, and one that is out of our price range. I don't consider them that much better than many of the free agent shooting guards out there (Mobley, Simmons, Sprewell, Finley, Houston, etc.). There's also the possibility we go after a point guard in free agency like Daniels or Stoudamire and slide Sura over to the 2. I'm not dead set against drafting a swingman, as long as that swingman is the best player available that is the best fit on this team. At #24, the Rockets should NOT be targeting any particular position.
First, "terrible fit' is a value judgement. What exactly makes Mobley, Sprewell, Finley or Houston "good fits"? It's in the eye of the evaluator. Again, I don't like SAR on the Rox but he'd be preferable to all 4 of those SG's. Secondly, I would normally agree with the BPA except this summer. A quick and excellent shooting SG will be able to impact the Rox much moreso than any PF (with the possible exception of Diogu). The Rockets defensive pressure starts with soft traps on the perimeter and our biggest weakness is weakside rotation to the arc. A rookie SG with quickness will be continously open on the perimeter. A rookie PF will have to get weakside boards and hit 18 foot J's to impact. In the Rox/JVG's scheme, a quick SG will have much more impact than a PF since they will continously be left open on the perimeter and will be the first line of defense.. Bottomline for me...If I replay the DAL playoff series in my mind, I'd much rather have had Franciso Garcia, Rudy Fernandez or their #24 pick equivalent on the court than Wayne Simien. But all of this is unimportant since we're trading #24 to ATL for Boris Diaw (perimeter) and #31...David Lee...PF.
Draft picks are always a roll of the dice. All you can do is your best evaluation and make your decision based on the criteria you deem important. As far as the Rockets go I believe they will take the best athletic player in the draft at #24 regardless of their position, unless another teams offers them a trade they cannot say no to and we trade the pick away. The need for quickness on the perimeter was blatantly obvious in the Dallas series and the fact that JVG made comments to this regarding Yao's foul trouble due to opposing guards penetration kind of tells me that they will go SG/SF type of player unless there is a big at our pick that we feel is to good to pass up. Thats all I have....
