It's the Bonzi signing. Just huge. It makes more difference than I could ever imagine. Perimeter defense and shooting were the weak links last season, both have now been addressed. I have never paricularily liked Bonzi, but he is a very very good player that fits this team's needs well. If he has matured and changed his attitude, then the sky is the limit.
Not to be anal or anything, BUT ... "All Rockets need is for talent to gel" vs. "jell" Am I right here? C'mon Feigan.
in defense of t-mac, he says it every year, but he's usually right on. i really believe last year was just more than the back and it added up. every other year he's been pretty good about getting in a high amount of games played.
Are you gellin'? I'm totally gellin' like a felon... he's definitely not gellin' In light of that, maybe they should all get the Dr. Scholl's padding for their shoes
I really hope you're right, I really do. It's just that I've had REALLY high hopes at this time for the last 2 years and both years we got off to a very slow start. We recovered TMac's first year, but obviously not last year. So this year, I'm holding back as much as I can so I won't get let down again. It's not easy to do, believe me, because I really like this team on paper. But that's the same thing I said during the last 2 offseasons.
oh no i completely understand your cautious optimism regarding the team, especially after the last couple years, but regarding t-mac specifically i think we can all be more at ease about his back. he'll be fine.
Originally Posted by McGrady "It's been a long time since I've come into a training camp and actually felt like I had a great chance of winning big in this league." Yeah. About 12 months. not so true. fans were excited before the season last season, but i remember JVG being very skeptical early on
No, you're not right. I thought the same thing, but I looked it up. From M-W.com: jell (v.)(2): to take shape and achieve distinctness : become cohesive. There is no verb form of the word gel.
We were pretty excited to get TMac two years ago, but nobody was actually hoping for a title. In fact, there was considerable skepticism that we would make the playoffs at all. Remember, our starting point guard at that point was CHARLIE WARD. Last year, yeah, expectations were off the charts. Sadly, Sura and Wesley had essentially been done in by the huge minutes they'd had to play the year before. They'd gotten banged up and blown out in Dallas, but both those guys had heart for days: Wesley played last season with broken ribs, and Sura is still trying to come back. Anderson ended up injured and wasn't in a huge hurry to bust his ass and come back. He was shipped. Swift did the same things he'd always done, but those weren't enough. Oh yeah, and I can't remember what happened to Mike James. Anybody? In retrospect, it was probably technically possible for us to have contended last season had everything gone out way. Nothing did. This year, it's a brand new team once again. Lots of questions, probably even more than the last two years. In recent times, we've seen some pretty wild answers to our questions. I'm looking forward to seeing what's going to happen with this bunch.
This year should be the best of the last three assuming no repeat of the injury bug to Tracy and or Yao, as we have players for the present and a better chance of developing young players for a championship run in a year or three. Two years ago we gutted the team of talent to get Tracy. so aside from Yao all we had were old veteran role players, but no young players to develop. It was a one shot deal. Last year when the old role players burned out as Hippieloser pointed out, we had no replacment as Stromile and Anderson did not turn out. Now this year we have more than replaced the old vet role players of two years ago with younger vets in their prime. Battier and Bonzi. This should be enough to make us at least as good as two years ago and when you factor in Yao's improvement there is no need to think we aren't better and can't win at least one playoff series unless matched against the Western Conference top team or two. What is also new is that we have lots of young players with potential talent to actually help us get even better in the next one, two or three years. All we need is for two or three of the Novak, Head, Snyder, Lucas VSpan to turn into bonafide young role players and we will definitely be a strong playoff team the following year assuming we don't just lose Bonzi for nothing. Unfortunately I predict that though we may be able to give any team a toigh series, true title contention will not happen till Juwan's salary comes off the book and we replace that slot with another strong big man. Help me out. Does Juwan have two or hopefully not three more years left?
I don't believe in jelling, chemistry, or momentum as they're described here. Any time an an announcer talks about any of these things, I smirk. It's not that the underlying concepts are entirely fictional. It's really that (a) they're impossible to understand, (b) you can't manufacture them, and (c) they're too ephemeral to count on. If they exist - great. But people simplify these things too much. It's almost like people think Compatible Players + No Jerks + Good Coach + 3.2 months = chemistry. Not that easy.
"Howard signed a 6-year contract worth $36,900,000.00 on Jul 16, 2003. Will be a free Agent in 2008. Howard has a player option in 2008" http://www.clutchfans.net/players/juwan_howard/
funny you say that b/c I took that as a hint-hint from this article......................the right coach That may be Vangundy or someone else, hint-hint. I hope its Jeff Vangrumpy "We never put together this much new talent in one year since I've owned the team, an amazing amount of talent influx," Alexander said. "With two superstars and the right coach, I think we can do very well. This team has a lot of talent. How quickly it comes together and how quickly it jells and how it will perform will have to be seen on the court."
