He has sucked all year. They are probably going to be better without him. Btw Anthony Davis is still the best player in the league right now. He is still healthy and kicking ass.
No, I remember from 2007 playoffs, Battier, Mcgrady and Yao's percentages actually got better for the playoffs. Luther Heads three point shooting in in the can. It generally depends on the player.
Eric Gordon has not actually been a positive player for the Pelicans this year. Yet to see how their performance plays out. Shouldn't have immediate impact... should have long-term impact due to lack of depth issues and their only 2 back-court players having to play way too much. AD should be able to keep them in most games. But they'll remain a fringe playoff team. Schedule gets a little tougher moving forward - between now and year-end they get Warriors twice, Spurs twice, Rockets, Blazers, Cavs, Mavs, Clippers, Wizards, Bulls, Suns, and Kings tomorrow.
Sure, if its true that we made that promise then we couldn't deal Parsons even if we wanted to, also the fact that Morey didn't match the Mavs offer tells us that Morey did not think of Parsons as highly as everybody thought he did, he maybe thought that at 8 - 10 million he was ok, but at 13 - 15 million no freaking way!!! So if he could have dealt him freely to trade for somebody like Rondo then he probably would have. Lets hope that keeping our word with Parsons's agent helps us 2 years from now if we want to keep Dwight when he hits free agency again.
Cyberx, do you know if the Brewer talks were any serious? Why gun for a wing over big man depth? We haven't heard anything in while though, possibly Flip posturing.
i'm not a stats guy, so tell me if these below are not correct... rockets 3P% last year reg season: 35.8% 3P% last year playoffs: 31.8% -11% variation 2P% last year reg season: 52.9% 2P% last year playoffs: 49.5% -6% variation
This. The Fegan/Morey/Dwight backroom agreement.... The gift that keeps on giving. I've been mentioning this for the past few weeks, and it just makes too much sense that this played a major part in the Rockets not being able to move Parsons in a trade last year. If the Rockets knew that Parsons was going to be a free agent and could potentially get offered bookoos of money, why wouldn't they of thought it to be a good time to cash in Parsons for a 3rd star? Maybe, just maybe its because they were not allowed to as part of the Fegan/Dwight agreement. If Fegan didn't stipulate that Morey COULD NOT trade Parsons, than there was no way to guarantee that Parsons would get let out of his contract early. There is no way that Fegan, as smart as he is, would not think that one through. He knows Morey would uphold to his end, but he did NOT know that a Danny Ainge or whatever GM would uphold to that end of the deal. Also (Cyberx if you can dig into this more Id appreciate it), let's not forget that there is a whole other part of the Fegan/Dwight/Morey agreement that has yet to play out- .... The Dwight Howard Player option after next year. We know with about 99% certainty that the final stipulation of the agreement had to be that Dwight declines his player option for the 2016/17 season and the Rockets will be forced to give him another max contract. Dwight not taking a pay cut in 2 years will be devastating to this team given the timeframe of his career he will be in. No doubt that Dwight could still be a very, very good center (maybe still top 5), but giving up that much salary when the Rockets will then probably need to make moves in free agency could have devastating long term ripples. I think this is a big reason why Morey knows that the Rockets need to add another star player. I think he realizes how difficult it will be to add talent to this team with mid level players in a couple years, and how Dwight will probably be a costly 3rd or 4th best player in a few years. All I know is I'd still do the Dwight deal now, but in a couple years if this team doesn't achieve much, we might look back at this Dan Fegan shakedown and wonder if it all was really worth it in the end.
Charlotte would be the only one to consider that trade. Bucks trading assets would be premature/is unlikely. TOR has Lowry long term on an awesome deal. CHAR would assume it would be a SAC situation, Rondo has to agree to an extension. Many teams could outbid the Rockets.. it is just unlikely that they will.
You're just quoting a rumor which has been refuted by Ainge himself as well as others in Boston. Here's a reprint of a Boston Herald article on the subject: Here's an article that says Bosh will sign with Houston if Lebron leaves. http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on...eaves-miami-chris-bosh-will-sign-with-rockets Here's another that says that no free agent will sign with the Lakers because of Kobe. http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/sto...obe-bryant-reason-los-angeles-lakers-downfall It was published on the internet so it must be true, right?
Gordon had actually been playing better recently. Nothing earth shaking, but he was scoring in the teens.
So somebody finally put 2 and 2 together and finally figured out why we were not going to trade Parsons.
I can appreciate the loyalty and pride these Celtics and Suns fans have for their team but they tend to gloss over the single biggest issue, and outright dismiss it in some cases. Rondo and Dragic are in their prime now and both are impending unrestricted free agents at the end of the season, with little incentive not to jump to better teams with the money being equal, which it likely will be, due to possible cap smoothing. They simply don't fit on their current rebuilding teams. Sure both teams can exclusively offer the super max to their PGs, which is an advantage, but neither is worth that, and doing so severely hinders the team going forward, specifically in Phoenix's case. Having 2/3s of your cap tied into one position, long term, on mediocre team, is a recipe for long term stagnation, specifically as Dragic declines over the years. Furthermore, there is an age gap here, where guys in their late 20s cant really afford to wait 3-4 years for what could eventually be a great team. It reminds me of the Granger/George situation in Indy a few years back. Danny Granger was a similar type of fringe all star talent who was not good enough to build around and kept Indiana not great, but not terrible, while wracking up mid lottery picks. Indiana got lucky with George/Hibbert and they became the new hotness. Granger CLEARLY did not fit with that core but Indy fans insisted that they would build around the three together despite the clear mismatch in age/career trajectories. Indy ultimately passed on any good deals for Granger in his prime, despite all the rumors, and he never was a real part of any of the good Pacers teams that followed. Perhaps if they had gotten good pieces for him it would have been enough to push them past Miami and into the finals. While I know Boston/Phoenix fans are excited about all the youth and picks/assets, players generally don't care about that and are more bird in the hand type guys. The assets aren't worth much to the players until they translate into good players. Right now, the market for those franchise changing talents just isn't there. The only real guys available are the Rondo/Dragic/Milsap types who are complimentary types, like Granger was. As such the impending free agency and mediocre standing of Phoenix and Boston is a huge detriment to their standing in any trade negotiations. Bad teams with good assets simply won't be interested in trading anything of value for an expiring contract because they are afraid the players will just walk at the end of the year. Celticsfan believes that there are outstanding offers from Charlotte or the Bucks. My response to that is no, that is highly unlikely. Those teams know they have little shot at keeping Rondo and have little to no incentive to trade anything of value for them. We saw this with Sacramento pulling its offer after Rondo told them he wouldn't sign an extension. The teams that will have interest will be the good teams with limited cap space going forward without a PG (Dallas, Houston, Chicago maybe). It will come down to an offer like Houston's of say the NOP pick, Jones, maybe Papa as filler or risk the player walking in free agency. I know fans like to say, "well we are better just letting him walk!". No, no you are not. That is pride talking and letting an asset walkout getting anything in return terrible. Ainge and Sarver will start having their risk analysis meetings in mid december and we will see what they ultimately end up doing, but I can't really see any scenarios with Dragic and Rondo re-upping with their current teams that benefits them long term.
Larsv8, I agree with your general sentiment but you can't account for bad decision making by the other actors in the equation. Look at the Bosh situation; we thought it was in the bag then Riley goes and F***s it all up by throwing $120mil at Bosh. I know that Suns fans were very upset about trading Dragic to Houston the first time. Ownership knows that trading him a second time to houston will be a punch in the gut for the fans.
Your reasoning for Parsons not being traded weren't because you knew something we all didn't about the Fegan shakedown. If you had insider info that even Clutch himself didn't even know until months later, I'm sure you would have been blowing your own trumpet about how you have insider info all year long. plus: http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/7/...-trade-mavericks-rockets-2014-nba-free-agency Technically you were somewhat wrong because the Rockets actually did try to trade him in the end. Also- Hows that Rubio trade coming along?
