Does the Battier/Gay trade still bother/frustrate/infuriate you to this day?

I say yes... but only becuase I think we could have filled more needs and waited for his trade value to go up so that we could get more than just Shane Battier.

I mean Shane is a great defensive player that would be good off the bench. But I really think that Gay had so much talent that his stock wouldn't have dropped much while he sat behind Tracy.

I'm not as angry as I was on draft night, but I still think about some of the spots that we need filled now like PG, PF not so much now that we have Scolandry, but the back up C position. not that we'll get that in one trade just that we could have made a package involving Gay and gotten more talent back with that. Ya know.

 

wow, you guys don't even require lube

 

People still don't realize that we DID NOT WANT RUDY GAY IN THE FIRST PLACE!

We drafted him SOLELY to trade him to the Grizzlies.

Rudy Gay was not our target for that draft, Thabo Sefolosha was.

 

You are assuming that Gay's trade value goes up. At the time, Gay could have been a bust ...like Stromile. Now it is clear that Gay won't be a bust.

Instead, he's a good player on a bad team (like Mike James or even Carmelo). It still remains to be seen if Rudy Gay will be a great player that can lead his team to success.

Meanwhile, Battier proved to be a key contributor to our 22-game win streak and we clearly miss him in our rotation this year.

 

Here is an idea........

GET OVER IT!

 

I thought we traded for him because he was the missing piece to the championship. We were in "WIN NOW" mode.

Unfortunately it all showed to be a big mistake. Shane is a nice player but definitely not worth a first round pick.

This forum tends to get in love with scrappy players though.

 

Why would he have been a bust? Now you're just assuming that he would have. Obviously his athleticism alone would have more than likely enticed some team on biting.

If you think about it everthing depends on chance. There was a chance that Yao could have been a bust. He hasn't won a ship yet but he is the best center in the league right now. Lebron could have been a bust coming out of hs. Now he is the best player, in my opinion, in the NBA.

The thing is everyone can be a bust it just depends on how hard they work when they get there to become better players out of college. That's why I say we should have held on to him longer than 2 hours, even though the staff knew they didn't want him, I would have kept him.

 

Its been said and beat 1m times, the rox made a mistake. How do I know? They traded their 1st rd pick for ron artest. That's enough there. They basically said we don't score enough to win and anyone that have watched the rox in the playoffs know that. Once Roy was gone, the next best talent to fit what the rox were trying to do was Gay and or Brewer. Gay wouldve been good because just as Battier frees up tracy to score, gay last yr would have allowed tracy to focus on defense more. Brewer couldve been drafted and was actually the guy I wanted couldve been that defensive, atheletic wing the rox were starving for. For those that talk about Swift, i'll admit I wasn't a big fan of his, but the year he played for the rox, tracy and yao missed a lot of games. Not to mention that contract everyone keeps bringng up expires after this season.

The messed up, but got artest which kinda makes up for it some. The lakers were kinda in the same boat and drafted Bynum at 8. Sometimes you're in the high lottery for a reason.

 

I totally agee.

 

ditto ...

 

The only thing I wished at the time was that we took the Grizzlies pick #24(which turned out to be Kyle Lowry).

 

Battier lovers....here is a semi-truce. It's quite evident that the trade was a mistake. Gay is a better player than Battier is now, PERIOD, his trade value is higher than Battier's, and we haven't won a playoff round since we acquired Battier in the "win now" mode. So in essence, we gave up the better player to win now, and we haven't won squat. It's a failure any way you want to look at it.

With all that being said, the team seems to have made up for that failure by getting Artest. So the team made a boo-boo and potentially fixed it. It could still work out for us due to later acquisitions. It's kinda like it was a mistake for LA to give up Butler for Kwame (they lost there), but they eventually made up for it bu using Kwame in the Gasol raping (they made up for it).

Truce???

 

You, on the other hand, seem to fall into the "oh this player is talented! he has hops! he'll win us a championship because i dont care about defense chemistry or leadership" category. Tsk. Tsk.

 

No. You're right about Gay having higher trade value, but the point stands that he will not have attained similar value if he stayed on the Rockets. We wouldn't have had the room to let him run wild, like in Memphis. Do not underestimate the importance of Battier on this team.

 

Let's see how this discussion goes in a couple of weeks when Battier is on the court and things magically start jelling on defense.

 

I disagree. As someone else already mentioned, we have had plenty of injuries in the last few seasons so he would have gotten a shot. Plenty of avg wing players have gotten minutes in the past few seasons with us.

 

I will still call the trade a mistake then. Battier is the better defender, but he isn't the better player. He couldn't carry a team on his own any further than Gay could...not even as far IMO because he can't even create his own shot. His trade value isn't as high at this point either. I appreciate what he brings to the team, but we still got the short end of that trade. Hopefully getting the long end of the Artest trade will get us that title.....

 

All that stuff about Battier is great, but where exactly has it gotten us? And if we did so good on this trade then why did we need to bring in Artest. I mean Battier is the best... Right?

 

rudy gay if he would of stayed with the rockets he wouldnt be as good as he is. remember van gundy didnt play rookies. so he probably would be a more athletic luther head right now. so yes im glad the trade happened

 

Funny I though the idea for this forum was to discuss these things.
Why can't it be discussed?