Exactly. It's not like Brooks is expected to be our starting one. At best, he may get 20 mpg off the bench at this stage. If he struggles defensively, then he will never be more than a rotation player. But I was impressed in the few times I saw him play and think the expectations people have for a #26 are ridiculous. All of those fours you mentioned would be useless defensively against elite bigs. As a matter of fact, Chuck Hayes was a much better collegiate post-defender than McRoberts, Davis, or Fazekas.
Now I consider that a stupid reason to not take the best player on the board at that point. Who the F cares what the Suns were going to do? If that is indeed true, then Morey got played. Normally that's true but due to woeful drafts of the past 7 years, the Rockets desperately needed to hit a home run like finding a Tayshan Prince or Josh Howard with this pick and Brooks, while he was good college player, cannot be considered that due to his lack of height.
HillBoy, I think what ZBoy meant was that the Rockets valued Brooks just slightly more than they did Landry, Davis, Splitter or McRoberts. Given that the Suns (and the Spurs and Pistons?) also likely valued Brooks at this area of the draft, the Rockets did not want to risk losing out on the best player available in their estimation, especially if they had already begun discussions with the Sonics to trade for the #31 pick and knew that one of the aforementioned PFs would still be available at #31. From everything we have heard from Daryl Morey, Dean Cooper, Joe Ash, Eddie Johnson and other league sources and various local media in Houston, Detroit, Phoenix, San Antonio and Sacramento, it appears that the Rockets' draft board looked something like this: [Oden, Durant and various other players already off the board in the top 20] Rudy Fernandez Morris Almond/Aaron Brooks (I guess we'll never know which one the Rockets had graded higher) Carl Landry Glen Davis Tiago Splitter/Josh McRoberts I'm guessing that the Rockets probably had Fernandez and Brooks rated higher than some other players taken prior to #24 (i.e., Dudley and Chandler), so it's safe to say that the Rockets were pretty high on Brooks to likely have him in their top 22 or so. Bottom line: The Rockets didn't get "played" by anyone. If you disagree with their evaluation of Brooks as an NBA prospect, then you are certainly entitled to your opinion (hell, I'm not too thrilled with the pick either). But your criticism should be of the Rockets' entire evaluation process then, and not with Morey getting played by other teams. Keep in mind, though, that the Suns and other teams seemed to think just as highly of Brooks as the Rockets did.
