Then who else would you have picked to fill in those empty spots on our roster? Deke was the best backup available. CWard was the only one that didn't want almost 7 mill a year(If we DID pay someone that we wouldn't have Sura to help our bench...when he comes back) and JJ is great for what we're paying him. What other players were available that you would've taken? You make it sound like CD and JVG turned down shaq, nash, and kobe from all coming here. Think about the situation NOT what YOU want...
You say patient , I say change in front office and then we can refresh our patient level. We've been patient a lot of years with CD and I don't see any progress.
It doesn't. You are more than welcome to have that opinion. I said that predicating your desire to be a fan of the TEAM on who is coach and GM and then saying that you would openly advocate to have your favorite player leave for another team are actions that might get you called a traitor. Who can argue that to a Rockets fan? If I go onto a Laker board and say, "If the Lakers don't make the playoffs and Rudy T is still the coach next year, I'm going to go pray that Kobe is traded to another team and then be a fan of that team," do you think fans on the Laker board are going to embrace me or call me a traitor? You certainly aren't a Rockets fan. Rockets fans will support the team no matter who is the coach, GM or players. It is inherent to being a fan. You think Packers fans would give up their season tickets over a coaching change? Do you think they would hope that Brett Farve would get traded to the Giants and then watch them instead? You think Yankees fans would stop being fans if their manager sucked? There is a BIG difference between complaining about the team and the way it is run and openly supporting that its best players be traded to other teams and being willing to drop your allegiance to a team over the coach. Being a fan means sticking by your team through thick and thin. Being a fan means watching 17 win seasons right along with championships. It means being involved. It means complaining and griping but also praising and cheering. Players change. Coaches change. GM's change. Owners change. But, fans remain. I've watched this team through 3 starting centers, two of whom will be in the hall of fame and one who has that potential. I've been through half a dozen coaches, 3 GM's, two owners and three logos. I've seen Rudy T. go from player to scout to assistant to coach to coach of the Lakers. I've watched them draft Hakeem Olajuwon and Yao Ming but also Eddie Griffin and Buck Johnson. I listened to fans boo Robert Horry because they wanted Harold Minor. Fans are people who stick with the organization through all of those changes and identify with the team. They are absolutely NOT people who hope their team fails in order to see someone fired or traded. They are absolutely NOT people who advocate for their favorite players to be traded to teams that would treat them better. That is not a fan. Ever. Period.
The inability to draft anyone that can stick in the NBA is quite telling. It may show why Damon Jones was passed over because the Rockets opted for Moochie. It may show why Ward was signd to a 3 year contract. I think maybe talent evaluation is at an all-time low for the Rockets franchise now.
The MM combo is in its infancy. There's a lot of room for improvement. MM like each other and have complimentary skill sets. Thus rendering a higher ceiling of total impact than the Big Aristotle and the Big Ego. Sura is an X factor, players are not fully accustomed to playing JVG style of defense, Barret starts playing just now and has a good start, Boki is just in his second season minutes wise, Ward returns to his back up mode and Lue is getting the nod, and Badiane is developing in Germany. Many shuffles indicates a transition and adjusting phase. Throw in the initial injuries, the new team, the young season, and the tough starting schedule it's just premature to make a judgement on this team so early. Not to mention there's nothing new the board doesn't already know.
I am not collecting 7 figure paycheck from the Rockets organization. Of course I can't think too much about this team. But you can take a look of Miami Heat roster. They did a major trade, too. Shaq's contract is even more horrendous. But they managed to sign Damen Jones and Doleac. You use the bad contracts and lack of draft picks to defend Rockets' inaction in the past off season. But who signed all these bad contracts and who traded away all the draft picks? Same management. You started with a thin team. Then traded away three starters for a superstar, a redundant PF and a backup PG. That was good thinking on CD's part, right?
Jeff, you can have your defination of FAN. I can have mine. You can have your entitled opinion on all the Yao fans. But the bottom line is NBA needs Yao fans. Les needs Yao fans. Otherwise they wouldn't send the Rockets to play in China. As I stated before--"You gain by giving". Houston is an international franchise now. Les can't sit there counting all the new revenue Yao fans bring in and turn a deaf ear to Yao fans' basic requtest, which is to let Yao have a good system to prosper. For NBA, it does't count which team is at the bottom, Bobcats, Chicago, Orlando, or Houston. Somebody has to be the last team. But NBA has an interest in Yao's development. A lot of NBA's major sponsors have stakes in Yao. Jeff, as you said, fans should be loyal to a team. But without players and coaches, what are you loyal to? The uniform? The logo? For God's sake, how many times have they changed the uniform and the logo?
I thought you did since you just 'sat down and analyzed the team' did you not? Besides Shaq and Wade(who is putting up Michael Jordan numbers...yeah, that's going to keeping happening) who else do they have? Jones and Jones? Doleac? All role players that are decent, and their bench is thinner than tissue paper. You think they're going to win a championship this year? No way. No, the Rockets Management did make mistakes in the past with Rudy...but we aren't going to make MORE mistakes by signing overpriced/overprime PGs to insane amounts of money and ruining us even further. Is that what you suggest we do? BTW, the only person I wish we could've gotten was Damon Jones b/c he was so cheap, but I think he'd prefer to stay in the east and with Shaq...that was probably HIS choice. BTW, instead of concentrating all your 'analysis' of the Rockets management, why don't you look and see what other bad mistakes other GMs have made? If you did, you'd see that 90% of the GMs in the league 'suck' and need to be fired. And if we DID fire CD and JVG, who would you replace them with? I bet you haven't given one thought about that...it's so easy to complain yet not have a solution to the complaint isn't it? No, it was great thinking. We were going NOWHERE with those players. We gave up good players so that we could have the buildings of a GREAT team. We are NOT going to win the championship this year...so get that out of your head. WE ARE going to have 2 GREAT players so that when MO, Juwon, Maloney , and other long unnecessary contracts are gone we can get other good roleplayers to go along with our 2 great players, but that won't happen until later so be patient or do us all a favor a quit pretending to be a Rockets fan.
Management's move to get Mcgrady was a good decision, but I do feel they kind of stumbled into it. They wait until Steve Francis has his absolute worse season and his trade value is at an all time low before they trade him. Now it was extremely fortunate that Mcgrady made his trade demands. But what if he didn't? How close were we to trading Steve for Jalen Rose (the deal Doc Rocket said was in the works)? Then there are of course the bad signings and the blown draft picks, that people have already mentioned. I don't think it's out of line to have severe doubts whether this front office can build a championship team.
Moochie's, Maloney's and Cato's bad contracts were Rudy influenced. MoT's bad contract was an under the table deal of which the mistake is seemingly learned by CD. Spoon's bad contract is a consequence of the under the table deal with SAnderson. They gambled and they lost. It's more bad luck than bad brains. Eddie Griffin was a gamble in Rudy's time. Nearly all things go back to the Rudy era and his incompetent assistant coaches. In the JVG era, there is no bad contracts and no bad signings. JJ is a bargain. The T-Mac trade is the best thing happened to the Rox in the recent years. Pike sucked and Griffin injured, but the JVG era's management converted these two scrubs for the all time defensive player Mutombo. Ward isn't a bad signing, we had not many choices. Padgett was a good pickup. Drafting Malick can turn out to be a steal. Still, way too premature to make a judgement on the Rocket's current management given JVG's short tenure with the organization. It's OK to have doubts but they should be reasonable. BTW, cudos to the management for staying away from the money spending frenzy in the last FA market to keep us away from financial drowning.
I think it is ludicrous to think TMac/Yao will be as effective as a duo that won 3 championships straight. Both Shaq and Kobe in their heydays were the BEST 2 players in the NBA. Kobe was bandied about as the best player in the league. I don't drink the same koolaid that says TMac is better than Kobe, or that Yao is even in the same league as Shaq was when he won the championships.
JVG did nothing wrong? Under his watch, SF3's trade value drops to ridiculously low. After the super bowl incident, everybody in the league knows that JVG and SF3 couldn't coexist, they just waited for bargain. JVG won in the internal power struggle, at the team's expense. Talking about the spending frenzy of last season, CD and JVG should anticipate it. That was their job. And comparing with last offseason's market value. Cat was a huge bargain and Cato's contract is fair. Houston should just held off the trade until Orlando gave up on Cato.
Give Rudy T some credit in the sam cassell,robert horry,cuttino mobley picks ,the trade to bring steve francis in, and the drexler trade at that time maloney was the point guard that we need and fit in that system with olajuwon,cato bad contract was because they put good numbers that season and most of the team want them the moochie was a hey is a good backup to steve francis and put another style of play in the team and the best way to get the hell out of moochie bad contract was with the trade of weatherspoon at the time we cut from the books weatherspoon ny have to pay one more year of the moochie contract
Yeah, all we were able to get for him was the leagues leading scorer. What a ripoff. langui1: This may come as a shock to you but the Rockets organization did exist before your hero Yao got here. Actually, it has fared quite well thank you very much. You see, there was this other center we used to have who was also drafted #1 and well....he was pretty good. He took the team to the Finals his rookie year and they managed to get a couple of wins against what I and many others still consider to be the best team in the history of the NBA. After we lost, we weren't too upset because we all figured that this team would be a dynasty for years to come. What happened? Well, the team was ripped apart the very next year by injuries and drug suspensions. Poof. It was all gone. For the next 10 years, our great center was surrounded by a lot of subpar NBA talent. We never even sniffed the Finals. Finally, after years of slowly building the team, adding a piece here, adding a piece there, we won a couple of championships and there was much rejoicing. In a few years, our great center will be a first ballot hall of famer. My point in all of this is that you are acting like this years team is a finished product. You are acting like management thinks that this is the team to all the way. Your expectations are that 2 years after being in the lottery, we should win 70 games and win a championship. lanqui1, this is the NBA and championship teams are not built from scratch in 1 or 2 years. Everyone in this thread seems to understand that except you. And before you say what I think you're going to say, no, it shouldn't take 10 more years. And it won't. That's not what I'm saying. I say in 2 or 3 years, this team will be a championship team. If that's not soon enough for you, why don't you just go away until then.
Ward is getting 7.5 million for 3 years? Somebody has to be out of his mind. Ward could not get a job after the season. Everybody knows that Ward is done. How can he got 7.5 million for 3 years? At most, I will give him a one-year deal plus a team's option.
Where'd you see this. I'm pretty sure I read in an espn insider article, that Ward is getting 2 years for around 3 something million total.
Thank you for reminding me the history of Rockets. I watched dream's two championship games. I also know Charles Barkley trade, Pippen disaster and SF3 fortune. I would say the Rockets organization is a very lucky one. The way drafted the dream with Ralph Sampson on board, the way got SF3 by a cheap trade, and the way got Yao lottery with SF3's migraine headache. But except luck, the management have done horribly in the past 5-6 years.
I didn't say that was for sure. I don't think it's not reasonable to say Yao and T-Mac can have better chemistry and two man game than Shaq and Kobe. Yao won't be as dominant as Shaq, but he can actually play at the end of close games shooting fts. T-Mac is on par with Kobe in terms of talent, and better in terms of physique. The only thing Kobe has over him is the playoff edge. Kobe's game grow a lot after he had Shaq. Yao and T-Mac will grow together. They like each other and their skills compliments each other well. I don't think it's neither definite nor out of the question to think the MM combo can have similar impact on the team than Shaq and Kobe. Chemistry can make up for some loss in individual dominance.
You are right on those things. Rudy had his wins and blunders. Other than the records, it doesn't take a genius to see his GM related opinions are part of the reasons he was driven out of town. I think Rudy was a quite a coach in the championship years and good talent spotter in general, but he had blind spots that proved to be fatal in terms of evaluating players.
Yeah, and Phil Jackson lowered Kobe's trade value by leaving LA. I commend them when half of the GMs in the league couldn't do their job. The T-Mac trade set some GMs into panic mode and helped their financial suicide. Hehe, chalk it up to the Rocket's management once more. Let me try to get your underlying idea. When CD and JVG make a bad move, they are dumb and dumber. When they make a good move, it's just their job? That's not very nice isn't it? It's every GM's and coach's job to win rings, I guess all of them in your eyes suck because they can't do their jobs except Joe Dumars. I had a dream that JVG's blad head shined more and more and eventually became a cystal ball that told me the same message from basketball God aka Lanqiu1.
