Feigen: Who should and will the Rockets take?

Dont disagree. Spot on. Signing any of those older guys, you're still in the same spot - looking for a long term answer at center. May have exposed myself/my argument in that post, ha but thats ok. Willing to admit defeat when wrong.

1. Yeah I guess. Your last point there about push for a center starting 5 games into last season and NOT 2-3 years ago, its debatable but thats where I think they went wrong. Yao goes down, give it another try, Yao goes down, give it another try, Yao goes down, give it another try, rinse and repeat. They rinsed and repeated too long imo. Kept counting on him, didnt look for another viable option(easier said than done finding such but...) But like you said, they felt this was their best chance or best option.

2. We wouldnt necessarily tie up future flexibility with those older guys with say 1 year deals would we? Some of those other guys, yeah no doubt, you'd have to pay them over 4-5+ years. With that said, are you saying you wouldnt go after any of those other guys(Asik, Gortat, Gasol)? Or which guys wouldnt you have gone after or signed if you were Morey? Maybe Im completely confused and misunderstanding you though.

 

smh... speaking ill of the dead.

 

Unacceptable. Get this crap out of here.

With Asik/Gortat/Gasol/Chandler I definitely would have gone after them(like the Rockets did). However, with Yao still in the picture, I don't think they wanted to pay an arm and a leg. Because if Yao does come back healthy, we may have sabotaged our own championship chances by overpaying for essentially a 15 min backup. That is no longer the case however, with Yao out of the picture. Which is why we will have a much better chance of getting a deal done in the future, since we will be willing to "pay up".

 

Haha. No, it's all good. Ive been exposed. Shame on me.

Makes perfect sense now. Not sure why I didnt understand before. Durr

 

The part about drafting guys who does 1 thing great vs versitile guys is and always be the shortcomings of the rockets.

 

The rockets were no closer to contending with yao than they were with chandler. At least chandler would give you more games in recent memory and impact the defense both in space and at the rim. They could've offered yao for chandler and it would've been one of the best trades the rockets made regardless if yao came back or not.

 

The Rockets missed out by 3 games -- I'd probably agree that we'd still miss the playoffs, though I do think we'd be a tad better. As small of an upgrade as Hill->Damp may have been, it would still have been an upgrade.

I'm not sold on the 50-win team idea though. I know they looked great after the trade deadline, but I just don't see that carrying over into a full season. Dragic was playing out of his mind (52% from 3), gave us a good boost off the bench. Hopefully he can continue improving on that.

We tried to sign Gortat a few years back. Tried to get Chandler through trade this off-season. I think the Rockets have been very aware of their need for an insurance big, but it's not easy/cheap to acquire talented bigs. Heck, we were so desperate for size we overpaid Brad Miller - yuck.

The NBA has changed -- Kelvin Cato's contract (7M/year) would be seen as value right now.

 

Dragic was playing around 13 minutes a game for us, until some huge minutes the last few (meaningless) games that dragged his MPG up. I would like to see him play more next year for sure, but his solid play was not the reason for our surge after the deadline. The lack of Aaron Brook's play was.

Yes, we tried, but we weren't willing to pay the full price until now. Like Clutch mentioned in one of his articles recently, maybe adding Brooks to the deal would have netted us Chandler? But we were not willing to overpay because if Yao happened to come back healthy, we just gave up our starting PG(and whatever else we have to include) for a backup center. I think with that out of the way, we can REALLY go after a center now.

 

Come on, not even close. With Chandler this is a 50-win team at best, and most likely a first round exit.

With a healthy Yao, meaning 25 MPG in the regular season and 30+ MPG in the playoffs, this:

Lowry/Dragic
Martin/Lee
Battier/Budinger
Scola/Patterson
Yao/Hayes

is a squad I'll take and go up against a Dallas or Miami any day. Yes, no way they trade Battier if Yao was healthy. They may not be a shoe in, but certainly a good shot at contending.

Now, you can argue that a "healthy Yao" doesn't exist, which would be a legitimate argument, but that would be a completely different conversation. The question was why haven't the Rockets gotten a center? The answer is they were still banking on Yao.

 

Now looking back on it I wished we followed the Spurs model and tanked the 09-10 season while Yao was out

 

Couldn't you put some of that blame on Moreyball though? Our offer to Gortat was below the full MLE.. Daryl thought creating a gmail account would overcome the extra million or so other teams were offering. Right now, Gortat's contract looks like a steal.. but at the time, it was trumped as "Morey has a set price and he'll never overpay! Genius!"

Hopefully we've learned a few lessons.

 

Yep, Cuban has proved that being thrifty in the market will only get you lemons.

 

Cx- even with the mythical healthy yao, they were never contenders. The lineup u put out doesn't reflect the difficult nature in which the rockets would have trying to implement yao while still trying to do what's best for the team. Sure yao helps defensively, but clogging the baseline offensively and getting exposed in the pick and roll would still make the rockets 1 and done if that. Chandler on the other hand allows the rockets to keep their flow offensively while also being a better more mobile defense. Would it make them contenders? No, but neither would the lineup you put out. In the end and at this point, chandler has a bigger overral impact on this rocket team.

 

Orlando ended up matching either way. I think a lot of us saw potential in Gortat and liked what he could bring, but at the end of the day he was a backup that wasn't a sure fire homerun. Anything above the MLE would have just been imprudent. Nothing to do with Moreyball. For instance, would you pay $10M/year for Asik? I think he has the potential to earn a contract like that for sure. But a team would be crazy to offer that now. I'd sure as hell take him for Courtney Lee though.

 

The mythically healthy Yao is a 6-time allstar and second best if not BEST center in the NBA. Chandler is no comparison. The biggest need on this team is a shot creator and a rim protector. Yao fills both holes. As efficient and fast pace as our offense was this year, we lacked that one guy who we could dump the ball down to in a tight playoff game where the opponent has scouted out all your plays and the only thing that can beat them is unstoppable, overwhelming, individual talent. You can argue whether Yao was that, but he was certainly our best shot at it, and fits the bill way more than Chandler in his wildest dreams. Could Chandler's length and quickness have helped out more in some schemes and matchups? Sure. But as a package, offensively and defensively, it is nowhere close.

Anyways, pointless to argue that now. Water under the bridge.

 

How many finals did this great version of yao. Ming produce. The rockets need wayore than this guy from 5 years ago because everything changes. Its not that linear in basketball. There are huge tradeoffs with yao in the lineup with this group of players. Just as we saw in the utah series or any other team, when they need a basket, yao is in pnr. Put him in enough and the drop it to him becomes meaningless because he's tired. Not to mention, he's on the baseline where all the action is going on. Chandler on the other hand is a modified version of hayes. He allows the rockets to play the same way offensively and improve defensively. If scola is your 4 and martin is your sg, you need a agile,quick, defender on the court. Personally, I don't think martin or scola can be part of a contending team unless you have great defender at other spots.

 

How many 1st rounds did Tmac get out of? KG? That doesn't mean they weren't elite talents though, just because they lacked the support. What has changed over the last 5 years is we have accumulated a great deal more talent around Yao. Problem is that great version of Yao is gone.

BTW I agree that Chandler could make our defense even better than with Yao. But Yao's shot making would take the offense to another level than it is currently. Maybe not as statistically "efficient" for the stat geeks, but more unstoppable. If that makes sense.

 

Having a 6'6 starting center for two straight years is the most damning aspect of Morey's tenure as GM.

But he is not willing to fill a position of need if it makes it harder to acquire a star player by overpaying.

The moneyball strategy is if you don't have a star, fill your roster with BPA rookie scale contracts and productive veterans that aren't overpaid, positional need is low priority. Eventually a rookie will become a star or you can trade for one.

 

Last comment until the draft. Willing to give Morey full credit if he comes up with something in the offseason or draft to have a solution at one of his goals. Center or star. Take me to the woodshed Morey. Please. I am begging you to. Internet slap my comments off this planet in this thread.