then why are you in this thread. the context of thead is that houston was excited because they thought they would get a champion player, instead they got a guy who the guys said they would get when he left orlando. the writer said nothing about steve francis, madmax just had to remind us that hey, we didn't get the championship player but we got rid of the houston player he hates more than anything else, so he has no problems with mcgrady's faults
since all you front office houston personal who are members of this site and have so much intuition as to what is going on behind closed doors can you please give me a job because i obviously know more about basketball than you and i am recent college graduate looking for job and if you fon't work for the rockets please try to keep the speculation to a minimum
see i've never liked stevie's playing style - from day one he's here; and i thought to make a historically huge trade just to get him was a mistake by rudy and cd. he competes hard and that was the only thing i liked about him (but i doubt he's lost his fire by now). the trade at the time made every sense. it's the sort of trade every gm would do w/o hesitation. none. how mcgrady and steve did after the trade is all hindsight, totally irrelevant.
really, is that why you show up in every steve thread, even though we know you really don't care, like you're in the thread in the dish also today
you completely edited my post leaving out words and then responded to a strawman. did tj teach you that?
What are you, the hall monitor? I don't hate Steve Francis. But even if I did it would be entirely irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. My criticism here isn't for Steve...but for second guessing the Rockets for making that trade for T-Mac (which is exactly what the original article was all about)...but waiting 4 years now to do it here, locally...and then doing it by failing to mention that what we traded away to get him didn't amount to squat.
man, i don't know how this got so personal. sorry to offend you, pgabriel. you're actually one of my favorite posters here so i'd rather just leave it at this.
the guy isn't second guessing the rockets, first of all his point is we told you so, so that isn't second guessing. secondly, fans absolutely knew this team would be a championship contender when they traded for mcgrady. it isn't, there are a lot reasons but part of that is because of the criticism mcgrady got coming from orlando. his faults have been realized, and they have a right to say they told us so. and lastly, steve francis or not, orlando is a better team than houston right now, and they have a playoff series win in the last years since the trade, so they have scoreboard. yes, i know that has nothing to do with francis, but they can still say they told us so
you're not offending max, but I do have to challenge you on your assertion that everything's okie dokie as far as the trade is concerned because of the team got rid of steve and the rest of the people they traded. the rockets are better, but they aren't where they thought they would be, and part of that is do to exactly what this writer is saying. some of it is undue criticism to tracy.
Please show me where I said everything was okie dokie. This is another strawman, pgabriel. More assumption.
actually you're right, but the more accurate point should be this guy isn't wrong because we got rid of steve francis, which is the point you made in your first post. and the point i'm making is yeah, if you disliked steve francis enough, then yes, that this team has made no progress towards expectations is not a problem because we still at least got rid of steve francis. iow, 4 year later, the evaluation of tracy on this team has very little to do with the artist formerly known as the franchise
Again...that's not the point I'm making. I'm not saying it was a good trade merely because we got rid of SF. I'm saying I think the Houston Rockets got the better end of that deal. And for all the problems Me-Mac has and had...it's not as if everything was coming up roses here in Houston. He wrote the article back in 2004 suggesting we were taking on a cancer and that the trade was bad for us....I would argue that the Houston Rockets, despite injuries, put up a better product with T-Mac than they had before without him in the few years prior to the trade. We had expectations because of the T-Mac deal that have not been met. But I didn't hear much expected of the Rockets at all before that trade. Did it work out? Doesn't look like it. Was it better than the status quo? Absolutely. But for an Orlando columnist, who laughed at Houston in 2004, to now make the argument of, "see I told ya so..." He can only do that by ignoring the context of the entire situation. Of the very trade he criticized. It's easy and self-serving to leave out all the facts when assessing it...but it's less than honest, as well. Finally, you keep bringing this back to a like/dislike thing. I don't need to dislike Francis to think that T-Mac was an upgrade.
For what it's worth, the McGrady/Francis trade was obviously good for the Rockets. It didn't yield the results everyone wanted, but it was still a good trade for the franchise. The real debate is did the Rockets make a mistake when they gave McGrady a max contract. I say this as someone who is definitely not a fanboy of either Steve Francis or Tracy McGrady. We gave up a talented, macho, low basketball IQ selfish jerk for a much more talented, smarter, moody, mentally weak, sometimes sissified selfish jerk.
I wouldn't call either one of them jerks, they are both flawed stars, francis's flame has faded entirely, mcgrady still has a chance, but given the grief that guy caught just for pointing out mcgrady's flaws, he has a right to say I told you so.
So when he writes this: "Houston should've known better. The Rockets should've done a little more due diligence. Or just applied a little more common sense." You think its fine and totally complete to ignore what they gave up to get him??? If the original article were written by him around the time he were given a max contract, that would be one thing. But this entire article is him patting himself on the back for pointing out T-Mac's deficiencies (and the Rocket's lack of due diligence in that regard???) without stopping to consider what value was being returned for him. When people talk about sportswriters being lazy and/or self-aggrandizing, this is the sort of thing they point to. The criticism here in this article is for the Rockets...and it's completely misplaced without context.
