If these dudes ain't motivated already somethings wrong with them. Sorry but whenever I see "____is motivated because____" its a little irritating. You ought to be highly motivated already to win everytime you step on the court, for professional pride, self pride, and the fact you get paid millions to play a game.
I agree with you but NBA players are human beings. As such, many of them take both their salaries and the privilege of playing in the NBA for granted. For every T-Mac that dedicates himself hard year round there is a Michael Olowokandi who only tries to play the year when his contract expires. Most players fall somewhere in between.
yeah, we had troubles, but TMac and yao was playing at another level. We woulda had a struggle, but I have no doubt we coulda had a run at the WCF
m_cable, I agree with most of your posts, but what does this mean? We would have had to beat SA to get to the WCF's and will again until they don't win the division. Phoenix last year was irrelevant to us unless we got through SA. We got beat by the Mav's, who were then executed by the Spurs. How can anyone here say with a straight face that we could've gotten to the WCF's last year? T-Mac, Yao, Barry and Dik had a full season playing together last year amongst our regular rotation. You can throw Bowen in there if you want to. Sura and Wesley were injured in the playoffs and not themselves. So we'd have beaten SA how? Our improbable chemistry against theirs which has been forged with time and playoff success? Uh, uh. When guys talk about the WCFs this year I'm very happy to listern, but in terms of last year we come off as sounding like wannabes or just poor losers.
We would have faced Phoenix after the Dallas series. then faced SA in the WCF. Also Dallas got beat by Phoenix. What playoffs are you thinking of?
The Suns were the top seed last year, and they bounced out the Mavs. Remember Nash going ballistic against Dallas and carrying Phoenix to the conference finals.
man, declan, if you weren't a regular poster that I actually like, I would so be going off on you right now
Ide be happy with that, the reason we had the hard push before the playoffs was how we started the season. If we can start the season with a good record and play the latter half of the season like we did last season we could easily have a better record than SA.
Bless you man, please forgive me and I like your posts too . I do remember now. My profound apologies. I have SA on the brain these days.
Nah, changes were coming game 7 blowout or no game 7 blowout. CD just addressed the obvious needs to get to the next level, get faster and more athletic and get a true PG, its not like one game exposed those needs, we have been talking about these needs all along. Next years agenda will be to find replacements for Barry, Wesley and Deke.
Unless Head shows that he can develop into a legit PG (which would be even better because they are harder to find), then I could see him being Wesley's replacement. They're both slightly undersized (Wes is more than slightly) SGs but good defenders, and can play off the ball, shoot it from the perimeter, and do a little ball-handling. At least that's the scouting report on Head. For Barry's replacement, I was thinking of drafting JJ Redick. He doesn't have Barry's passing flair, but that shooting stroke is hard to ignore. He might even be available in the 2nd round, and we do have the Knicks 2nd rounder next year. Another thing, if DA plays well, we'll probably have to use part or all of the MLE to re-sign him. That would be well worth the cost, if he plays well, considering that we got him on the cheap this year. In terms of Deke's replacement, decent backup centers are a dime a dozen. GREAT backup centers the caliber of Deke don't come around much at all. Hopefully in two years, Yao can handle his minutes and fouls so that he doesn't need to get bailed out by Deke so much.
Precisely my thinking. I've been thinking for some time now that a 40-point blowout to end the postseason was precisely the fire needed to spur this team (pardon the expression) to new heights. That's why I would not be at all surprised if they make it to the Finals this year. At the very least, I won't be surprised if every Dallas/Houston game turns <b>seriously</b> ugly.
I disagree. No "sense of urgency" would be so extreme that you'd trade away the guy with the third best field goal percentage in the league.
You're one up on me, in that you were telling Dallas fans you'd pick up Swift. I was at a Bennigans near Katy, and drinking their lovely 23 oz beers while mourning the slow-but-steady decline of the Rockets' loss. That last 3-pointer to make it a 40 pt loss was just plain <b>brutal</b>. The friggin' bench, man...
I was just plumb tickled by Mutombo saying he was "looking forward to wagging [his] finger in Phoenix". Hope to see that this year.
Now that's a true fan bleeding Rockets red. Switched channels to avoid the embarrassment. I suffered till the bitter end. It was painful.
I hear you brother. I damn near cried in my chicken wings and beer. My poor girfriend suffered through it for 3 days with me. Thank God she was there to help me through that trying time.
