Overall, him being on the team makes us a better team, in spite of him making the role players play worse, if that makes sense. The talent he brings outweighs the detrimental effect he has on Adelman's offense and specifically the role players. If he could remove the clanging-contested-pull-up-heat-check-jumpers from his game and cure his penetrataphobia, this wouldn't be so bad, but I doubt he will. No empirical evidence here, just the sense/frustration I get from watching. Maybe someone can pull out some stats to counter this, and if so I will adjust my view. The assumption here is that there is a player(s) out there that could bring at least some of the talent T-Mac brings, yet enhances the play of our other players as opposed to dtracting from it, has a better effect on the offense, and actually tries on defense as opposed to giving up tip dunks to Ronnie Brewer because he cant be bothered to box out his man (/rant). I don't know if that's a valid assumption though.
I'm not hiding anything : Yes I have lost faith in T-mac because he's proven to me the type of guy he is.. I wish I was wrong but he has done nothing to change my views. It's about character,determination,loyalty,heart and more but those qualities I hardly see in this guy. He has skills you can't teach but you need more than just skill to be the best, to take your team to the next level.
IMHO I think he makes us better...by coming off the bench as a spark plug, because when he is starting, the offense just does not flow and his jumper is not as reliable as it used to be and now his FT% is not even great anymore. What is the point of slashing to the hoop with a less than reliable back and you end up missing freethrows. But if hes coming off the bench to give us that scoring punch, then you have to ask, do you want to pay a guy 20 mill to come off the bench? Or do you trade him for good 2nd tier players who can make the offense flow better. I would opt to have TMac come off the bench for the rest of the year and explore trading options when the season is over and we are bounced out of the first round again. He is a talented player...just not for what he is getting payed.
But, let's say you were required to walk over sharp rocks. Would you rather have a pair of say, Air Jordans that are too small, or no shoes at all? Let's say those are your only two available choices. Of course, you'd choose to have the Air Jordans, even if they are too small. Maybe you could cut out the toes like Tom Hanks did in Cast Away . However, if you could find a pair of less prestigious shoes, say Pro-Wings that, however, fit you perfectly, you'd choose those, wouldn't you? Spoiler Sincerely, Kenny "the Jet" Smith
Where is teh option for "he makes us better overall but a 20 millon guy should make us waaaaay better"
If you thought T-Mac slows down the offense, just put Arenas and Yao together. That is why the Wizards are doing great without Arenas. Another case of addition by subtraction.
What ClutchCityReturns may be getting at is that Tmac gets us better, but not good enough for a ring. And perhaps someone not as good as Tmac but fits better w/in the system will have a greater net result. That's just my interpretation. I myself haven't lost 'faith' in Tmac. He's got what it takes, no doubt. But his whole mental approach w/ the team is just dead wrong right now. We beat Golden State at their own game last night. Remember what Tmac said after the Utah loss? 'I was trying to get everyone going in the first half. I was trying to give everyone confidence early on.' Well none of our guys needed their confidence to be built up last night. None of them needed a single person to be the magic playmaker for everyone else. Everyone would be better served if Tmac plays within the flow of the game rather then just trying to do one thing or another. Everyone will get going if everyone is trying to be aggressive towards the basket. Ok, that said, I also said before Tmac's injury that he would need quite a few games under his belt to integrate better. I'm still sticking to it. It won't happen overnight. The win over Seattle was still more Tmac ball rather then Adelman ball imho. At this rate it looks like he still has a long ways to go.
If Tmac plays wihthin team conecpt and drive to the hoop more, he can be huge for Rockets. He's the best playmaker for Rockets by far when he drives.
Actually that's a really misleading analogy. Here's the correct one. You are in a race. Part of that race is to go over sharp rocks. Now you have an average pair of boots (Luther Head) to get over the rocks, but with a better pair, you might go faster and win the race. You have another pair, but it doesn't fit. Now no matter how that pair performs for you, if it doesn't fit, how can it make you traverse the rocks faster?
what an IQ! When you have shoes that do not fit, you don't have to wear them. and they still can do you good, such as: trade them for something useful, give them to somebody as a gift, use them as a hammer or mugs, save them and wait till you grown up ..... question is: how much better can he make? does it worth $20,000,000 per year?
I think players have to adjust as well. T-mac is suck a focal point that players need to stay aggressive when he's on the court. Problem is that even when t-mac was out of the line-up, our role players struggled to execute down the stretch. That's not the offense or anything, it's just that role-players don't execute well down the strecth. MJ controlled the ball a great deal, but without him the Bulls couldn't execute down the strecth or win big games - we saw that in the years MJ was playing baseball. I think t-mac makes his team mates better. What people don't understand is that you can't look at the beginning of the season, you have to look at the four games Yao and T-mac played together this year, and they were brilliant. Guys played well. Yao played well, and T-mac helped us be clutch in the fourth quarter. Our offense worked beatifully. In those games, both Yao and T-mac are shooting the ball FAR less than last year, and that means other guys are more involved. So I think T-mac HAS adjusted...its just that the haters don't want to see it.
I think it's hard to say how good this team is right now. In the 4 games with T-mac and Yao they are 4-0, including a win on the road in Portland. Our offense did not look great against Golden State - we collapse in the second half and managed to win because of Yao came through. But to think we'd have lost this game had we had t-mac in there is just absurd. We lost to Utah without Yao. Had we had Yao, I'm confident we would have beat the Jazz. Imagine if we were without both T-mac and Yao against the Jazz, do you really think we'd have stood a chance?
It´s not being haters, just check any game that T-Mac plays from here on and stop writing here so much ridiculous thoughts, weren´t we clutch yesterday?? was T-Mac there? Is T-Mac so clutch?? how clutch was he in last year´s PO?? FACT: Team plays as a team without T-Mac. FACT: A team has more chances to win than a star (no matter how clutch he is) FACT: T-Mac is overrated in your view, he is clutch only sometimes and he usually is not.
