[HoopsDaily] Deja Vu: T-Mac Receiving Same Treatment as Tim Hardaway Once Did From Ad

Very unlikely.

I do not think people will look back at the handling of the T-mac situation and felt the outcome was the best one for the Rockets.

I truly hope that's not the case, but that is my sad expectation.

 

It's already the best outcome based on the "addition by subtraction" principle. The players and the coach can now focus on winning games instead of re-inserting McGrady into the lineup. I know Morey won't bring in a bunch of trash so either he gets a player or two who can help the team or he doesn't make any move and McGrady spends the rest of the season away from the team. No lose situation if you're a fan of this team and its winning ways.

 

No one knows if that's the case. You never know with these sorts of things.

Hindsight is 20/20 - only time will tell.

 

Thanks for the post. It's whatever now. Both Tracy and the Organization have left me disappointed. I'll admit it Clutch, you did say it wouldn't end well. I guess I just didn't want you to be right.

I'm not happy with this at all. I still don't see this team being better off by doing this but oh well...

 

To my mind this really seems to be the case. When you're a player's coach I think its naturally that you start to favor some players over the other, however with Rick the ruler it seems his favorites cloud his judgement more often than not.

The article seems to have a valid point, but some of his "evidence" seem to be wrong, most notably the "Bonzi" example. Rather than that guy, why we look at what happened last season:

*Ron Artest was basically given the JVG-Tmac treatment, given the greenlight to shoot 20X a game, and given mad minutes per game at the expense of Von Wafer

*Yao Ming was virtually run into the ground during the first 6 games of the season, averaging close to 40 mins a game despite coming from injury AND even in blowouts. As a result both Hayes and Mutombo didn't get any time

This season it seems to be the case again:

*Ariza gets Artest treatment, at the expense of Tmac, C-bud and JT.

*Bryan Cook gets minutes while Pops didn't see any PT at all, rendering the "tough selection" the Rox had between him and that other pg prospect we had in summer camp useless.


The only consolation I have is that DM and his crew are stat geeks and would definitely see if these guys Adelman are playing at the expense of other players are costing us the game. If DM and his crew are fine with Rick the ruler's ways then I'm fine with it as well. Still, its kinda' silly to keep playing the guy who shoots 1-10 from the floor over virtuall unknowns. I mean, what the worse JT, C-bud and Tmac can do? Shoot 0-10?

 

What goes up, must come down. Stupid is as stupid does. Its not whether you win or lose...

 

Kinda' hard to win games when the dude who gets 40 mins a games goes 2-10 from the field. If Ariza has been hitting his shots with consistency I doubt you'd be hearing anything from the Tmac fans. An organization that is committed to winning should play the players that give you the best chance to win period. IMHO we'd have a much higher record had Ariza's minutes been cut back in favor of either C-bud, JT or Tmac.

 

They both shot virtually the same percentage from 3 point land and at the free throw line. Artest might not be the same defender he once was but if you're going to stand on a soapbox whining that Artest "took away" Wafer's PT or playing time, I'd like to remind you that Wafer is a defensive sieve. Just because he's good coming off the bench doesn't mean Wafer is going to blow people's minds with more minutes.

Are you really complaining that our max contract, franchise player plays too many minutes and that these minutes should be given to Hayes and Mutombo? We went 4-2 during that stretch. That's what franchise players need to do--play as long as they need to in order to secure the win.

Wow, an 11th man getting minutes over a 12th man. Last I checked, Pops ain't doing a ******* thing in Toronto and that team don't even know what the word defense means.

What game are you speaking of? And I'm pretty sure Morey is fine with Adelman's rotation because Adelman's using the players that Morey drafted/traded for to a good margin of success.

 

Actually, there is an old video interview on Rockets.com with Adelman during which he talks about his years in Golden State. He said he made the mistake of going in with a pre-conceived system and trying to force players to fit it, instead of building a system around the players' talents. He may be talking about Hardaway here but he doesn't specify.

His two losing seasons in Golden State were also his least successful coaching job by far.

Those interested can find the video "Rick Adelman Special" at the link below. It's a four-parter and it's scattered in the video gallery section.

http://www.nba.com/rockets/video/originals/


Back to topic: does this make Ariza our B.J. Armstrong?

 

Which games are you specifically citing where we could have won if Ariza was replaced with any of those three? If you can't come up with any specific game, then your assumptions are just that.

I'm not saying Ariza isn't sucking right now (because he is) but to say a guy who misses 8 shots (using your 2-10 statement) don't really have much of an effect on a team that takes 84 shots a game.

 

If I remember correctly, Yao complained/voiced his concerns about his usage in "the system" as well. And guess what, they adjusted "the system." After that you didn't see him at the free throw line as much as you saw him in the low post. Star players require a smart coach to alter their schemes/systems to maximize their special talents. Whether Adelman meant it or not, he even acknowledged this to be the case about T-Mac. T-Mac wasn't the guy he was but he was better than how he's been portrayed. But he was damned if did and damned if didn't it now appears. When he put up numbers (10) points he was viewed as selfish, not playing within the system and other negatives. Then when he doesn't aggressively assert himself then he is washed up. Next season is when we will know if Adelman/Morey were right in taking this route. If T-Mac is still unable to elevate and finish around the rim then they made right decision depending who they will have to take back.

If anyone is taken back in a trade and are inserted into the line up then we'll have our true answer. Chemistry was not as important as it was made to be. And it was all about friction between the two.

This team will need to get more out of its current players or acquire someone. I'm hard pressed to believe that they can sustain this pace for the rest of the season plus any playoff run. Just being fun to watch doesn't satisfy me as a fan.

Talk radio will be jumping for a while now. Let's see how much of a decrease in posting occurs once he's gone. Hopefully no more witch hunt threads.

 

Exactly. Worst case scenario is insurance pays tmac to spend the rest of the season in Chicago. No need for a buyout (team isn't paying him anyway!) or a trade for the sake of a trade.

 

Hardaway was only a 6 year vet when he went down. If T-mac had this happen in 2003 the comparison might be good. Hardaway went on to play 6 or more years. I dont think McGrady has 2-3 left in him tops, and none at a 1st-2nd team all NBA level.


Apples to Apple Juice. Same in theory, but different in actuality.

 

If you ask me let TMac go to LA, so they are out in the first round.

 

Where do you get your numbers? I'm gonna use true shooting % since it takes into account FGS, 3 pts and FTs in one neat stat. According to basketball referrence:

Artest's True Shooting percentage (TS) last season: 0.512
Wafer's TS: 0.541

Playoffs:
Artest's TS: 0.471 (2nd lowest playoff career TS)
Wafer's TS: 0.521 (only playoff TS)

We have the league's best all around defender aka Battier and the one of the league's most underrated post defenders in Hayes. Both are defensive liabilities. You really think we don't need an offensive injection, even if it meant a defensive dropoff?

Yao Ming is paid max money, but he isn't a max player...max players can play 30+ mins a game without breaking down (aka not Yao Ming). Yao Ming just recovered from his injury correct? There was talk of limiting his practice time to preserve his health, correct? Well lo and behold, look at his game logs:

Game 1: Memphis (scrub team, 9 pt lead) 38:12 mins
Game 2: Dallas (good team, 10 pt lead) 40 mins
Game 3: OKC (scrub team, 12 pt lead) 39:02 mins
Game 4: Celts (good team, 4 pt loss) 28 mins
Game 5: Portland (lucky ass shot, 1 loss) 41 mins
Game 6: Clips (worst team in league, 9 pt lead) 37:41 mins

^Wow, what a great way to manage our franchise player's PT! None of these games were close (5 pts below) except for Boston, and in that game Yao only got 28 mins! A lot of posters here were saying stuff like Yao needs more PT since he's sitting out practices, but considering Yao ended up injured again at the end of the year I dunno how they can justify RA's time management skillz.

Last I checked, Pops was tearing up the summer league with blocks, rebounding and terrific in your face D. Sure, summer league success doesn't matter in the league (aka Donte Greene rule), but if your team is getting punked in the boards, and your Scolandry hayes combo isn't getting the results you wanted, do you:

A) go with the 3 million dollar contract known as Bryan Cook
B) go wth bench player who recently tore up SL

Now don't get me wrong, both of these guys are scrubs. But before last season Wafer was a scrub who tore up SL and became a useful bench player. Pops tore up SL exactly like Wafer did, why would you not give him PT when he might give your team exactly what it needed(blocks, rebs)? Over Bryan Cook? Really? As I recall Cook had that -1 +/- that game we lost by 1 pt

There plenty of games in the season when Ariza jacked up a horrible percentage and we lost the game. If you're really interested I can pore through the list and pick out several games. I bet there's at least 2 where C-bud was having a terrific shooting night but only got 20 mins, Ariza shot sub 40% while getting at least 30 mins and we lost the game.

 

FIXED

 

LOL, this makes me think of the Coach of the Year Curse. Imagine if RA gets it this year, then gets fired next because Tmac is beasting on another team!
I doubt it would happen though because the organization really wants to get rid of him aswell!

 

1. JVG couldn't incorporate Bonzi, not Adelman. When Adelman joined, Bonzi's numbers went up from the JVG year by a decent amount.

2. Bonzi was traded, not waived, for Bobby Jackson. That trade worked out overall or, at the least, didn't hurt the team as the writer suggests.

3. 95-96 Hardaway played 1 more minute per game than Armstrong, despite Armstrong shooting way better in all categories. He also took 3 more shots per game than BJ. It is not as if Adelman wouldn't play him.

4. Hardaway didn't improve once he got to Miami as the article suggests. His minutes just went up. Because Bimbo Coles had been their PG and Miami had nobody. His "per 36 minute" numbers actually got worse in Miami.

5. Miami got the better end of the trade because Hardaway was better for the Heat than Willis and Coles for the Warriors and was important to a playoff team (even though his knees cost him a lot of playoff games) but the article doesn't mention that Hardaway had demanded a trade and that he specifically wanted to play for Riley. The field wasn't level for that trade so GS took an expiring Willis and a backup PG in Coles and basically did Hardaway a favor.

6. In general, it is understood that Adelman did not fit and work in GS. That is his one bad period of his career.

 

hey, remember that time when yao got a stress fracture in his foot? yeah? i'm pretty sure the stress fracture would have been less severe if he had played less minutes.

 

This is BS, plain and simple, and it's now becoming obvious. That was just a PR excuse for RA's personal issues with mac. When they trade him for an all-star player, that player's going to do the same thing. There's no such thing as a star player that plays like a role player, otherwise they would be role players. And role players don't win championships without star players.