(How much) Are we better than the 2009 Playoff (2nd Round) Team?

The 09' team could actually play defense and make defensive stop when needed. This team will always have to outgun our opponent, which makes it harder to win in the NBA.

Until this team has a legit shot blocking back up C, it will continue to give up massive amounts of points to the opponents, especially with Yao playing only 24 minutes.

There are some things to be optimistic about and there are certainly things that make you wonder if Morey will make another move or when.

Its annoying when your team has championship caliber players/potential, but everything depends on health and the players you are depending on being healthy are always hurt.

 

Summer league is a real shoddy indicator of anything. Players are often asked by management to use SL to work on weaker aspects of their games. Hence Patterson's proclivity for chunking up 3's, something I highly doubt we'll see much of in this regular season.

Remember how Landry did in his first summer league? He stunk it up. I would defer rather to Patterson's three-year body of experience in college, where for the first two years he was the anchor and unquestioned star of his team, ranked in the top 7 easily on most draft boards. In the third year he worked to round out his game for the benefit of his team which had overnight turned into a mercenary ship.

Throughout this journey we can be certain of a few things regarding his game: 1. He can play defense; 2. He's tough and athletic; 3. He's a team player; 4. He's at ideal size for his position. The rest (including his offensive game) has potential for developing--there's not a single thing that is impossible for him to get better at just based on his current skillset--but honestly those other things are gravy. The player just described, as is, represents a huge upgrade at the backup PF position and the perfect complement to Yao if he gets good enough to relegate Scola to 6th man/first-scorer off the bench status.

 

How can we tell this years team is better if we haven't even seen the team play yet?

 

i was basing it on the handful of kentucky games i had seen the past couple years. and compared with landry's body of work in college, i was not nearly as impressed. patterson was not nearly as quick and explosive around the basket as landry, who was admittedly a low-post beast at purdue. patterson does have greater range on his jumper and is a more fundamentally sound defensive player though. but i just don't see how he will get on the floor ahead of chuck (who's an elite defender) or hill (who's longer, a better rebounder, and more effective in the paint). again, i hope i'm wrong :grin:

 

Not better at all. It's all depends on Yao

 

But yet Hill is getting a lot of crap from the fans from his summer league play even though they were featuring him on offense, which will not be his role on the team. They seem to forget his play in NBA games in which he was an impact and contributed in every game he came in for the Rockets.

I wonder how many ppl actually saw every summer league game. Patterson had one good game, and after that he couldn't buy a basket and his rebounding and defense was very poor. The fact that he said in an interview that guarding Hayes was not easy even though Hayes is limited offensively, speaks volumes. I've been hearing more praise about Hill's play in training camp than Pat's, but it seems like ppl are always throwing him under the bus and ready to ship him out.

 

Easily. Last season i knew that team would be better than what everyone else was thinking. We have a good defensive bench with three starters on it, an interesting rookie and 2 more big men than we had last season.

 

you got the 4 all messed up. me thinks yous a landry homer??

 

Not sure if it has been mentioned or not but Courtney Lee is a better defender of shooting guards than Ron Artest was/is.

 

no way. Battier and Artest were a killer perimeter defensive duo and we were scrappy and won games. This team has the talent before it can prove it is as good as that team

 

True dat. People can trump us up or knock us down as much as they want, but it will never turn out exactly as anyone predicts in the off-season.

 

I just hope we make the playoffs and get to play the Fakers. I'd love to put them out of the mix. My quality of life would significantly increase with this scenario.

Regarding the original post, why didn't you add an element of surprise to the equation. Somebody this year is going to surprise us. Somebody always does.