Wel Rudy had good game in SL last night and he is of course good young player but I think battier is more valuable. I'm only missin' Stro cause he was a great PF, very strong and athletic...
And if we had traded Yao or McGrady for an extra rookie to go with with the 8th pick, we'd have a lottery pick, too. Some of you guys would rather have a bad record in order to get a high pick a high pick than to actually have watched a team fight through injuries to have had a winning year... all because the Rockets lost game 7 by a few points. That's the kind of perverted priorities is what the NBA gets for rewarding losing.
Some of us realized the Rockets needed youth and athleticism and Shane Battier would not deliver us to the promised land.
Last season was good because the bar was set low. It was nice, and definitely a suprise - but the fact remains that the championship, even the second round promise was never fulfilled. Where was the "Win now"?
Wow. Even though I usually say that summer league games don't matter, that statline is pretty much domination. That is a pretty good indication that he is for real. He also only had 3 fouls despite the Warriors fast pace and a lot of players have been getting 8-10 fouls.
We are going to look back on the trade in 5 years kicking ourselves or laughing our asses off. I hope we are laughing.
Name me one talented player who did not have potential. Not all players with potential become superstars but there are no talented players who did not have potential. Talent and potential are mutually exclusive? Completely illogical.
Rudy Gay is being seriously overrated here. Sure he's young, but he was quite subpar when compared to NBA players as a whole. He sure didn't smoke people the way true rookie sensations have done.. Gay's shooting percentages were quite poor, and he was a high-usage player as well. Battier was the opposite, being low-usage but very high efficiency. Someone earlier said that Gay's rookie stats are comparable to T-Mac's sophomore stats, but that's not true. With about 4.4 mpg more of playing time, Gay averaged 1.2 less rpg and 1 less apg. Just because Gay can posterize Yi in a summer league game full of scrubs doesn't mean he would have made this team better last season.
And Battier made the team better? It depends on how you define better. If I gave you 3 pennies, you'd be richer. Does that matter? Is it material? What's a 1st round loss mean in terms of being better? How much better did he make us?
How about 18 wins better? Would Gay have done that? Before and after is the only real valid method of comparison. If the whole season is judged on one playoff series, then I guess Gay was a total failure, since his team didn't even have a chance to loose one? If your only measure is winning playoff series, then there is only 1 team in the NBA that didn't screw the entire season up. BTW, it has been often repeated that Thabo Sefolosha would have been the guy if the Rockets had been drafting for themselves. Dreamcasting Gay is cognitive onanism in its most self-indulgent form.
We probably wouldn't have drafted Rudy Gay if the trade didn't happen. Remember the Rockets picked Gay for Memphis. If it were the Rockets' own pick they probably would have picked someone else. Rudy Gay is going to be a star in this league. Battier might have a chance to helping the Rockets win a series in the playoffs.
