Your basing an entire season off of the potential of a draft pick. "Deep" draft is very subjective. Deep compared to what? RA has a proven track record of overachieving with injury-prone rosters. The distance between, as you wrote, the 14th and 20th pick should not yield a decision to tank. Plain and simple, we shouldn't tank, nor are we. Listen to DM on a podcast and tell me differently. No GM would come out and say that his team was tanking, but you could tell by watching the games. If you watch the Rockets, which I'm sure you do , the scrappiness and fight evidences a plan to make the playoffs.
Everybody is using the "develop young players" theory to give an excuse to tank, or lose games. Wouldn't making it to the playoffs be an even greater way to develop them, and test their strengths and weaknesses? I hate tanking, I've never been the biggest on morality but I consider I see it as a "selling your soul to the devil" type strategy. Tanking is one of the worst things you can do to a fan, after all tanking does mean LOSING PURPOSELY, and who likes a loser? I think making the playoffs isn't too much to ask of this team anyways. A 6-8 seed is feasible right now, forget tanking to get John Wall or a lottery pick I just think it stupid.
If the Rockets TRULY believe in THIS season, NOW is the time to make a move. Because they have 2 key rotation players out for a number of games when they already had little margin for error. For a winning team thats PLENTY reason to look to deal. AND they are right close to the deadline. If Lowry and Ariza are out a few games, the Rockets drop a couple winnable games and the deadline comes without a major move, that will say enough for me. Time to Sherman/Bradley the rest of the way.
If the Rockets are a 6-7 seed, give it a go. As soon as the Rockets drop out noticeably, dont try to drop back in....is I think the consensus opinion How ELSE can a team improve internally after a busted season than to let young guys gain experience and learn the craft? What do you gain out of putting in an established product 35 year old Juwan Howard? Look at Portland the past few years, they did it with young guys growing into their own.
So you're saying that, for example, we make the playoffs with Taylor getting 0mpg is better for Taylor's development than him playing 15-20mpg and us missing the playoffs? You know how well Darko developed while sitting on the bench with his team keep getting into the finals each year?
Ah GEEZ Clutch ! Next thing you know you will be mentioning Frank Reich and 35-3, or maybe Mike Renfro being ruled out of bounds. Why not just stick a fork in our eyes? DD
For the fans who pay for games and for the integrity of the basketball, the answer would be no... But if we want to have a better Rockets next season, then yes... Take a deep breath and ask yourself this question, do you put your personal agenda before the team's best interest? If no, then you are a die hard Rockets fan, good for you, and we should tank... :grin: :grin:
This should be the starting lineup for the rest of the season....so we can develop our young talent. Starters: Aaron Brooks(25)/ Conroy(28)/ Lowry(23)*Injured Jermaine Taylor(23)/ Temple(23) Chase Budinger(21)/ Battier(limited minutes)/ Ariza(24)* Injured Carl Landry(26)/ Scola(limited minutes)/ Cook(limited minutes) Joey Dorsey(26)/ Hayes(limited minutes)/ Andersen(limited minutes) *(i dont know the time table's for Ariza and Lowry's injury but I'm assuming a couple of weeks) Lets see what the young guys have, plus Ariza & Lowry are most likely out for the next couple of games, and both Scola & Battier are 30+, so we need to rest are vets. PS. they sure would be fun to watch.... --RB
Tank? Nah. But hopefully we do make a move. Espn still has Houston as willing to push for Bosh oddly enough. Despite potentially only having him for half a season. That would be cool, but the rumors of this and AI to me seem like triggers that will never be pulled.
You have to be pretty lame as a fan of an NBA team to want to tank, at any point. And yes, that is going directly at all 120 of you who voted to tank. This is a lottery system, which means, even getting the worst record in the NBA won't assure you jack. Look at what the Heat did a year or two ago, they purposely put Wade on the shelf, traded away Shaq and tanked and all they got was Beasely. How is the number one pick helping the Clippers this season? How big of an impact did Greg Oden make to the Blazers? That Ricky Rubio is certainly a great top 10 pick right? Sometimes star players are there for the taking in the draft and sometimes they aren't. But banking your hopes on the draft is about as smart as putting your rent money on a Super Bowl prop bet. Look at the number of teams that have done so in the past and it worked out for them, not really that many. It takes more then one player to make a team work and by tanking, you are sending a message to any potential ingoing or outgoing FAs, that this is a scrub organization, like your Clippers, Warriors and even Bucks, that they don't have to waste their time on or take seriously. The only winners in tanking, are the opposing teams.
If we don't make a move there will be no need to purposefully tank. This team won't make the playoffs as it is currently configured. The league figured out this team's strengths and weaknesses so expect .500 basketball from here on out.
It would not hurt for this team to get more playoff experience this year in preparation for next year. Who knows? Maybe playoff experience this year for our young guys will be more valuable to the team than a first round draft pick whom Rick Adelman probably won't even give a chance to play big minutes next year unless he is a #1-5 pick. Even if we do end up playing the Lakers in the playoffs this year, chances are we will play them again next year if we are healthy playing at a high level. So any playoff experience that guys like Bud, JT, Dorsey are able to get will be very good practice for next year. The poll should say something more along the lines of: Would you rather teach our young team of growing players how to LOSE or how to WIN? I think it's more valuable to teach them how to win.
I agree that other team have figured out this team but there is no way (IMO) we will be a 500 team. Why? 1) We are 50/50 team 2) we will struggle on the road.
I don't think that this team is capable of tanking, not with the type of players we have and the coach we have. They'd compete hard every night no matter what.
