Info re the debate of who was behind the Battier/Gay trade

Yeah its pretty obvious, in fact more than obvious that we would have never done the trade had we known how good a player rudy has become right now. In fact he was putting up 10ppg in his rookie season which was similar to shane's ppg...and look at rudy now...

I'm pretty sure lakers wouldn't trade bynum away for mark blount or something..."just because they are competing"...why did we even have steve novak then if your not even going to give time to rudy...

by the way spurs was going to lose scola for nothing if they didnt trade him, as scola was going to sign a long term contract in europe if he couldnt come to the nba right away...

rudy gay trade was to us like how the scola trade was to the spurs...only ten times worse...

 

If they thought Gay would developed this fast, they probably wouldn't have valued Thabo over Gay. No contradiction there.

HP, you are sounding more and more like SamFisher.

 

I thought Carroll Dawson was still our GM at the time, and he really wasn't pushing for that deal.

 

don't forget, part of the reason why Scola was traded for us, is the salary dump the Spurs gave us Jackie Butler to absorb his contract. Technically, Scola had nothing against the cap for the Spurs, just like Weis has none on the Knicks or us, just "rights" which means NOTHING towards the cap. the Ewing trade for us, was a salary dump, and Weis, we can just let him be our property till he retires, since there is no way in hell anybody is interested in him, unless Carter wants a stand in when he does the Dunk Contest again.

back to the subject, I believe I heard buzz that Gay wouldve been kept by us, if we didn't move down to get Thabo, then again, thats just what i heard. I liked it at first when it happened, hell I was a Battier fan when he was drafted in 2001, I actually wanted the Rockets to take him during that draft. I was at the draft party that year in '06 and all I remembered was the place being pissed off and even Juwon and Chuck Hayes thought it was a bad trade. But I don't look back now, still one of the best moves the franchise made and never look back....

 

There is a difference between drafting and keeping Novak on the roster and drafting and keeping/trading Gay. First of all, Gay and JVG ball don't mix. I actually question how much playing time Gay would've gotten. I'm sure he would've been in the rotation, but I worry that JVG would've pigeon-holed Gay in as the 6th man, which would've slowed his development GREATLY compared to being basically the 2nd option behind in Memphis from the get-go.

Second of all, its all about getting value out of the draft pick. We could deal Novak off, but we wouldn't get a starter, so you might as well keep him and hope as he gets older he gets better. You don't want to draft Gay and then only give him like 24 minutes a game off the bench his first season.

No... its much more similar than you realize. The Spurs gave up a guy that they couldn't use, and even if they could've he would've been coming off the bench or splitting time with Oberto out of position at C. Their situation improved as a result because they got under the lux tax. Its basically the same for us, there were questions at the time of how good Gay could be in JVGs system. We got some salary relief and a sure thing role player out of the deal. We got better as a result from the trade... but so did the Grizzlies (much much better in terms of talent).

 

Morey was interviewed by SR610 right after the Rockets made their pick for Gay. The two things I recall from that was Morey being dismissive of JJ Redick and how he talked about possibly trading down for players like Thabo, etc. That is, if the Battier deal did not go through.

I think the Rockets were supposed to be the only team who had scouted Thabo in Europe a year before the draft. He was meant to be an unknown prior to the pre-draft workouts.

 

you're quick. so you agree...the "Spurs Way" sucks. right?

 

Just because I want to have his babies, doesn't mean he hates the Spurs as much as me.

I mean, do you think the Boston Red Sox fans said, "yeah, we finally won because we did it the Yankees Way."

huh?

 

But Thabo was picked right after we picked. I mean, I suppose we could've traded down and gotten other players, but not Thabo. Anyone who we traded down for would've picked Gay and Chicago would've gotten him. Anyone else we could've landed in the draft was significantly worse than Thabo. Maybe we would've gotten a decent role player in the trade down, but thats basically what we did getting Battier.

 

I've always thought it was a Morey trade. It had his fingerprints all over it. I still stand by the fact that the majority of Clutch readers had just cause to be mortified over that trade. It was a stinker and still is a stinker. The acquisition of Artest only reaffirms that the franchise wishes they could have a mulligan on that one.

 

Gay was an 8th pick. Thabo was a 13th pick.

 

I stand corrected.

My point stands about grabbing Battier and unloading Swift vs grabbing Thabo and a roleplayer (probably worse than Battier) tho.

BTW, take a look at that draft. After Gay the draft goes to ****. You have Brewer, Thabo, Farmar, and Rondo as the only decent players. Everyone else can barely crack the rotation.

 

He is obsessed with pissing on anything Europe. You are obsessed with pissing on anything Spurs.

 

Every team hits a wall once in a while, the rockets may have made a decision there, but there is no other club out there that has always made a win-win or win-lose trade. The rockets basically stole landry, artest and scola. So if its anything to be sad about, its how we unlucky we were to not encounter these steals eariler.

 

ok...so. I hate the Jazz, too. Would you say anything if you noticed me pissing on anything Jazz? Or would you think that was healthy. I mean, I fail to hate the Mavs, because they just make me laugh. Defending the Spurs or wishing we were more like them, for me, is like being a Red Sox fan wishing we were more like the Yankees. I actually only really hate the Jazz when we are playing them, now that Malone is gone. I truly hate the Spurs....always want to see them lose.

This is nothing new. Goes waaaaay back to 1990 and such.

Don't you remember we had a conversation about the Malone, Payton Lakers trying for the 4peat. Everyone wanted the Spurs to beat them. I didn't. I wanted the Lakers to win, because I'd take my chances with Detroit beating the Lakers to prevent the Karl Malone ring from happeneing...but I did not want the Spurs to get anywhere close to a real (not asterix) ring. I've hated the Spurs for a long time.

Bruce Bowen is my most hated player in the NBA, and 2nd on my alltime list next to Malone. I hate flopping, cheating, grabbing teams with a passion. And I hate stupid fans who don't care about bball but think they know **** because the have a smart player like Duncan playing for them. if they had their coveted NFL team, San Antonio fans wouldn't even care. it's similar to how Kings fans thought they were the smartest fans around, because their team played the fanciest offense.

Do you realize mysa.com (their lead newspaper) did a poll of the current most important Spurs about this time last year ... in a poll of 25,000 responses Duncan was voted 4th behind RC Buford, Ginobody and Popovich. I dare you to start a thread about that. Some Spurs fan will defend Duncan not being voted #1.

 

I take you information with a pinch of salt! I don't mean to be rude or anything but I would need a lot of convincing to defere me from my beliefs-which are that having a coach named JVG, bringing in rookie tallent with star potential, was a mistake, and getting a vet named Battier was a more viable player for JVG- he didn't have to teach the NBA Game and he was getting his favorite type player- a defender who could shoot the three ball,
Besides this JVG was filled with the win now mentality and didn't want to develop a team for the future.
Dawson and Morey got the player to fit their coach JVG.

 

Rockets underestimating Gay's progress on a terrible team does not = Rockets regret making the trade. It was NOT a mistake.

Why is it that in every trade, there have to be extremists on both sides? Why can't people just admit that the trade helped both teams, which usually happens 90% of the time? Just move on already!

We haven't gotten out of the 1st round, and there's no proof that Rudy Gay would help us get out of the 1st round either.

 

How many more Battier for Gay trade will there be in the next year?

How many years will it take to be over it?

I do recognize that many people obviously like to talk about it, but when will they get over it?

 

Haha, yes I remember that. I think that was the first time I noticed how much you hated the Spurs. Anyone who would want Malone's team to win must have some pretty intense hatred towards their opponent.

BTW, I could have put myself alongside you and Sam. I am obsessed with pissing on anything Lakers. But I figured I wasn't in the same league with you guys.

 

I know... just be happy the Grizzlies didn't win a title that year with Gay being rookie of the year or some ****. Then we would have a Red Sox like curse on us for 100 years probably.