Feel Free to lock this up, but this is not really a mike james thread I'm a mike james fan, of his game. his personality could use some work. I believe he has been highly underrated his entire career. but my god, is this the player that we have 50 billion threads on, worrying if he's coming to houston. mike james is at best an average nba player. he had a great year, but that is one year, the guy is already on the wrong side of thirty. and this is the player we are begging to save our off-season. what happened. did i miss something, was I in a time warp. this is yao and mcgrady, they were supposed to be the free agent magnets, but the best free agent landed since they've been together is bob sura. what is going on? I'm not mcgrady's biggest fan, but I understand he is one of the most uniquely talented players in nba history, and add to that we have arguably the best center next season. and the biggest name who we can land is mike james. is this all management's fault? what happened to the promise of this team just two seasons ago? its becoming surreal.
The Rockets have the MLE to work with this offseason, Mike James is the best FA available that is willing to take that type of money. He also happens to be the best fit as a 3rd scoring option and shooter. Besides the TE, we don't have any valuable assets to trade. Luther Head right now has the best trade value on the team. Our 2 best previous assets were Gay and Swift, but management dealt that away for an average role player. I don't want to whine about the Gay/Swfit trade. But I will always think we could have gotten A LOT more than Shane Battier.
its not about what they have to work with, I understand that, it just seems that guys aren't even interested in playing with the rockets.
I share your pain regarding Rocket management and how bad some of their choices have been .... but Mike James is no "average NBA player". I don't know what the averages are these days, but as a three-point shooter alone, James is way, way above average. As I've said before -- his Raptors season was awesome ... but just focus on what he did for us the year before last. It's funny to watch people (not you pgabriel but others) now rip James as being schizo, or crazy, or unstable. Those qualities are exactly the reason we need Mike James (along with his talent of course). I think we have enough of the mellow-cheese variety in Yao, T-Mac, Battier, Juwan and Rafer. We have our fair share of charity workers and win-or-lose-we're-smiling front men. Right now, this team could use a little Charles Manson. The Rockets need Mike James.
Well to be fair, this is a weak year for FAs. TMac and Yao have to prove something on their own first. They gotta prove they can carry a team and they are only missing a peice or two to put them over the top. Also, consider we had a well rounded team prior to the TMac trade and we traded away 3 starters to get TMac. Then we dumped all our bad contracts and we were left w/ nothing but Yao and TMac, basically. The strategy to bring in vets and dump our contracts almost worked 2 years ago. We were 3-feet away from advancing to the 2nd round (isn't that how far Finnley was standing out of bounds?). You can blame the Rockets that this strategy didn't work last season but the two biggest injuries weren't vets. Even with a young team, last season would have been a disaster.
Last off season it seemed like a lot of players seemed interested in coming here. But we were coming off a 50 win season and were considered a team on the rise. Last season was a disaster, there is the cloud of T-Mac's injury hanging over the team, and our last big free agent signing just got shipped back to the team he was trying to get away from. I think all of those things factor into it.
pgabriel, i'm so with you on this. i wrote an email to a friend this morning saying nearly the exact same thing.
I've share the same sentiments ad nauseum with no real progress. I just hope now that since CLUTCH posted this, the Mike James detractors can slowly go away. And what happens when James is being heavily courted by the Mavericks? The detractors go into full blown denial mode: "We never needed him in the first place" "He was too much of a headcase and an egotrip to begin with" "I guess his 'promise' wasn't real " "We should go after Drew Gooden instead!" If James leaves for Dallas (which I still think it's unlikely), I want those same detractors to watch every Rockets/Mavericks game next season and watch how James torches Rafer 4 times a season.
i think players around the leage will think twice now before signing with the rockets because of these 2 previous trade decisions the rox has made james for alston and now fighting to get james back because they made a mistake gay and swift for battier who will not necesarrily get the rox over the hump this year and also the trade overall is lopsided
#1 I definately agree that this is a really weak FA class, after the top 4 or 5 players there is a significant drop in talent. #2 Where would the mavs up james? they have terry locked up at PG, Stackhouse off the bench, Howard at SG, and they just drafted another guard. Is there enough mins for James?
I don't think James for Alston was a mistake. It was based on need, we needed a pass first PG not someone that was gonna take all the shots. When Sura went out, we had to make a move. Of course, in hindsight, we could've seen that with all the injuries, James was who we needed for offense.
no...don't misunderstand me...i want Mike James. i also wanted Shandon Anderson. i wanted stromile swift. i realize that mike is better than both of those guys...really, i do. it's just it's amazing to me that it all comes to this...that we're all waiting on pins and needles for mike james. this franchise is in it's 3rd offseason of putting together players to play with yao and tracy. last summer they let mike james go and paid for stromile...this summer, they're unloading stromile and hoping to get to pay for mike james. there seems to be little direction...and not much of a plan.
Totally agree. Time to stop hanging on JVG's words of "no knuckleheads" IMO. This team needs some players that have an I dont care attitude. It does matter to the team. 2 years ago was an anomaly. That chemistry is usually developed not just there all of a sudden. The FO needs to stop flirting with only one guy and play like they want to win. They seem a little slow, or whatever the case, but Mike James' attitude is needed on this team, as well as his shooting and all of those other things he can provide. There are alot of fickle Rockets fans around, and you cant do anything but laugh at the flip flopping. I cant wait to see the trade Tmac fans to be the first in line to say they love him more than ever next season.
I for one am pretty happy with their plan for this offseason, which has been to add two quality starters, assuming Mike James comes. Although we aren't going the traditional route of getting lots of rookies, we have gotten younger, mostly because Head/Battier/Hayes/Novak are going to take a lot of the minutes that last year were filled by Wesley, Howard, and Bowen. There's no point in ripping the fact that we're going after Mike James, since realistically he's the best option available this year. We simply don't have the cash to bring in any of the bigger names like Al Harrington or Bonzi Wells. Even in our heyday, free agents didn't make huge contract sacrifices to sign with us. At best we got a $1-2 million discount, which is far less than what we would need to get an impact FA. The malaise we're feeling is really a result of decisions made 2 years ago, not this year. That was when we brought in Wesley, Sura, and Barry. We could have instead gone for a bunch of young unproven players, and hoped somebody panned out. It would have made TMac year 1 a lot less exciting, but we'd probably be in better shape now.
