pgabriel, i agree with you. It is time to consider moving Battier. I don't think he's a terrible value for the money but he's more of a defensive luxury on a team that has been good defensively and hustled even before he arrived. The only player who i wouldn't consider trading is Luis Scola at this point. Anything we can do to get perimeter playmaking and durabilty should be the priority.
Yea we should trade the whole starting line up so we can get the 1st pick on 2011. What are the fans smoking nowadays?
lets trade Rockets fans who do not appreciate to those who appreciates what he does? teams had paid T-Mac big bucks and he had given good production, couple of scoring titles but zero playoff series wins. how do you explain that? its not about production on the offensive end, it about team ball, where everyone plays their roles. and i think battier is doing a good job on top of being a team first player. every team needs a guy like him, look we all knew Rockets aint gonna win a championship this year but i think we're getting closer, our chemistry will improve next year if we keep the same core, now if we can get T-Mac to chuck his ego out of the window and start playing team ball, i'm pretty sure we'll do better next year but then, coming back from microfracture knee surgery is a damn hard thing to do. we just need to keep healthy, man....imagine if Batman, Mac, Yao and Artest didnt get hurt much this year. i say Batman is a keeper!!
Most teams who lose their two best players suck wildly. The Rocket's D is probably the reason that the Rockets were able to extend the heavily favored Lakers to 7 games.
Funny isn't it? We got a bunch of fickle fans and I'm glad they don't run the team or we would revamp the roster after every loss.
in order to be good in any business you buy low and sell high. our role players values are all inflated after the playoff run. if you can get $1.50 for $1.00 you do it. as an example, if you could have traded tmac after the 04-05 dallas series that went seven games, you could have gotten a ton back for him. now you'd be lucky to get a ham sandwich.
When Yao and Tmac are both healthy, there will be no problem in Rockets' offense, even if some of the players are not good at creating space for themselves. So Battier is definetely needed here. Yao will come back for sure. The only problem is Tmac. Any way, Battier is not the problem.
everyone could be traded in right situations. that said, unless you come up with some details, this thread is useless. and production is not only points, otherwise chuck hayes should be waived already.
wow they guy who started this thread needs to be removed he has to just one of these people who job on the bandwagon. why do you want to trade the heart of this team?
Because paying one of the best post defenders in the NBA 2 million a year is such a waste of money...
Well you can't compare Battier to Carmelo Anthony - his closest approximation on Denver's starting 5 is Jones. Yeah but I don't really know who you get for $6.5 million that is so much better? that's essentially James Posey money - I don't see a huge upgrade there.
Did you even watch the Portland series? Battier may have only made 2-3 three pointers in some of those games, but those were momentum changers. Battier is GLUE. You need a 3 pointer to stop a Portland 12-2 run, Battier's your man to knock one down. Everybody goes cold and the lead gets cut to 1, Battier nails the 3. I saw that over and over in the Portland series. The stats don't show everything. The timing of him making alot of those shots were critical to the Rocket's success. Trading him for anything other than a legitimate superstar would be foolish for the Rockets. $6.5m is dirt cheap for the leader of a team that has so many intangibles. I can without a doubt say, that we would not have made it this far without Battier. Even Yao basically got replaced by Hayes and Brooks this playoffs. I don't think we have anything for what Battier does.
I hate myself for it but I have to agree with the OP. I really don't like talks about the "intangibles" that a player brings. The way JVG talked about Ryan Bowen. I don't care. I want results. Battier is all heart and all hustle but he is also one of the big reasons why we didn't make it past the first round against Dallas and Utah. He DIDN'T SHOW UP, offensively he was non existence and defensively he was ineffective. This year he did better but as someone pointed out, Kobe still shot better than his season average. As for attributing Houston's solid defense to Battier, that's a misconception. Battier is not the main reason, its Yao, its Artest, its Scola. Otherwise Memphis would have been one of the better defensive teams during Battier's stay there. People also forget or don't realize that we have ALWAYS BEEN in the top 5 in FG% allowed since Yao entered the league. It has nothing to do with Battier joining our team. Now don't get me wrong, I still don't think we are overpaying Battier that much but as someone pointed out that his value is clearly very high after this playoff run and if we can get someone really good for him, I say GO FOR IT. This is about Houston Rockets not Yao, not TMac, and definitely not about Battier. Sorry guys.
