in my opinion, only if the Rockets start the season dominating competition and looking like the absolute favourite to win it all. Otherwise yeah..byebye to one of them.
It's weird how jacked Jones looks through his shirt, but you can hardly see the weight increase on Capela with a jersey on.
DMo's injury is concerning, so despite some opinion on here, Jones is going to be an important role player to start the season. To the bolded, it's certainly a possibility. It's certainly tough balancing winning a championship with getting value. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Morey kept both because there wasn't a dea(s) good enough. Plus, it depends on Dekker (stretch 4 potential) and Harrell's development, most likely in the D league. It was simply a matter of playing time, I bet they're going to play some of Smith at the 3 since they're thin there.
Lol...... The Jones hate from you is a getting a little overblown with this one. There's a lot worse PF in the NBA to pick on than Jones.
I don't care about the rest of the PFs in the NBA that are worse or better than Terrence. I care about this team and it's opportunity to win a championship. No hate my friend. But the truth is most of you are going to have to come to grips that Terrence is not the answer here to the PF question, either as a starter or as a reserve. Harrell may not be the answer either. But he's got a 2 inch reach advantage over Terrence and he's got every bit as much lean muscle mass as Terrence, and he's a quick twitch athlete with incredible hops. Terrence is not nearly as quick as Harrell is. If you want to go further, we can talk about defensive aggression and jump shot development. Harrell is the better player and it's only a matter of time until some of you see it. Some of you won't ever see it .... until Terrence is moved out of here and his career fizzles out. And there'll be a bunch of you that will think Morey has lost his mind when that happens.
Myles Turner's first NBA preseason game: 3 points, 6 rebounds in 15 minutes. Terrence Jones' first NBA preseason game in 2012: 20 points, 6 rebounds in 25 minutes.
I'm a big dmo and tjones fan. I wanted both before they were rockets. Didn't think we'd get either. I think between those two and with Harrell we have what we need at the pf position.
BBallholic (fakeDMOfan), I like how you diss Jones, but even I don't agree that Harrel is better than Jones with second unit. If Capela & Montrezl are together, we have limited inside scoring from them, second unit defenses can concentrate on guards more.
I'm highly sympathetic to this analysis, on both counts. I'm almost embarrassed at how optimistic I am about Harrell. I watched him in college and regretted that we almost certainly wouldn't be able to get him. The cynic in me says, "Yeah, in 2 years, you'll be just as soured on him as you are on Jones."
The cynic in you may be right. If Harrell doesn't improve his very lackluster FT shooting and other parts of his game that are lacking and he doesn't go on an upward career trajectory quickly, doesn't show that he can match up against other quality bigs, then I probably will "sour" on him. One thing we have to understand about young players is they've got a very important short span at the beginning of their careers to show they are players. When you get into year 3 and 4 and guys are still just dawdling along in their careers with major weaknesses that they haven't improved on it's a huge sign that they are going to be mediocre for their careers. Some guys are driven to succeed. They come out of the gates working hard. They establish at least one above average NBA skill that is key for the position they play, and they work like dawgs to improve the holes in their game to become positive players. Because they love the game and they love PLAYING the game. And some guys start getting those big checks, money they've never seen before in their life, and it changes them. They lose whatever motivation they had that drove them to this level of success. And their true character comes through. And they meander through a short, mediocre career, doing the bare minimum of work to warrant some team throwing them a big dollar contract, only to watch them fizzle all the way through it. I'm not for sure what Harrell's character is. Haven't been around him. Just watched his game from a distance. But we'll know soon enough how driven he is. Terrence isn't driven to be great. He's simply pulled along by being surrounded by championship driven teammates. I don't even think Terrence loves the game beyond what the game has given him. He simply doesn't have that drive. Three years is enough to determine that.
One thing: Did the emergence of _asketballholic happen when TJones got drafted or what? Sweet times before that
What exactly do you think we have with Capela and Terrence? Limited inside scoring. That's a terrible half-court offensive combination. Our second unit is not built to play half-court basketball...period. They're built to push the opponent's bench into bad shots and turnovers and get the runouts going, and finishing on the break. IF our second unit doesn't create defensive havoc THEN they will lose their matchups. That's why Josh Smith was such a huge key to this team last season and that's why Clint Capela is the key for this team this season. Not Terrence. Capela is the guy that is going to have to show that he can lock down the paint and the rim and gobble up the boards when Dwight sits and the second unit is running. And if he can't do that we will get ate alive. Terrence has already clearly proven that he cannot perform in this key role. He's simply too small, not skilled enough defensively, and not nearly long enough nor aggressive enough on the defensive glass.
If you will recall, when we brought in TJ and DMo we already had PPat and Marcus Morris here. PPat was going into his 3rd season I believe. And after watching them play early I felt that we needed to go ahead and start DMo, and trade PPat as soon as an opportunity presented itself while PPat still had shelf life on his rookie contract and would garner more trade value. We weren't good enough to win anything back then and I knew we weren't going to lock PPat into a long-term deal. PPat in my mind at that time had shown improvement. (I still think he's a quality player.) But he simply wasn't good enough to be paid big $$$ and deny ourselves opportunities to get a true 2nd/3rd superstar. Also at that time I didn't know if Morris was a 3 or a 4. (Really still don't know.) I thought he was too small to be a 4. But I knew he didn't have the quicks to really be a 3, especially defensively. My hope for Morris at that time was that he would become such a devastating offensive player that he'd have to be given minutes at the 3 because of his offensive prowess. But at the same time it was very obvious that Parson had already broken out and was going to be a very good player. So I felt that DMo should start and PPat and TJ should come off the bench as the backup bigs behind Asik and DMo with the battle playout out between Morris and TJ at the backup 4 spot. I did feel that TJ was significantly better than Morris defensively. But I knew TJ had to develop his jumper. I was cautiously optimistic and hopeful that TJ would go to work on his jumper issue as a rookie and really develop into a plus player. But it's never happened. And despite some gaudy box scores from TJ from time to time playing alongside Dwight, I have never been convinced that he was the answer after he didn't work on his jumper early in his rookie campaign and get it fixed or at least start to get it fixed. BTW, to the guy saying I'm a closet DMo fan. I have been on and off DMo's bandwagon several times. I have been disappointed with DMo's development up until last season. I may have felt differently about him if he were handed the starting PF spot like TJ was. But he wasn't and I thought he'd really show enough to force his way into the rotation. But it didn't happen until late in the 2014 season. So I have been disappointed in his development as well. However....I did learn a few things about the internal workings of the Rockets that helped answer some of my questions as to why DMo wasn't given minutes. And I'm not going to divulge that here. But there were other circumstances besides pure on-court basketball play involved in that decision. Right now, I'm not convinced how good DMo will become for us as a 4. And the 4 is the position where DMo plays best. Alongside a defensive monster 5 like Dwight. I think it's pretty clear that DMo will never be a good-to-great defender. He'll just be adequate. And he'll look good defensively next to a guy like Dwight but will look mediocre next to other mediocre defenders like Terrence. At least DMo has the defensive intelligence to understand how to push his man into difficult shots and into help defense. I think DMo's rebounding will only improve incrementally. So, if that's what he is defensively and on the glass then for him to become great he has to develop his offensive face-up game to another level. He's got to get his 3-ball up to close to 40% or above. He's got to develop his stroke to practically Dirk level. If DMo does that...he'll be great because he's got great post moves and he's got great vision and is an incredible passer already. We should have those answers early in this coming season if DMo continues his recovery and gets back on the floor.
