Looking back: Eddie Griffin, biggest bust in Rockets history?

Maybe because it magnifies on RJ's most glaring weakness--aside from athleticism and getting to the basket, he has nothing else. The jumper for him is inconsistent. He needs a point guard and an offense that can cater to his abilities (NJ). You take away Kidd he'll do okay...not All-Star talent. You take away the Princeton offense AND Kidd and see what he does.

All i'm saying is that Richard Jefferson works well in those situations..where he has a great PG and a system that meshes with him. He would have been CBA fodder by now if he played for the rockets alongside Mobley and Francis. Basically, the situation made RJ and not the other way around.

 

steddinotayto -

OK let's call that a sensational draft,

for me, given the choice of the eddie griffin bust or
the turkan, drew, dickerson surprises

I'll take griffin, he had some game, he was a player, he just
didn't have what it takes in personal character. That is much harder to read than talent.

anyone who thinks drew (hit one lucky shot in ncaa's) or turkan had talent is not scouting well.

dickerson had talent but he also lack some mental intangibles and he was injured.

that draft was a big bust. a waste of 3 picks.

just because we all have heard it over and over and over proves it.

 

lest we forget, we had barkley, dream and clyde on that team. no one was going to going into some rebuilding mode or a babysitting mode with Rashard. And remember, our team was full of vets and Lewis wasn't going to get any PT anyways. This, once again, is an example of how a system benefits a player. Lewis went to Seattle when all they had was GP and he continued to grow. I doubt that would have happened in Houston. Is houston bad at developing it's rookies? I'll plead the 5th.

We hear it over and over again is because people see what Lewis has become and not what they saw in him before.

 

Measuring their whole careers, I'd put Shaq, Zo, Spree, Googs, JJ, and even Christie ahead of Horry.

But he was money for us. Definitely not a bust.

 

true about the project of a high school player with all the vets we had, agreed,

but go back and look at this board the draft night we passed on Rashard, people go over and over on it because most everyone, here and in the media thought he was a no brainer pick.

He was the #1 high school player coming out and he had alot of talent shown in local gyms here. In fact, I don't think he has become that great of a player, and I don't think that draft was a bust because we didn't draft Rashard.

That draft stunk because the guys we picked, specifically
Brice Drew and Turckan were obviously long reaches as far as
their talent level.- Nobody in the world of NBA BB had Turckan going in the first round. Nobody

And Brice Drew was such a reach considering he was slow, and not a good catch and shoot player. He was considered to be a smart PG and he made a lucky shot. That was his scouting report.

 

Michael Dickerson had a career avg of 15 PPG. He retired due to chronic injuries (not because he was doping up or doing other stupid crap):

 

NOOO!!! Eddie can't be the biggest bust in Rockets history.

Honestly speaking, I've never been more exicited (in things other than women) than when we parlayed three mediocre picks for the guy that nbadraft.coma had predicted then as the likely #1 pick in many of it's mock drafts, comparisons to TD, etc.

I will always like Eddie and regret that he didn't pan out for us. Biggest bust in Rockets history? I'm not sure that the statement is fair. Tell me something, say we keep the three picks and we gain three mediocre players - one of them turns out not to be Jefferson - (Rockets may not have even picked Jefferson anyway)...would you still think that he's as much of a bust.

Is the trade the part that hurts, three mediocre players for one, or the fact that Jefferson was traded "from" us? It's rhetorical, a ponder point...I don't want to rehash the past several years.

 

I will add as to Drew and Turcsan, half the teams in the league passed on Lewis (not just the Rockets) mostly for lesser players. That kind of stuff happens in every draft. For example, every team in the league passed up Karl Malone. Most teams passed up Cat Mobley. Lewis' development was not a shock but surprised alot of people. Hard to call drafting Dickerson a bust. The other two pics were late 1st rounders so what do you expect?

 

Your starting to sound like Clinton. Unless something changes between now and the rest of history, it's a huge bust and I think unquestionably the biggest bust (gap between expectations and what we got) in the history of the Rockets. The #1 pick hype (regardless of the way he has turned out to be character wise) was certainly not justified in a basketball sense.

 

I have to say Yao ming is the biggest bust so far

 

I'll agree with you about Turckan getting picked instead of Rashard. I, too, was surprised that night when they didn't take Rashard. But Drew, Mobley, and Dickerson were justified to an extent.


Dickerson could have been a very good player if he didn't retire because of chronic injuries. In all honesty, he was a better player than Mobley hands down. I'll say that again. He was a better player than Mobley hands down. Speed, shooting accuracy, athleticism. The one thing that pushed Mobley was his competitive fire. Dickerson didn't have any of that. He was too passive and didn't have any kind of killer instinct.

It's like having a highly skilled marksmen and a decent marksmen going into war only that the highly skilled one couldn't pull the trigger in a real battle while the decent one is out there just fighting like he had nothing to lose.

 

Here's some perspective for ya on the two drafts:

To me, it was a bigger bust by far to give Jefferson up. But as long as we are talking players not drafted by the Rockets, look who we also could have drafted with our three picks in 2000 . . . Tony Parker, Zach Randolph, Jamaal Tinsley, Troy Murphy, Gilbert Arenas. I think that's a better team for Yao to work around than what EG gave us.




.

 

Every time I defend Jefferson from you on this BBS it seems like he goes out and misses a bunch of field goals in Athens, literally seconds later!

Maybe I should stop.

CBA fodder is way too extreme though. (...waits for Jefferson to miss another jumper)

 

Nah.....the biggest bust in Rockets history was when Rudy got his face BUSTed by that dude from the Lakers....j/p

 

hahhaahah it's not that i have anything against RJ. he's a good player. but i think

-he wouldn't have blossomed so much if he were to play with the likes of MoT, Francis and Mobley

-he needs to stop having such a big head for a player that's not yet complete yet


and besides, if he did play for us and got us a couple more wins his rookie year, we definitely wouldn't have been able to draft the New Zealand devour.

 

He missed two more shots after I wrote that!

 

I don't know. I think Oliver Miller has a bigger bust than him.

 

We would have Yao if it wasnt for us trading for EG and him not really panning out his rookie year. Imagine if he had been really good, and we had made the playoffs.

No Yao.

 

How is Horry a bust??

• He and Scottie Pippen are the only two active players with five-or-more NBA Championships (Horry has five while Pippen has six)
• A member of the 2000 Laker championship team appearing every game of the Finals
• Recorded 7 points, 6 rebounds and a game-high 4 blocks in a 111-104 win over Indiana on 6/9/00 in Game 2 of the 2000 NBA Finals
• Posted a 1997-98 season-high 23 points (9-11 FG, 5-5 FT), a game-high 13 rebounds, 4 steals and 3 assists against the Vancouver Grizzlies on 3/15/98
• Set an NBA Playoffs record, for most three-point field goals made in a game without a miss (7), against the Utah Jazz in Game 2 of the 1997 Western Conference Semifinals
• Set an NBA Finals record for most steals in a game with 7 against the Orlando Magic in Game 2 of the 1995 NBA Finals
• Ranks second in NBA Finals history in career 3PT-FG made with 38 (Michael Jordan leads with 42)
• A member of the 1994 and 1995 back-to-back NBA champion Houston Rockets
• Has appeared in 118 career NBA Playoff games, averaging 9.9 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 2.9 apg and 1.32 spg
• Ranks 5th in Rockets franchise history in three-point shooting percentage (.365) and 6th in blocked shots (343)
• Established career-highs in 1995-96 in steals (1.63 spg, 16th in the NBA) and blocked shots (1.54 bpg, 20th in the NBA)
• Set a Rockets' franchise record with 9 three-pointers against the Cleveland Cavaliers on 2/22/96, and set a single-season career high for three-pointers made with 142
• Scored a career-high 40 points, hitting 8 three-pointers, against the Milwaukee Bucks on 11/16/95
• Named to the NBA All-Rookie Second Team in 1992-93 after averaging 10.1 ppg, 5.0 rpg and 2.4 apg

• I, Robot (2004)
• Shark Tale (2004)
• Bad Boys II (2003)
• Men in Black II (2002)
• Ali (2001)
• The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)
• Wild Wild West (1999)
• Enemy of the State (1998)
• Men in Black (1997)
• Independence Day (1996)
• Bad Boys (1995)
• Made in America (1993)
• Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
• Where the Day Takes You (1992)

Ok, I guess WILD WILD WEST was a bust. but other than that, Horry is a legend.

 

Correspondingly, it's not Eddie's fault the Rockets drafted him so high. For the two years we got out of him, we would have been considered to have received a decent return if we drafted him lower (like the second round).