[Man-crush?] Ron Artest's recent comments about Chuck Hayes

seriously have u watched Rox gms.How much layups he miss from tmac passes???I lost count.

 

When I read this response, I thought it must be Carl H and sure enough it was. Very thoughtful and comprehensive defense of the Chuckster. Hayes haters - please go away. When you have a team with 3 special players, you need to complement them with players that have a special skill - lockdown defense, 3 point shooting, etc. They won't be your big minute players but rather your situational players and insurance guys. There's even a place for (oh no, don't say it) Luther Head on this team. 15 rosters spots - they don't all play.

 

In a perfect world your post would have closed this thread.

I'm somewhat confused by a couple of durvasa's posts here (whom I respect) because he knows more than most how layups are quantifiably measured, and also how Hayes almost single-handedly exposed +/- figures to be cosmically irrelevant.

I love Chuck, but no one will ever get any sane person to believe he was a viable starter on a contending team in the WC in the last three years.

Glad he got the love though.

 

Another weakness about Hayes is his free throw shooting.
His free throw shooting form is one of the ugliest in the NBA.

 

Isn't offensive rebounding part of offense?

 

This sentence confused me, so I guess we're even.

All I'm saying is that something doesn't add up if a player who can barely make a wide open layup is somehow shooting 56% from the field for his career. Are those all jump shots and dunks? Is Yao Ming picking Chuck up off the floor and lifting him to the basket so all he has to do is drop the ball in the cylinder? What's going on?

As for the comments that Chuck is not a viable starter on a contender, I would say that I think he can be a viable rotation player on a contending team. Him starting does not preclude our ability to contend. I mean, if we're depending on him to play 30+ mpg, we're probably in trouble. But that doesn't mean he can't be a starter getting 20-25 minutes if the front court depth is there and we have multiple potent scoring threats on the court alongside him.

 

Dude, we also had Scott freakin' Padgett, one of the most athletically gifted and talented PFs this league has ever seen. Hakeem had nothing on him.

 

One of the ugliest? Try the hands-down ugliest free throw shooting in the history of professional basketball. How could it possibly get worse? Shaq looks like Steve Nash at the line compared to him.

Jokes aside, I think that Chuck is a valuable end of the rotation guy/defensive specialist. For what we pay him, he adds a ton of value. You gotta love his hustle, defense, rebounding, etc...

 

Yeah he sucks and he a liabilty on defense.We need laundry or scola.Hayes should not be in the gm at all.

 

his free throw shooting is also among the most entertaining

 

Yeah...he has a great shooting percentage but anyone who has watched him play for a couple games finds it almost comical the way he blows easy layups. The good thing is that he plays within himself (he knows he's terrible on offense) and doesn't take to many shots unless he is reasonably open (which he misses sometimes).

I wouldn't care if he never took another shot, though. He is a valuable player on this team (i would argue more so than Landry) because of what he does without the ball.

 

I'm a big chuck fan....you don"t trade guys like this just for the sake of a trade, even if he the 15th man you keep him on the team....guys like hayes are sparks of the bench when the team is looking like they are asleep out there.

 

it wouldn't be right to not have hayes for the rockets.

he and shane are the type of role players that make me proud of being a rockets fan. that everyone thinks they're just nobodies ... when they give it their all and dont care at all if what they do goes unnoticed.

 

Okay, now I understand where you were going. But please understand that these offseason threads do tend to make us some of us older guys a little more crazy every year, and this one... well I thought it utterly pathetic.

The media has bludgeoned Artest with one inane question one after another, but he mentioned Hayes twice(?) and this is somehow insightful?

Chuck did see his value to this team plummet last year, but he's more valuable to us on the bench than anything we could get for him in a trade, and I believe he'll see valuable minutes this season. But him being a rotational player on a consistent basis this year is doubtful.

The only thing where we might disagree is that Hayes being a starter doesn't preclude us from contending. You know Rafer is our starting pg, and if you have Hayes starting you've got 40% of a starting lineup that wouldn't start even for a couple of teams that won't make the playoffs next year in the WC.

Hayes had a good run, I'm glad he'll still be here but his bus left the station when Landry hit the court last season. Dorsey will probably be less skilled in most ways, but he'd have to be an absolute bust in order to be less than a bigger, stronger (if less skilled) Chuck Hayes. And if that happens we can really give Morey grief about how he's hyped his rookie and reflect how insane it was that it took 5 years before we found someone who knew that playing next to Yao was really pretty easy.

Anyway, I wasn't knocking you by any means.

 

Ok. I think you place more significance on starting than I do. And whether a player starts on a good team shouldn't depend on whether he'd be a starter on every bad team. I don't see why that's necessary.

We've played at a very high level against good teams with both Rafer and Chuck starting. Is that an ideal situation? Maybe not. But if the depth is there, and we have our "big three", I think we could be a contending team anyways. And, to be clear, I'm not arguing that Chuck should be a starter next year. If Scola and Landry are on the team, I think they should get more minutes at PF against most teams. But if we didn't have Landry, and Adelman decided to use a starting lineup of Rafer, T-Mac, Artest, Chuck, and Yao with Battier and Scola off the bench, I'm not going to say that we can't win a championship.

 

Don't remind me, it gives me nightmare well on the other hand he is a Mav now.

 

I have a man crush on Chuck.

 

Chuck Hayes is awesome. He's not in the rockets for his offensive capabilities but more as a defender and to get those boards.

But his free throws are sooooooo funny