oh well.....MJ is better then alston but we really cant do anything about it...all we can say is that raptors won that trade....we are stuck with alston for the remainder of his contract and lets hope that he has had just a crappy season
Would that be the long post where I asked you to enlighten me how Juwan is better than hayes, and you never reponded? The one where I posted the stats? The one where I asked you to tally the number of post moves Juwan makes and avoids being rejected? I suggest you go back toyour tapes and watch the game. And this time try to keep the stats. Keep a count of how many times Juwan gets the ball in the post and tries to do something, and what happens. Seriously, try it. The results are just pathetic. If telling things as it is is hating then i guess i am guilty. Juwan is a flower forward. That's a FACT. Please do refute but bring valid arguments. Your love for Juwan is commendable. But you have to get used to losing too. You cant have Juwan and winning at the same time. History will tell you so.
MJ was gonna asks a lot of $$$ for his next contract, we will gonna get nothing for him. PS. LET GO allready!!!!!!!!!!
If you guys read some of the things Raptors fans are saying about Mike James, you'd swear that they'd read this board last year. Pretty much most of the Raptors fans have gotten off the MJ bandwagon and now want him gone in the summer. Things like "chucker" , "ballhog", and "we need a pass-first PG to feed Bosh and Villanueva" appear more than once in their comments on James. Just check out the Raptors forum at Realgm. If the Rockets can get healthy, then trading for Alston will make more sense.
Hey dude, this is off topic. But if we had a poll for the best signature, I'd vote for you. Everytime I read your post and see it, it makes me dream and smile.
I got that off a documentary on the back to back championships. I saw it on espn classic but you can probably buy it. its something like clutch city back to back, I can't think of the exact name.
Did you see MJ create shots for Yao on a consistent basis? Honestly speaking I can think of once in last year's playoffs where James created shots for Yao.
LOL. The irony of myopia. Last year: Rockets fans whine about MJ hogging ball and our lack of a real point guard. Toronto fans whine about Rafer Alston's attitude. This year: Rockets fans get their true PG, but whine about Rafer not being as good offensively as Mike James. Team suffers due to massive injury bug. Want Mike James back. Toronto fans whine about MJ hogging ball and their lack of a real point guard. Raptors still suck, despite Mike James having a career year, the emergence of Chris Bosh as an all star big man and Villanueva contending with Chris Paul for rookie of the year honors.
Which will be one more shot than Alston creates for Yao in this year's playoffs. You guys have it mixed up. Players do not create shots for Yao. Yao is such a force that he creates shots for them, e.g., by drawign quadruple teams or packed zones, such as vs. Dallas last week. Then it is on them to capitalize.
well, in order to draw some attention, Yao needs the ball in his hands. and the major issue last year was inability of Sura & James to get the ball to Yao. when we were healthy this year it was clear as day (to me at least) that both Yao & our team were better with Alston. BTW i really, really wonder what will James play like after he collects his paycheck this summer...
Yao did a better job 1. getting position, and 2. demanding the ball this year. He also did a better job drawing contact and getting to the line. That has little to do with alston and everythign to do with yao. The flipside of people babying or making excuses for yao in the past (nobody's passing to him, he needs a good big man coach, etc) is that when he does well it robs him of much deserved praise. I know for a fact that the "sura and james are freezing yao out" bogusness is going to be trotted out anytime there's a guard that can hit the broad side of a barn from distance, just as the "mobley and francis are freezing yao out" came up before, and just like the "alston is freezing yao out" came up after the WIN versus New Orleans last weekend. Of course this is ironic insofar as many of JVG's sets wehn he runs a post up play call for the 2 or 3 player to be the entry passer anyway. We have barely enough basketball to give both Tracy and Yao. Why people want to take the ball out of their hands and give it to the so-called "playmaker" to run picket fence backdoor cuts or whatever, when Yao and Tracy are eminently more capable of making plays, is beyond me.
okay, its your opinion. i, and i'm sure many other, don't (completely) agree with you there. i didn't, nor i ever will, forget numerous situations from last year (especially later in the season) when Yao established perfectly good post position only to have Sura/James pass the ball in opposite direction. of course T-Mac's perfectly capable of creating for both himself and the others, but is that really neccesary all the time? the point of 'so-called playmaker' is to make life easier to the rest of the guys. i do like watching T-Mac with the ball in his hands but i truly believe it would be much wiser to spend less of his energy on creating and more on other things.
intresting point, cuz players play outa there minds when its a contract year...alston just needs to shoot consistantly and then we can say the team is better off
Revisionist history. With James and Sura freezing Yao out, we somehow managed to win 50-somethig games and go to the playoffs. So I don't recall things the same way you do and wide open Yao all the time. Now, I know that the story has been written in certain quarters that Yao is now getting the ball because Rafer is a selfless player rather than a freezer outer, except for when he is. I tend to chalk that up to a variety of factors, mostly owing to a rejuvenated, rested, uninjured Yao and the non-presence of McGrady. That's not the way people will see it, and we'll watch Rafer more often than not clang from outside while Yao is doubled and tripled, and his defense blows ass, and he can't run a break to save his life, if past history is any guide. But hey we finally ahve that "pass-first PG", which is great, because you can't unlock the sacred scrolls of basketball wisdom unless you have one - unless you don't.
What the Toronto fans think about Rafer Alston is interesting to know, if they think he is better/fitter than Mike James, I wish their GM think alike, so Alston/James swap can be done in a heartbeat. When the Rockets are in the lower echelon leaguewise of scoring even when T-Mac and Yao are healthy, we'd better worry about scoring rather than not enough balls to go around. We need a well rounded third scorer more than a passing specialist. Also, a three legged stool is better than a two legged one. It's simple logic. Rafer's passing pales in comparison to James hitting open shots galore under 1 & 11.
I don't know what you guys think, but Yao would not be who he is today if not for the Alston and James trade. There is a reason Alston is called a PG, and the only true PG Yao has ever had in NBA (Mark Jackson was a shadow of himself when playing with the Rockets). Had we still stuck with James, we'd still have the similar record, but Yao would not be developed as he is now. Alston has some obvious flaws in his game, e.g., poor shooting, sloppy defense, but those were part of the whole package the Rockets organization was fully aware of, and they still made the trade. If they have to redo it again today, I believe they will make the same trade, and I would agree with their decision. We all love the Steve Nashes, the Tony Parks, but the reality is we cannot have them, and this team desperately needed a pure point guard, and Alston was the best trade option out there. Alston is the least problem the Rockets have, we have much bigger problems in TMac's health, Yao's backup, servicable PF, and a SG who can split the minutes at the SG position with Wesley.
Horse droppings. I've deliberately stayed out of this thread but enough is enough. If there was an ounce of truth in what you're saying about James hindering Yao, we'd expect he'd have the same impact on Chris Bosh. Wrong. Bosh has already attempted more shots in 70 games this season than he took in 81 last year. And besides, James for the most part came off of the bench behind Sura so he was not always on the court with Yao. It's interesting you used Tony Parker as an example. Parker averages a whopping 0.6 more assists/48 than James. Alston (not ranked due to injury) is 8.3 to James' 7.5. A huge gap of 0.8. Of the 400+ players in the NBA, only 22 of them have more assists/48 than Mike James. Half of the 22 are playoff bound and a substantial number of them...B. Davis, Billups, Cassell, Marbury, Iverson, Joe Johnson and Lebron James...also put points on the scoreboard. IOW, handing out assists and scoring points are not mutually exclusive events. TMac this season was 6.2 a/48. Maybe he's hindering Yao, too? Yao's toe surgery had more to do with Yao's (recent) development than anything Rafer Alston has done. He's now able to hold off a defender and drive his body to the basket in traffic unlike he has ever been able to do before. You are right that the Rockets have more pressing issues than PG. But if the best player available to the Rox in the Lottery draft happens to be a PG, Alston might want to consider working on his game a little extra this summer.
I can't stop laughing when I see so many people rush to give Rafer credits just because he has a "pass first PG" label. But since Mike James probably won't play for Rox again, Rafer Alston will stay at least 2-3 years and we have much bigger problems at other positions. So I agree, let us move on.
Had a sick kid and my mother is now in town. These kind of comments is why I hate discussing anything with you. How is being a "flower forward" a fact? And then you follow that up with saying I need to bring a valid argument. lol I don't recall I've ever heard you make an optimistic comment ...you just spew negativity about your least favorite players and refuse to make even simple acknowledgements if somebody makes a decent counter to your argument. So I've got better things to do with my life than hit a tennis ball into a brick wall all day long. For the record: I don't love Juwan ...I just don't spend every waking moment of my life dispising everything he does. Juwan ain't great but I don't think he is AS BAD as so many people around here claim. He's still better than Stro, unfortunately. I'd LOVE to get an upgrade to him but if it doesn't happen, he isn't our biggest problem. And since getting an upgrade to him is unlikely, I think we can do A LOT worse than him. Our biggest problems are getting a 2-guard, getting a 3rd scoring option and getting healthy players. So I've still got those games on Tivo and if anybody still cares, I can go back and review Juwan's play in the 4th quarter as I promised. But I won't be having that conversation with you because your MO just plain sucks.
