Houston becomes one of the top 3 dominant teams in the league. They are no doubt in the top 10 now. Alot of people are whining on this board about how the rockets are having problems cause they lost several games. Basketball teams loose games and have slumps sometimes, thats part of it. Yao Ming is the second best center in the nba right now at 22 and in the first 30 games of his nba career. Steve francis may not be the best pg in the league, but i couldn't really think of somebody that i would take over him. Eddie Griffen is what, 19 or 20 now and see how he is improving from last year. Despite his faults, Mobley is still one of the best one on one players in the nba. The problem the rockets are having right now is growing pains. With Yao Ming emerging like he is , the rest of the team has to get used to playing that style of basketball. Besides Rice, not hardly one player on the rockets has played with a dominant center like what Ming will be. All the competition at the PF spot isnt helping either really. The team will eventually jell together and become accustomed to this new style of play to them. Time will take care of things, u just have to give it that, time.
Very nice post, it'd be nice if everyone could see this after a rocket lost so the "trade Francis" "trade Cat" threads dont start after every loss.
I love the rice comment, very well thought out. And yeah i agree, its all growing pains. I do think that griffin has to work on putting the ball on the floor and then we can do some major damage b/c we can leave him in for consistent Offense and the defense he is doing now.
Nice Post!!! Thanks for something other than "We must trade our whole team for Eddie Jones threads". CC.net was down for a bit and I was sure that there was about 77 posts on why we should trade for EJ (in fact I had set my own estimate of the O/U posts on the subject at 67...I guessed Over and lost to myself). Time will cure our problems. Once Eddie reaches drinking age and can drink a few to help dull the pain from being thrown around in the paint, he'll go into the lane more frequently. Just wait and see, he put it on the floor recently (don't recall the game, but it was nice). Thus my hypothesis is, Once Eddie can have a beer post-game, I imagine it will improve his post game.
Hmmm...food for thought...the PF competition is actually not a good thing. I believe that with a championship team, the role of starter and bench player needs to be defined. But guess what...the Rox aren't a championship team and we don't want to choose the wrong PF for the future. Unless Eddie shows a good amount of consistancy throughout the season and MoT proves to be a team player, I think the Rox try to resign Kenny for one more year and again let them go at it. One of the players becomes the starter and the more team-oriented of the other two stays. Then, the Rox proceed to their championship run.
i'm not saying the competition is bad for the team, i think it is bad for their record. Rudy is not nesicarilly wrong for changing it up so much either, he is just waiting for one of them to step up and be consistent. If mo taylor or kenny thomas don't step up he will play griffen just for the plain and simple reason that he is getting better each game he plays
I think that if the Rockets make all the right moves in the next couple of years (including a couple of major trades to reconstruct the roster and there's no need for me to say who needs to go), we'll be in the finals in 2005.
Kidd is a different player than Francis,i do not know who is better. Ut i do think kidd will have problems playing alongside a good center.he play's even more fastbreak basketbal than houston.he likes to run. Kidd is a verry good pleyer. But francis is either. it is difficult to say what would have happened if we had another player on our roster,and useless because he isn't on our roster
