i don't see what the fuss is about. this is the 26th pick not pick 10. of course it has value but it's past the sure-fire range. you take a gamble with who you think has the best talent. we didn't pass on ANY of the available 4's for brooks. we passed on them for landry. landry was clearly graded by the rockets as the best available 4 and if that's the decision then i certainly don't have the knowledge to call that stupid. i also don't understand all these posts talking about how he can't guard tony parker or deron williams or baron davis. NOBODY CAN. who are you looking to pick up to stop these guys that we didn't? who can guard yao ming and tracy mcgrady? you guard them as a team. deron williams abused tony parker, but that worked out well for him didn't it? landry can't guard tim duncan, kevin garnett, or dirk nowitski? no ****. neither can splitter, mcroberts, or big baby. amare stoudamire and carlos boozer can't guard tim duncan or dirk nowitski either. they're called superstars man. if this is the end of the offseason and this is the pre-season roster, then the rockets are dumb, dumb, dumb. but this isn't it. moves will be made, then maybe we'll see a bigger picture.
great point....let's trade for someone who can guard duncan. maybe we can trade for hakeem from the 90's. can you name anyone outside of garnett who can guard duncan?
My real concern with Brooks is how he'll be able to defend the PGs of the west. The Rockets keep raving about this kid...but it's all offense (quickness this, unguardable that). But on offense, after seeing more highlights from Brooks, he reminds me a lot of Rafer. the only difference is that he's draining his shots and making his floaters/layups in traffic. Rafer's got to be somewhere around 3 for 82 in tear drop percentage this season. Of course, if you look up Rafer's video highlights from the and1 mixtape, you'd be wondering why he isn't the all-star drexler keeps talking about averaging 32 points and 20 assists. The Brooks move has the potential to make Morey look like a genius in the future. I'm going to go ahead and put this on Adleman's shoulders and trust him and Morey on this for now.
I think the rockets learned from last season that you can't teach an old dog new tricks , or at least as far as shooting touch is concerned. There is an inherent attribute in shooting touch that you cannot really change. Rafer Alston was practicing threes all summer long ( probably shot thousands of three point shots for practice ) but it did not incrementally improve his three point shooting one bit. From all accounts, this kid Brooks has a very good shooting touch , very fundamentally sound in this respect, which is a rare commodity and very badly needed on our team considering our pointguard's performance in this respect. Couple that with his speed then I think this kid will do fine. Although conditions in the NBA are different, still If he was able to attack against multiple defenders in college , he would do well being a peripheral threat. Someone you can't leave alone. And when you have defensive players lunging at you when you receive the ball from a kick-out pass , there are plenty of opportunities for penetration. Rafer had all day to make those floaters because of the attention drawn by our top two threats. We already have a solid post threat in Yao and all-around player in Tmac. What we sorely needed was guard penetration. Luther and Rafer can't drive to the basket , its just a deficiency in their game. And when Tmac started taking outside shots, no one else on our team could really penetrate. Manu Ginobili stole one game from the Jazz in the WCF all by himself just by stubbornly driving hard to the basket repeatedly getting fouled and making his free throws. one thing all the championship-caliber teams have in common is that they have guards that can penetrate. Dallas has Devin Harris, jason terry, et. al. , San Antonio has parker and ginobili, Golden State has Davis and company, Phoenix has Steve nash and barbosa, Miami had Dwade in that championship year. Last year, who did we really have in our lineup ( aside from Vmac and Tmac before he fell in love with the jumpshot ) who could effectively penetrate to the basket? In this respect, it was frustrating why JVG had to bench Snyder who offered one of the remedies to the latter. Anyway, one of the keys to winning is always to have good penetrating guards. At least now with Mike james and Brooks we have two penetration threats. I certainly hope they are the solution to our patent deficiencies in this area.
In addition, to become a penetration threat, one generally has to be a good outside shooter or midrange shooter, hence, Steve nash, Baron Davis, Chris Paul, even tony parker and devin harris have fairly respectable outside shots. If you don't have a good outside shot like skip or vspan for that matter , defenders will simply lay off and let him shoot. Brooks fits the bill of an effective penetrating guard because he can shoot well or in fact was the top outside shooting guard in his batch. If he can shoot the outside shot, he can blow by defenders when they try to stick close to him.
I think you are right, but can he make good decisions when to shoot and when to pass? I'm also concerned whether he is a good passer or not. He will have to get the ball to Yao and T-Mac in addition to penetrating and shooting.
Yes. That remains to be seen. I think thats when a good coach like Adelman comes in. I really think Adelman is the right coach for this team because he knows how to utilize or efficiently utilize the assets on a team. He was principally responsible for Sacramento's rise during the Webber years, and efficiently utilizes the bench. The Coach can really make a difference is the team's direction. Adelman is a very perceptive coach and knows how to adjust and guide people. Many people say that the Spurs is all about Tim Duncan, but a lot of San Antonio's success has lot to do with a confluence of other factors such as that they probably have the most lethal guard penetration duo in Parker and Ginobili.
This is amazing too. I didn't know he won the three point shoot out! http://youtube.com/watch?v=X5UNT6XUgWY&mode=related&search=
Anybody here knows how long has the rockets director of scouting: Dean Cooper been working with the organization? What's his background?
That was amazing. Brooks made 18 straight 3s, 2 he got a friendly rim bounce on but 18 straight is pretty impressive. This kid played in Adelmans backyard so I am sure Adelman had as much to do with this pick as Morey and I think Coach A has a pretty good eye for talent. Maybe the Rox found their PG.
I remember that guy had so much internet hype that all the message board GM's were all over his jock.
Actually I think Brooks is less of a true PG than Rafer probably than James too. But Brooks is super quick and a great shooter, and a much better athlete than either (or than JL3). Brooks was a 2 guard last year on a much better than expected college team that made the final 8 (largely due to him). His A/TO ratio as an SG was better than the PG Green from Florida, despite not having near the caliber of teammates. BTW he lit up Green and Florida for 27 in that final 8 match-up and kept them close for most of the game. IMO he is a lot like a much more athletic version of Green. Acie Law, who people around here were salivating for, also was in the same ballpark as Brooks--both about A/TO 1.75 over their last 2 years. The bottom line is when you can shoot and score like Green, Brooks, and Law, your A/TO isn't going to be as good as a guy who doesn't have as much responsibility in the offense for putting up points. Don't know, he didn't have a Horford type player to try, let alone a Yao. But I don't think we have starter in mind anyway, if you get a guy off the bench who brings a punch and can help you, you have done well with a 26 pick. He didn't play PG last year because Oregan had a 5.5" PG (Porter) who was their 2nd or 3rd best player. Oregon was better with both on the court, so Brooks played SG. As for total assists and A/TO, like I said, look at Green or Law. But he was a high volume scorer, the Pac 10s best scorer. A good shot for him was better than a good shot for his teammates. Same deal with Law (if you look at their last 2 years they are very close) and Green--this wasn't true for Conley, Critt, Pruitt, etc, who had better shooting teammates to distribute to. Good analysis. He just killed the Wildcats whenever we played. You might be interested in the final 8 Oregon-Florida game, and USC games. Against Florida, USC and UCLA, he was playing against elite college defenses and NBA caliber defenders, and I think averaged about 25PPG across them. We ended up getting our choice of Landry, Davis and McRoberts anyway (not sure if the other one you are referring to is Fazekas or Splitter). We got the PF we wanted without costing much. If you look at it Landry and Davis both were very productive against top competition, maybe in the end the wt, health and quickness concerns leaned toward Landry over Davis, I can understand if this is where we were coming from. We also got the guard we wanted. If we don't take Brooks he is probably gone by the time we get that second. This way we got both late 1st round type guys we wanted. Overall I think we executed the draft really well to get the two guys we wanted without costing much, that is all you can ask. Both guys are also very efficient offensive players, and offensive efficiency was a sore area last year for us (and during all of JVG's tenure). Finally, who was happy with Horry or Cassell or Dickerson or Head or KT at the time, while we jumped for joy for Langhi, Novak, Drew, Griffin, etc--just have to wait and see.
I noticed that Glen "Big Baby" Davis did NOT get drafted in the first round. However, considering what we drafted, I wish that we had taken him at #26. I could have lived with the lesser disappointment. BTW, has Chris Taft's back healed yet?
my first time posting Aaron Brooks wins 2007 3 point competition. I can't tell what the official tournament is from youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcTMJyu5TDg&NR=1
