yea thats why we can't win for jack without him, with him our win/loss is amazing and that we continued to win 10 consecutive games after Yao went down. Imagine that. TMac and bunch of scrubs. Replace TMac with any other superstar, and trust me, our season would be in the drain without Yao.
lol right.. and dont forget the fact that Detroit is DYING to trade Billups AND Price or Rip or Sheed to get TMac! TMac haters are just blind even with the facts in front of them. Sigh plain idiots.
Go to any non-Rockets or Pistons board and bring up the question of who is the better player. NOBODY will say Billups is the better player....NOBODY. Hell, noboy will put Billups ahead of Paul/Nash/Williams/Davis/Arenas, so no, he is not a top 3 PG by any stretch of the imagination. Nobody will even have Billups as a top 25 player in the leage. Meanwhile most people will have T-Mac as top 10 in the league, and a top 4 SG (most people rank him just behind Kobe and Wade, but some also put AI or Joe Johnson ahead of him).
I think Billups may be able to had for expirings. Detroit is considering blowing up the team, and Billups can be replaced there by Stuckey. If Detroit does poorly through the first month or two of the season, Morey should send them this offer: B Jackson/Francis/Head/1st round pick for Billups This looks like a ripoff but is actually pretty fair from a money point of view. Billups has 2 more seasons on his contract after this one at about $12 million per year, which Dumars does not want to pay. All the guys we send are expiring, and there are some pretty solid free agents available for next summer. Detroit would be able to reload and be younger and better after just half a season of tanking. If the market is competitive, we might have to include Landry as well. But I don't think we should give up any more than that.
Tracy mcgrady was the best player in the NBA last season... for the first week anyways where we thought he had regained the Orlando touch
I don't know how people are getting the idea that T-Mac put up "big numbers" last season. T-Mac's PER was 18.5, good for 46th in the league. He shot an absolutely horrid .487 TS% while having the third highest usage rate in the league. In other words while being incredibly inefficient, he used the most possessions on the team. Not surprisingly, he had a negative Win Share Above Average, meaning he contributed more to the losing cause than winning one. The Rockets didn't win 22 games in a row because of him. They won in spite of him. That being said, it is worth mentioning that he did play incredibly well in the playoffs and if that T-Mac is more representative of the T-Mac we used to know so I'm inclined to believe that he was coasting during the regular season. Look, I love the guy and at one point he was the best player in the league. I hate how his stigma of "never getting out of the first round" is so overblown when he plays so incredibly well in the post season. However, whether it be injuries or apathy, he just isn't the same anymore. If we truly are in a "win now" mode, and we have the opportunity to replace his inefficient possessions with one of the most efficient ones like Billups' we have to do it.
You'll never miss what you have until it's gone....it's amazing that people bash and degrade our two PRODUCTIVE superstars. It's crazy really. No, we haven't won a championship with TMAC yet, but guess what? There only 1 champion out of 30 other teams a year and those 30 plus teams cry about the same damn thing. Yes, I have my issues with Tracy and Yao, but I do understand that the GOOD waaayyyy outweighs the bad. Some of you won't get that until that Good is gone. Stop being fairweathered, fickled F&^ks.
I'm in favor of stats in hoops, but it's obvious from watching any Rockets games that PER is not evaluating him correctly. The guy regularly draws double and triple teams, even 20 feet from the basket. That's why his numbers don't look as efficient as guys like Landry -- who scores because his man leaves to help out on McGrady. PER and other similar stats will continue to be only mediocre until they can incorporate defensive attention into their evaluations.
I don't care what kind of statistical analysis you are using - if that's your conclusion, I have some property I would like to sell you.
The Rockets did not win "in spite of" T-Mac. He was integral to the team. Was last year relatively bad? Yes. T-Mac as a Rocket has generally become less and less efficient each year...worse 3pt shooting, 2pt shooting, and FT shooting. He's still the Rockets best playmaker...check that, only consistent play maker outside of Yao. It's like that year Allen Iverson lead the 76ers to the Finals and got killed by the Lakers 4-1. Critics would say AI shot too much, took bad shots, etc. That was true, but it's not like they had other options. The offense was set up for AI to shoot and others to rebound and hustle (Snow, McKie, Mutumbo, Theo Ratliff...). Now, Addelman has been trying to implement a system that doesn't need a creator and while progress is being made, it's far from finished. The system also needs shooters and slashers, which the Rockets lack at least 1 more good one. So while, the T-Mac high PnR and elbow screen catch n shoot jumpers aren't the greatest offense in terms of efficiency, it was definitely NEEDED and INTEGRAL to the Rockets scoring and thus winning. No one else on the team could perform that role the way T-Mac did.
BTW, the Pitston fans are NOT very excited about the possibility to get T-Mac, they see him as injury prone, and not very successful in the postseason. I doubt this has any legs under it. T-mac stays!
You don't have to be a T-Mac hater or an idiot to consider trading T-Mac. The question is not whether T-Mac is better than Billups, he clearly is, but whether the Rockets would be better with Billups and Sheed or Billups and Prince. T-Mac is double and triple teamed. Utah was grabbing him with impunity throughout the playoffs. The problem is that he has no consistent teammate other than Yao to set up with the ball and he has no backup to give him rest. With the Rockets salary-cap situation it is unlikely that we will be able to solve either of those issues. That's why trades for T-Mac should be considered, whether he is top 25 or top 2. The Rockets winning is what is important, not being a homer and being so in love with one player that you are blind to reality and 11 years without a playoff advance. 11 YEARS!!!!
B Jackson/Francis/Head/1st round pick for Billups SHUT UP! I am sick of these nba live bull**** trade ideas!! They don't care about the stupid money they could get real value for Billups!
As I've said before, if you think the Toyota Center looks empty now, wait till we become the Houston Pistons...
Expiring contracts are useful to many teams, but not so much to a team that thinks it has a good shot at the title this year. If we DID trade T-Mac for Billups and Prince, could we play 6 players at a time? Just checking.
no no no no, we wait till 2010. We can build a damn near unstoppable team with the kind of money and contracts we're gonna have to play with.
NBA's top 20 players in no particular order Kobe Bryant LeBron James Dwyane Wade Chris Paul Deron Williams Steve Nash Allen Iverson Carmello Anthony Tim Duncan Amare Stoudamire Dwight Howard Yao Ming Tracy McGrady Paul Pierce Kevin Garnett Chris Bosh Baron Davis Gilbert Arenas Dirk Nowitzki Carlos Boozer Not really anyone you could swap out for T-Mac is there? He still commands double teams.
