I say trade for the right opportunity to come along. I trust Maury to wait until he gets a good deal for him. I am sure he will have no shortage of offers. We are massively strong now at 5 and still have a glaring hole at 4. I would hold onto Asik until the deadline (unless the perfect opportunity comes before then, but unlikely) and hope that one of our young 4s finds his stride, but if not then Asik is a luxury that we can easily flip to improve the team. And he wants to be traded now anyway. We have him locked until 2015. He will CERTAINLY walk at that point. We HAVE to trade him at some point.
My answer for my feelings on any current Rocket is the same, that I would be fine with trading him if it makes the team better. This applies to Harden, Asik, Lin, or Reggie Williams. In my Rockets viewing history, which started in early 90s, the only players where I would not hold the above opinion were Hakeem, Clyde, and Yao.
As long as Camby's here, I'd trade him if the opportunity arises for a guy like LMA, Bosh or Love, you know, that "perfect hit" 4 in our starting 5. Otherwise just keep him, 6th man of the year playing 25-30 minutes per game. One of either him or Howard will always be on the court and you retain the option of throwing them both in there to eliminate any inside threat if some penetration-happy opponent starts getting hot. I like Omer too much to just trade him unless it's a great opportunity. Also I like the idea of being a conteder, even a fringe one, without the drop off between your bench and starters being massive. Imagine staggering Omer's and Dwights minutes in the frontcourt, staggering Jeremy's and the Beard's minutes in the backcourt, Cisco backing up Chandler and McHale maintaining the option of going either twin towers or ultra smallball just to mess with the opponents' heads. It's a very versatile team we have right now that doesn't have to look like a bench unit for a single second in a 48 minute game. If we give that up, it better take our starting 5 above the Heat's level.
Let the Dream and the Great Wall mentor both Dwight and HIM. Throw in also Camby for additional guidance. I feel that he will be needed at crucial times. He needs to be REaDy.
We better be getting something Damn good back if we trade Asik. He's a keeper for me, best insurance we got at centre.
Since when has Dwight been known to be any sort of "crazy?" Indecisive? Yes. Immature, at times? I'll give you that, but that does not make him crazy. Delonte West is crazy. Ron Artest is crazy. Dwight Howard may be a lot of things, but crazy isn't one of them. Even with all the drama surrounding his last 2 seasons, his game has never really suffered. He has been as consistent as anyone in the NBA, outside of maybe a handful of players. Take last season for example. He plays for a team that he doesn't really want to be on, for a coach who's system does not fit his game, with teammates who would rather criticize him than support him, but somehow he still leads the league in rebounds and is top 5 in blocks. If being "crazy" is affecting his game, I'm not seeing it. As for the OP's question, I'm all for keeping Asik, unless another top flight player becomes available. Having a C of Asik's caliber coming off the bench is a luxury few teams have. He could also prove to be rediculously valuable in the event that Dwight is injured. *Knocks on wood* Even though I'm a huge fan of Camby, I don't know how well his body could hold up with consistent 2nd string minutes.
Defense wins championships. I don't why a lot of people wants more offense generated from PF. McHale should adapt the system to his available players. I think it's doable. Howard and Asik can share time. Both can play 30+ minutes. Rockets tried to be mostly offense last season. It's time to try suffocating defense strategy and let the defense generate the offense. We've got fastbreaking, one-on-one players in JLIN, HARDEN and CP25. Howard is one hell of a fastbreaking center. McHale needs to utilize them properly. I don't believe that NBA is a 3-star players league. The 3rd star almost always becomes just an above average role player (see CB, Allen, Kukoc/Rodman, Ginobili and Harden of the past). With CP25, Asik, Lin and Bev, we've already got above average role players both on offense and defense. I'd rather let the players mix it some more. You might be surprised at what they can give as a team.
Chandler needs to sleep over Asik's place for a few days. It'll change his mind about leaving. Question is, why hasn't Chandler done so? Is he AOH? I blame this all on Chandler.
It's looking quite obvious that the best deal is for Ryan Anderson, but we don't want to turn the Pelicans into the next big contender even if the trade strengthens us a bit.
I love what Asik brings to our team but at the end of the day he is an asset. An asset that has been rumored to be unhappy to being a backup center to D12. I can't blame him he has proven himself to be a quality starting center in the league! In a perfect world we wouldn't trade AWAY any of our good players but that isn't reality, I see him being traded by mid-season.... ....... ....... .......
If you go to read the smutty ESPN comments section on articles about the Rockets (less smutty now that they forced people to attach a facebook account to their words; now you can literally SEE who all the scum-of-the-Earth Laker fans are, and true enough they're mostly bandwagon human beings, or just guidos), then you will get a sense of what non-Rocket fans think of Asik. Long story short, everyone wants him. They're all like, "hey trade Asik to the Lakers/Trailblazers/Hawks/My Crappy Team for Such and Such Guy I Don't Want Anymore." But the difference is that the guy that they're offering isn't as crappy as he used to be. One Laker fan even offered Pau Gasol. (And then he proceeded to go back into his self-masturbatory dream of fielding a team of Asik-Kobe-Lebron-Melo-Nash LOLOL. Anyways...) What is going on around the country now is that everyone is starting to realize how valuable Asik is. And once the season starts, it's gonna snowball even more as people look around, DESPERATE for a starting center. There aren't many starting-caliber centers in the league, maybe only 15-20. And we have two now. So pony up, chumps. How much do you wanna pay for water in this drought?!
Asik is the best center in the league that is actually acquirable, sure there are probably 6 or 7 guys better, but their teams would rather sell you their souls than their center.
I love Asik, but if we can get considerably better not just a little better I would pull the trigger on a trade. He averaged a double double and had a total of 4 plays run for him all season.
