Right now, SF has 3 guys to throw an alley-op to, Cato, Posey and Cat. Let JPo go and start TMo.... then we only got 2... TMo has no athletism..
Can anyone tell me when Posey played more than the odd minute here and there at the 2? I can scarcely remember him doing it, which surprised me, and I saw most of the games. I really thought he would be used to cut down on Cat's excessive minutes... but Cat seemed to play injured or not, or Steve played at the 2 while Mooch (ouch) was at the point (and Cat was sometimes at the 3, for crying out loud). Which begs the question... can Posey play heavy minutes as a SG for the Rocks? (assuming Steve doesn't move there next season and/or we don't get a Jon Berry... uh, make that Barry, etc. as a backup/starter)
Although I would love to have Posey stick around. I would not give him more then the mid-level exception. Reason is: 1) He is not our main offensive threat(s). 2) He is a role player on a non playoff team 3) What team is going to offer him more then mid-level?
Is the MCE cost at about 4.5 mil?? Would Posey sign for Cuttino Mobley level money?? If so- I say sign him....
The Rockets should be leary of signing another "role player" to a large contract (Cato, Taylor etc). If the Rockets want to sign Posey to MCE level money then fine but not much more. I like Posey as a role player on this team. I like the energy he brings. Every team has an energy guy and Posey is that guy for us. However, we can't overpay for this. Hawkins/Morris are a lot cheaper and can at least, albeit a lesser version, play the same role as Posey.
Personally, I think Posey has the potential to be one of the best role players in the league. Unless he's demanding a huge chunk of change, you keep him.
which posey are we talking about here? february/march posey? the one who couldn't hit the ocean from the beach and brought any sort of defense like 1 out of 5 games and who got in foul trouble every single game? or the last month of the season posey who started hitting 3's quite regularly, played good d (and rebounded well, although he did that early on too), and seemed good at taking chances on D and getting steals. also pretty good at junk points. which posey are we talking about? i wouldn't take the feb/march posey for the league minimum. non-shooters at the 1/2/3 positions have no place on this team. none. if you ever want yao to see daylight once he becomes good. the april posey was very good, but still not worth much more than the mce i think. average it all out and i'm very wary of giving him even the mce b/c he could go back to feb/march form and then we're stuck with that forever. hopefully the shooting changes stick, we get him for the mce and he's a great role player for a long time. and mr. clutch, posey plays on both side more than cuttino??? what? cuttino is superior to posey on D (he actually played it during feb/march and he was really getting good in april when posey decided to play again) and brings much more to the table on offense. posey doesn't really even play on offense. he just waits for open kickouts and then does the occasional drive after a pump fake. cuttino at least scores on his own sometime and brings a more reliable outside shot. i don't understand how cuttino can be so undervalued on this team that we're starting to say posey plays more on both ends than he does.
I think the Feb/March Posey was an aberration. He seemed to be falling into the same trap that Pippen and Shandon did under the Rockets offense, becoming nothing more than a spot up shooter. In April I think he finally found his niche. The team finally let him do what he does best. They gave him the ball much more and he did a great job creating plays for himself and his teammates. Posey does so much on offense with so little. He can be the 5th option on the floor the whole game and still end up with 14-16 points by the end of game. Whereas Cuttino has to be the 1st or 2nd option to be effective. No, Posey is not the scorer that Cat is, but he is the more efficient player on offense.
JPo is Mr Disruptive. He disrupts the opponents game as much as any 'non-giant' this side of Artest. If he does not disrupt the locker room and if he does not disrupt the payroll (he won't) then make sure he reupts with Rox.
""""he just waits for open kickouts and then does the occasional drive after a pump fake. cuttino at least scores on his own sometime and brings a more reliable outside shot"""" thats what the problem is,,,,cat does things himself,,,if he has the ball he will always try to create for himself, he wont let the game come to him, unless its an alley oop from franchise, he wont cut to the lane or give and go,,,, as posey doesnt try to "get his",,he just does with the flow of the game,,,in half a season he learned his role,,,he went from a superstar,,well on the nuggets he was,,,to a great roleplayer mobley still thinks hes the 1st or 2nd option
and there's the point. cuttino was our 2nd option for the most part. he was called upon to create for himself often. it's a lot easier to be efficient when you can rely on others to do the heavy lifting to get you open. and anyways, the whole argument was that posey played on both sides and cuttino doesn't. the fact cuttino scored 17.5 per game tells me he played offense and since pretty much everyone acknowledged he was playing damn good d down the stretch (and good d dating back earlier in the season) it's hard to say he doesn't play on both sides of the ball. and since posey took about 2 months off, it's hard to say he somehow contributed more to the cause on both sides. if we're just looking at the april posey then why don't we just pick out all of cuttino's best games and start comparing. fact is posey brought it for about 1 month, cuttino was here all year. i don't care if posey was learning to fit in, it doesn't negate the crap ball he played for a long stretch.
yes except everyone can't just always go with the flow or let it come to them. someone has to do the bringing. unless you think yao had it in him to be a 18 ppg scorer this year (which he didn't based on his stamina/struggles with many defenders), someone had to do some of the creating and scoring to get us our points. it's very nice to want it to come to you and go with the flow, but when you are the number 2 option (while being transitioned to #3 if he isn't traded) you have to go out of the flow a lot. when you're james posey, you can just let people get you open shots or move when people double off you to get easy shots. that's the easy life. unless you wanted to score even less than we did, we needed cuttino to create for us at different stretches during the season (beginning before yao, yao's rookie wall, yao's second rookie wall) and we needed his scoring punch at all times. and at the same time, we expected cuttino to start blending in and being the 3rd scorer. it's not that easy. i thought he did a great job of reigning himself in this season (feigen said so in one of his recent articles) while still being expected to get us points. we just needed posey to figure out how to hit a jumper and get the occasional putback/hustle point. and about give and go's/cutting through the lane. i don't think anyone received more of those types of passes from yao than cuttino. i know posey didn't. so saying cuttino is somehow less valuable to us offensively than posey or not as good at being part of the offense to me is crazy. we do remember what happened to the offense during the 8 games he missed early on right? please don't ban me for all this pro-cuttino stuff clutch, i'll take it all back
Posey is *our* free agent. He has full Bird rights. If he will not settle for the mid level, that's a problem for other teams who have no cap room. It is only a problem for us if we do not want to pay it. We are unlimited in our ability to pay Posey, up to the max. Not that we will. The Rockets will not use the MLE on Posey. They will just use the Bird Exception.
I agree. This is what Posey said about his play lately. "I'm just being more aggressive," Posey said. "I've been working with Jim (Boylen, a Rockets assistant coach) on shooting the ball, so when I'm shooting, the confidence is there. I'm still scoring in transition. It took me awhile to adjust to not knowing at first when I'd touch the ball or where my shots would come from. "I had to be ready to shoot off the other guys' penetration. But I didn't want to just settle for shooting the 3. I'll shoot them, but I prefer not to stay out there jacking up 3s. If I hit some, the next time I can get to the rack or go get to the free-throw line." "Where I came from, it was all screens, curls, ball movement. Here, it's a lot different. But right now, my confidence is going. I've tried to mix it up, be hard to guard. It's worked out." Notice he says that he is not "settling" for the 3pt shot everytime? He is penetrating. Also of note that is interesting is the last paragraph where he contrasts OUR offense with that of Denvers. Kinda sad actually. But you can see that Posey was adjusting to OUR offense much better than Pippen or Shandon did. I really liked what Posey brought to the team the last month of the season.
According to Patricias web page the Rockets have an option on Posey for this year. Is there any reason that they can't just extend his contract until next summer before resigning him?
Go to google and type in Patricia's Various Basketball Stuff and check out the web sight. It has tons of good and usefull info including the contract situation for every team in the NBA. Go to the web page and look for yourself.
