Battier is one of my favorite, hate to see him go....but • Battier is 32, and expiring, not many years left in the tank. • Rockets better at developing big man than Memphis, let's wait and see what we can do with Thabeet. • we got 2 more first round picks • We got rid of the problem child in Brooks, enough said. It's a win.
Hmm hard to say. I think it's going to really depend on Dragic and Chase. I think Dragic is a good backup instead of Brooks. I think thats an improvement, and at least with Dragic he won't get trigger happy seemingly randomly and throw away leads like Brooks has. Brooks value was still high, Rockets needed to trade him today I feel. It could have got worse, so I think it was a good deal to replace him with what I think will be a better player and a 1st rounder too. Thabeet...what else is there to say? Get this guy some time with Hakeem and Dikembe. Honestly if Thabeet can just block shots it will be a massive improvement. Hopefully he plays but I doubt it. Chase is going to have to play better all around. He's a starter now and he's going to be playing a ton of minutes. One good thing I can think of this is that Chase may be able to see his scoring average rise significantly. 17ppg? I can see that. By this time next year if we don't land a Harrison Barnes in the draft or some other SF Chase can be a valuable asset. We may even trade him to a team like the Clippers for their lottery pick. Twill is the wildcard. I'm guessing he'll get a shot as we don't have a backup SF and even if Lee gets minute at the 3, Twill is still going to play unless we plan on playing Lee backup at the 2-3 and wear him out. So Twill is going to get his shot. He's the wildcard because we don't really know what he can do. I don't think the Rockets get significantly better or worse though, but they chose a direction clearly. Rebuilding, and Morey not going to blow up the team and tank, his plan is to stay competitive but also acquire draft picks. Overall I think Morey did a good job, although I'm a bit disappointed we didn't go after Mayo especially with what the Pacers were giving up for him. You'd think that Hill+ something else would have landed us Mayo? I think so.
This year? much worse. solid starter and speedy sixth man with good potential to regain starter form ... for ... 7 foot project (at best) plus 3rd string turnover machine. Next year? better. Two new draft picks instead of two expired contracts we would not have resigned.
I think we did ok. Hearing that we tried so many different routes was at the very least encouraging. Giving up 2 expiring guys that we almost certainly weren't going to retain plus a project in ish for an appropriately paid adequate backup pg, 2 1st rounders and a prayer(thabeet) is not that bad by any means. Add the fact that we held onto Lee and didn't just give him away for some garbage backup C and I think today turned out pretty good.
Well, not to be repetitive, but by the numbers, Dragic is a lot worse. He shoots worse. He defends equally poorly. He turns the ball over at twice the rate that Aaron does. Turnovers >> trigger happy shooting? Blech. Just blech. I'm hoping his turnover rate is amplified by just not having much playing time on a consistent basis. (i.e. he comes in cold from the bench and gets mugged right away.) But will Goran get much playing time behind Lowry?
The rockets has lost three best perimeter defenders: Artest, Ariza, & Battier. Which direction are the rockets on?!
We should be pretty terrible I think. I hope this will be our rotation for most of the remainder. PG: Lowry/Dragic SG: Martin/Lee SF: Williams/Budinger PF: Scola/Patterson/Hill C: Hayes/Thabeet/Miller God they better play Thabeet over Miller, but I don't think you want to force him to start over Hayes. Sounds like you'd just be setting him up for failure and doing him a disservice. Just treat him like a rookie and bring him around slowly...but not too slow. You could start Budinger at first and let Williams proves he deserves it. I just don't have a whole lot of interest watching Martin and Bud's defense on the floor together. As far as Martin and Scola, maybe you reduce their minutes a little, but Martin's young enough to still be around for the rebuilding. You also don't want to complete remove any value these guys have for the future by unjustly turning them into bench players, when they clearly aren't.
For this year, most likely no. Unless, that is, whoever takes Battier's minutes, be it Budinger, Lee or Williams really steps up. I hope it happens. I don't think we'll miss AB much for the remainder of the season, given how badly he's played. We are probably still the same team, still good on offense, still struggles defensively.
He has to play, unless we plan to play Twill at PG. We have 2 PGs now and i'm guessing we are going to bring up one from the Dleague. Dragic is not having a good year, but I think there is potential there. I think Brooks and 'Potential' begin to look like a lost cause. It's his 3rd year in the NBA and that's about the time teams make decisions on new players. I really think last year was just one of those things where everything went right for him and we should capitalize on it.
We're a worse team, but at least we're showing a stronger commitment to rebuilding. We're going to suck for a few more years before we get better, but I'm glad the Rox got younger, stayed flexible salary cap-wise, and added draft picks. Play the young guys and suck until we get a high lottery pick (unless the very small chance of a Free agent wanting to come here).
More assets? U guys have bought into Moreys mind games. The Rockets will be a mediocre team for the next 5-10 years w/ assets. We're going absolutely NOWHERE under Morey
Short- term, no. Our defense is going to be even more horrific. Let's hope Courtney can take over the Shane role.
No. We should be pretty terrible the rest of this season when we're down to just 1 player who can defend. And the rebuild is with a small 'r' too. Thabeet will likely give us nothing. The first rounders likely won't give us much either, with one likely being Orlando's and still no indication on where the other is coming from (and when). The NY pick won't be in the lottery to lend us any ping-pong balls. Even the NY 2012 pick won't be worth much after a full season of Amare/Carmelo and an offseason for picking up some complementary pieces. We didn't get our star player, we didn't get an upside player (though lots of other teams did). Our primary hope for the future is that T-Will is the All-Star-in-waiting people are delusionally hoping he'll be and that we'll suck hard for the remainder of this season to get a high pick in a weak draft.
I think we got slightly worse this season with the potential to be significantly better than we would have been in a season or two.
