You don't want Head in the game. No matter how much you think he's going to just be a spot up shooter, he will still dribble and he will still pass. Neither of those options are particuarly appealing. Rafer is in an obvious shooting slump. Like all shooters give him time. If it persists for a long period of time sure you have to do something. Trying to replace him after 4 games is asanine. And I don't want to hear, "oh well he's played bad for years!" Wrong. He's played average for years. However it's been blatantly obvious that when he is not on the court our offense struggles in past years. For instance last year's playoffs. Sure Brooks is doing great, but I for one like having that punch off the bench when the opposing starters are resting. Let Rafer and the starting unit work it out until they really gel. If that never happens make a move, but you don't completely shake up the team after a few games of poor shooting. Adleman and Morey > you
I wouldnt minds tmac moving to the point and scoring less. I think if he actually plaed pg he could get about 10 assists per game and about 15 ppg. Let Artest and Yao get theirs and that would even allow Scola to score more which I think he is capable of.
Having to handle PG duties is both tiring and stressful. I'm not sure you want to put McGrady who we need in the 4th and has a history of back and knee problems that job.
I think a cahnge needs to be made with Rockets fans. It is 4 games into the season. At least give Alston 8 games to get it together, lol. Seriously, if we have an ok record by the All-Star break and Alston is still playing this bad, then try and make a move. We need to give Rafer and the Rockets time to find themselves as a team and to build some trust and chemistry with the new additions.
we need to bench rafer and see if his game reacts to the benching. for the meantime, put out barry or von wafer as starting pg. just bring the ball up the court, hand it off to tmac or dump it down low immediately to yao and let those two decide what to do with it. when brooks come in, barry/von wafer slides to two or sits down and von wafer/barry/head comes off the bench as our 2nd SG. if we're gonna trade people, id only want head, dorsey and von wafer to get traded for a good PG or a 7" PF/C. I'll be willing to give up chuck if we get a 7" PF/C who's a great defender and can read defense like chuck. ill hold on to stevie for the trade deadline to see if he gets back to form. never trade battier . if we trade for PGs, im good with either Blake or Rodriguez but i dont portland would want any of the 3 i mentioned. If we cant get them, we need DJ strawberry back. whoever decided to cut strawberry (adelman probably) needs to swallow his pride and re-sign DJ. as for hinrich, i doubt morey would trade for a 10mil PG. he's smart with money and i dont think he'd sign a PG for more than 10mil unless his name is Chris Paul.
My radical thought: Put one of those dog zappers around his neck. Every time he bricks a shot, send him a little shock. Luther can send the shocks since he has nothing else to do and will be within range.
He'll would end up giving the team more technicals cause when Luther zaps him, he's just going to go crazy and start barking all stupid lol.
Ever thought of just booing Rafer? It might be something to do during pregame introductions (when his name is called) on the Rocket's first home game (next week Saturday, the 15th) after this five-game road trip ends if he kept on shooting as poorly as he has been shooting so far this season during the trip, and still remains in the starting lineup. If there should be a lineup change that would involve Rafer on the bench, should it look like this, especially with Shane Battier on the shelf? We should not forget that SF is T-Mac's most natural position. PG--Aaron Brooks SG--Brent Barry C--Yao Ming SF--Tracy McGrady PF--Luis Scola
Nothing is going to happen this early in the season. If this were the All-Star break and Rafer was shooting this bad, then it would be different. RA is going to let him work it out for awhile, as long as we are winning. If we get into the same losing streak as we did last year, then he might do some tinkering, but until then, I don't see it happening. Plus, all you have behind him are AB who is still young and Francis who doesn't seem to care about basketball anymore. So you have to trade. Portland might be willing to trade Blake if it looks like they won't see the post season. The bulls would probably want us to take Kirk off their hands with his contract, but we don't want contracts like that. Anything Memphis has isn't any better than what we already have. There's not really any options for us right now and it's too early to do anything.
That's an interesting offensive lineup to see for small stretches but we would get owned defensively.
Why don't we just start Barry for the first few minutes, who cares if he works well with AB off the bench, if he is out there early our big 3 will have a chance to get hot and if Barry is left open you know it is going in.
It's not a bad idea till tracy gets back to full physical health. then you unleash the offensive or scoring mcgrady. till then, let him get inshape by running the point and have him take over now and then when we need scoring.
Here's my best answer to the Rafer issue: if the smartest Man on earth cannot devise a way to get him off our team, you know it's just not feasible. Think about it this way--let's make the very faulty assumption that Daryl Morey cannot completely dump on some other GM's face and get something for nothing--by this token what you have in Rafer is the essence of a moderate anti-asset. Low skills with a moderately priced non-expiring contract. He's not an awful player thanks to his A/TO rate, he's not an albatross contract like Sczerbiak, but he ain't an expiring either. If you want to get rid of a Rafer-type player/contract, you're either looking at A.) trading to acquire talent at the expense of contract value, B.) trading contract value at the expense of talent. Since neither of these possibilities is palatable to Rockets fans at the moment, it's better to just let Rafer work out his problems until he has a little more value; let him hit a peak so to speak. At that point, who knows. Maybe Morey can pull off another situation where we improve both talent-wise and contractually (Case in Point: Wells, Bonzi and James, Mike to New Orleans for Bobby Jackson's Expiring Contract).
Morey had two radio appearances yesterday. in one of them he mentioned, I'm paraphrasing here, it's a teams top 4 or 6 players that matter the rest can be filler. From that, I think he'd sacrafice some depth to get a better starter into the lineup. Another issue might be salary space for LeBron or another free agent in 2010. Morey simply said it's a proven bad strategy for acquiring talent. The full MLE, over $6M, gets unrestricted free agents like Stromile Swift, Jason Kaopono, Matt Harpring, Matt Carroll, etc... Proven above average veteran talent is going to cost at least in the $8-10M range. Hinrich's salary decreases annually.
I suggested Tmac should play part tiem PG years ago when Rockets just signed Bonzi. But it won't work. T-mac is not good enough to be full-time ball-handler. He make too many turnovers on one-on-one situation, which usually lead to opposite's fastbreak easy points. He is also like too much one-on-one play to ruin team rhym although he has great court-view and willing to pass. Rafer's offense ability is so underated here . Rafer isn't a good shooter but is very good to organize the team offense and protect the balls. But at the end of a closed game, I think Battier, artest, T-mac definitely will be on the court. Yao will be on the court most of time. The last position will be shared by Rafer/Scola/Hayes and occationally by barry and landry. When Rafer is not there, T-mac can be a pg with Artest helping on ball handler. Artest are not good distributor but strong enough to protect balls.
