Reflections on the Rockets and the Mo Taylor trade.

Posey at 6 mil -IMHO is not too much to pay...He is young and no less consistent than Jim Jackson - who I liked, but consider a streaky shooter....Posey IMHO is a better defensive player than Jackson and on par defensively with Wesley IMHO. I liked Posey's energy.

Oh Yeah -there is that difference in age- Jim Jackson at 44 yrs plus would break down in heavy minutes in Houston.

That being said, Posey has had injury problems since joining Memphis, but still not a bad value at 6mil...

My goodness- we paid 9 mil + for Glen Rice who contributted absolutely nothing.

I am not going to get into the Taylor debate- he was overpaid and not a rebounder, but there is so much irrational hatred for Taylor....

When we signed Taylor to one year a one mil and later the 6 yr 48 mil- I foolishly thought we weere set at the power forward for years..Big disappointment, but the guy came to camp in top condition every year (save one)...

Let it go - we are abysmal at the power forward anyway you look at it. Recall last season how a 40 year old Malone owned us inthe playoffs....I would argue we are worst in the leage at the 4 position.....

 

Sorry for the typo on Jackson's age - I meant 33 yrs +.

Also I liked Posey's size and speed as advantage over Wesley. Posey certainly is a streaky shooter, but no less consistent than Wesley...

 

Taylor's stats from NJ game last night.

23 1-4 0-3 5 0 2 2 . How soon we forget.

Just say no!

 

In 17 games for us, as a starter and 3rd option, he scored 15 points + exactly once, and has done it only 5 times all season total.

That was the problem. I think JVG could live with MoT's cruddy D and rebounding if he was hitting the J consistantly in the flow of the offense. He wasn't and couldn't. Hence, he was just about worthless as a player.

 

I'm so glad Mo T and his contract are gone.

 

Never forget: MoT is ONE drug test away from a year long suspension. No matter how big or little his contract, he is NOT someone you can build around for that reason.

If he makes one slip, you are screwed at PF for the year....

 

The NBA needs to revamp their statistical categories.

I suggest Points/Rebounds/Assists per $1,000,000 salary

What would you all think about Vlade Divac as a Rocket for a couple of years. He, too, reminds one of Dan Issell. He can shoot and bang as well. Plus all those flops!

 

Did someone say Mo was a scoring threat? How many people on this board watched him play? holy geez he's horrible

 

Add in Kenny Thomas. If we were not going to resign KT or JP because of salary why bother to do the KT-JP trade and give up another pick in the 1st place. One year later we had no Griffin, no Thomas and no Posey--any of whom would be of good utility on our roster. There is no way you can get around that those were some seriously miscalculated moves.

This is misleading. Not signing Posey early in the offseason lead to us signing Pike and Adrian Griffin. We got JJ on a bargain basement price late in the off season only b/c Sac went in another direction and we freed up money through a Rice deal. It never was a choice between JJ and Posey, there was a choice between Pike/Griffin and Posey however.

MoT did not get off to a good start this year, no question. Players go through slumps, and MoT was not the only one having trouble getting going at that point in the season. I'd be curious on those numbers from the year before, Yao Ming's 1st. Also, you can't directly compare MoT to the others because MoT more often faced the opponents 1st rate PFs, plus, like I said, the whole Rocket team started to become much more effective after Yao and Tmac started to play better.

As for Posey, you must consider last year too. And like you said Memphis has a lot of SF types and what you didn't point out is JP's injuries this year. If you weigh the last two seasons, and consider the Rockets don't have depth in his position, JP could be a solid contributor. Certainly earning his contract a lot more than any of Spoon, Ward, Vin and Mooch--all guys who will also be on our books next year.

What is my personal opinion? I will answer this. That they have done some great moves--Orlando deal and Milw deal especially, I think were great from the short term AND long term perspective. They have also done some very good ones, like the Wesley, Deke and Barry ones, I merely rate them as very good though b/c after 2 years they won't be on the roster. In the big picture those deals won't mean as much.

But they have made major mistakes--both in personnell and fiscal matters. We put our stock in EG and Boki--who no are no longer on the team at all, and let KT and then Posey go. It is not like we are free of signing or acquiring overpriced contracts either. Just look at Pike and Ward, as well as Spoon, Vin and Mooch. Luckily we found a taker for Pike, good luck finding one for Ward.

Overall, yeah I think we are doing a pretty good job putting our team in contention for years down the line. But no need to sweep the mistakes and miscalculations under the rug. Further, we did some short term deals (Barry/Wesley) to put us in a position to win this year and next, now doesn't it seem a little odd we did the reverse --giving up comptency and ability right now (MoT) in our most vulnearable position in terms of depth and quality--to have one big year of salary savings two offseasons away. Like I said, I'd been all for this deal after the offseason when we had time to find a viable guy to share the 4 burden with the 30+ JH. Think of it as renting MoT for 3 months even if we had to give up the 2nd rounder we are going to get from NY to postpone the deal--that would have been well worth it.

 

Are you honestly griping about a future second round pick? Exactly what we got for MoT anyway? If New York is only playing MoT 15 minutes a game and getting 5-3, why give up an extra pick and take on 10 (really 20 if luxury tax stays) million?

The miscalculation was giving Mo, and also Cato and Moochie their huge contracts. Not drafting Rashard Lewis. Drafting Nachbar. Acquiring Rice was a mistake. I wanted us to keep Damon Jones when Moochie was holding out in training camp, and look where that ended up taking us. It made KT expendable and unaffordable. KT was not going to be with us past his rookie contract, because he could not see Griffin and Mo both deciding to implode. The KT deal was not a mistake, it was a residual effect of reality. The Eddie Griffin debacle was bad, but I think it's a deal that's made 10 times out of 10.

Sigh. This isn't monopoly money. JJ took about half the MLE, and Pike and Griffin took the rest of it. We weren't going to use the MLE if we kept Posey. Our pretty consistent salary level agrees strongly with that, and Les quotes about staying out of luxury tax land strongly agree with that. This isn't monopoly money. Now you can put it on evil/greedy/tightwad/Satan Les Alexander if you want, but those were the simple, and pretty obvious mechanics. Just like knowing we won't be paying MoT $10 million (or Baker/Norris) in 2 years allows us the flexibility to acquire a longer term deal this summer. That summer was the first step towards putting pieces around Yao. Posey fits dandy with Steve Francis scissor kicking up the floor and taking lob passes. But offensively, he was another iso type player, and shooting above 33% from 3P land in 2 out of 7 seasons doesn't cut it for this team. Pike was supposed to fix that but it didn't happen.

Whether you would be willing to swallow paying your backup 4 $10 million while paying TMac $16 million and Yao in his first year of the max is immaterial. You see it as $10 million in "saving". I see it as $10 million in flexibility.

And if you want to turn this into James Posey and a 2nd round for Mutombo and Wesley (the derivatives of Pike/JJ), be my guest.

MoT's numbers on Steve Francis' Rockets don't matter. That was a different team- if you want to look at those, why not look at Howard's from last year. When he was coming off the bench for the Rockets (22 games), he played 21 mpg, scored 7 ppg, grabbed 3.6 rpg, and shot 43%. In addition, his fouling frequency this year was bad. Or heck, even better, go back to the first half of last year- Vin Baker's numbers with the Celtics were better than what MoT did. Vin Baker has had success just as recently as Mo. Both are playing like garbage this year. Your argument is Mo might play decently if he were given minutes again? Okay...you don't think his lack of minutes in New York are at least in part a function of lack of production?

You keep saying how it was such a huge risk. If Juwan Howard had Raef Lafrentz, Marcus Camby, or Kelvin Cato's injury history, ok. But the guy hadn't missed more than 5 games in a season in the last 5 years. It was a fluke injury. It happens. If Yao or TMac were to go down tomorrow, should we lament not acquiring Erick Dampier or Kobe Bryant in the offseason?

There was no guarantee this deal was going to be available this summer, especially with uncertainty swirling around a new CBA. Since you like risk/reward, you risk MoT blowing out a knee again, and/or getting caught with weed again. Then he's even more of an albatross. There were reports of the Rockets looking to trade Mo going back to training camp- if that was the best they could get, they had to take it and run.

Why does this seem to bother you so much? Do you honestly think Maurice Taylor was in our future plans? Do you think he would make one bit of difference towards us winning the title? There's a much better chance that 10 million in flexibility allows us to make an impact signing or acquisition. Hell, I give that 2nd round pick greater odds of impacting the championship viability of the Rockets than what Mo Taylor would've done. As long as Van Gundy was coach, he was finished as a Rocket.

 

NIKE, it bothers me because 1) MoT would have given us a lot more of a chace than what we have now. We do these acquisitions to make the best team now and compete for titles now (Barry/Wesley), yet trading MoT for Mooch/Vin definetly worsed the skill/talent/competency of the roster for the next 2 years (and not just the roster, but our weakest position in our roster) and only substantially improves the salary situation after those 2 years.

2) I think it was as much of a personal thing as skill/player thing, JVG said himself MoT was extremely similar to JH in game and used the language of redundent. But we didn't have the luxury of getting rid of "redundent" players in some positions. I understand that an injury to Yao or Tmac also kills the season--because those guys would not be redundent for any team in the league. But you build the team so no other injury was an absolute killer. The James deal was fanastic because we covered that situation for the 1-2 (have 4 competent small guards instead of 3) and picked up a guy likely to be of value for many years. Then after putting together a team with a legitimate shot at a tile, barrying no more than 1 injury to any guy not named Yao or Tracy--and we just reopened another sussesptible spot by leaving JH as the only servicable NBA level 4 (not to mention MoT would be one of the options if Deke went down). Yes it was an incredibly unfortunate set of injuries and conditions, but given JH age (and Dekes) it was a calculated risk to get rid of our 4th most capable big man. Had we just waited 3 more months to trade MoT we would not have left us so exposed (fixed the situation via FA). I would much rather have taken my chances on a drug suspesion or injury to MoT for a 3 month rental post the trade deadline and have had him there just in case we needed him. That simple. I said so the day of the trade. Only now it really pisses me off because a promising season and legit darkhorse team for a title THIS YEAR just went poof.

I am fine ending the debate. But some of you want it all rosey, and it just isn't.

 

First not enough trades, now too many, holy hezues no pleasing peeps