You're not even in the same ball park. Jordan is maybe the best to ever played, hakeem is top 10. When its all said a done, amare had or is having a better career than yao. I think yao was the correct choice, but your idea of comparing the two isn't even close.
Even with Yao Healthy, it still wasn't enough..... Should have gone with Caron Butler or Amare Stoudemire that year...
Uh, no. I don't regret drafting Yao at all. But there is no comparison between the Yao/Amare discussion and the Hakeem/Jordan discussion.
Except consider that both Caron Butler and Amare Stoudemire have also been injury ridden, and neither are on the team that drafted them. Yao's career basically ended in 2009 but he did give us as several good years and a heck of a lot more than Butler gave to Miami, the team that drafted him.
Your asking "if I know what I know now", then...yes...I regret it. However, you don't have the luxury to know the future when you draft players...so obviously the choice to draft Yao would still be the right thing to do regardless. But, the Yao era cannot be viewed as anything other than a total bust imo. There is nothing to show for it. Yes, he had glimpses of being a great player before his injuries...but he never fully reached his potential and now never will. It is what it is. It wasn't worth it to me. From a marketing and financial perspective, it was totally worth it for the Rockets organization. But, I could care less about those things as a fan whose main concern is winning. Winning is the ultimate marketing tool and financial windfall. It's hard to come away from the Yao era only having made it to the second round in the playoffs once. If you would have told me that is all we would do when we were drafting Yao, then I would have laughed. I'm not laughing now.
Clutch keeps huge storage of data, which includes all the discussions prior to the draft. Was there EVER a single post from those "regretting" "fans" proposing to take Amare as the No. 1 pick back then? Regretting? Seriously, you need to have something as a serious option, then you decided to go one way, and later on you might be wondering - I might have been fared better with the other way. Now, that's your regret. What were the options back then? What was the argument? It was always either Yao or Williams. Yeah, you regretted so much. BTW, I really regret that I didn't win Power Ball last night.
The discussion at the time was NOT about taking Amare with the #1 pick instead of Yao. It was about trading the #1 pick (instead of taking Yao) and moving back in the draft to take Amare. There was some discussion about them trading that pick for Lamar Odom. Yes, this was absolutely discussed, because I remember Refman was a proponent of that argument; and I remember there was discussion that Francis and Mobley initially liked the idea of trading the pick for Odom.
We should have drafted Jay Williams, then traded Steve Francis. Then, after Williams got hurt, the Cuttino Mobley/Kelvin Cato-led team would have been a high lottery team for the 2004 draft, positioning the Rockets well for Dwight Howard. (Revisionist history is silly.)
Mad, while there's plenty of discussion for trading down and including Odom(like there is for pretty much any high pick, as our discussion of talking with the Wolves show), you're literally the only one I can find who would trade for Stoudamire. Heck,there's very little discussion about Stoudamire as it is, and a good chunk of it is hoping that he would fall to #15. Props to you for getting it right, but I don't see where there was a discussion at the time.
I would pick Akeem over Jordan every time. I was a huge fan of his during his UH days, and couldn't believe our luck in getting him, especially after the previous luck of the coin flip in getting Sampson. Honestly, the idea of regretting that choice never occurred to me. Looking back, hindsight always being 20-20, the pick I regret is Sampson over Clyde Drexler. At the time, I was jumping for joy with the Sampson pick.
No, I admire basketball players who genuinely play for the love of the game. Yao gave everything he had every game. I guess that's why I enjoy Luis Scola so much because he's such a gamer. Brings it 100% of the time and never backs down. It's a shame that Yao hasn't been able to get his ankle and foot right because he was sure fun to watch.
Amare had Joe Johnsn and prime Marion to go with MVP level Nash. Yao had Tmac + Alston as 3rd option + Luther Head as 6 man. In other words, Amare had the best supporting cast Yao could only dream of. Yet Amare didn't even reach NBA final. The Suns got to the conference final twice, one with Amare, one without. The reason: They didn't have interior defense. Just like Rockets this season, tons of offense but no inside D get us nowhere. I don't know what some fans are smoking. A healthy Yao has way more chance to take a team to championships than a healthy Amare. I only regret Yao got an owner like Les, who didn't want to pay lux tax to add talents when Yao/Tmac were healthy despite made a fortune off them. From very early on, James Posey was let go for nothing because Les didn't want to pay him MLE, Glenn Rice's 9mil trade exemption didn't lend us any talent. In Yao's entire career, Rockets couldn't find a legit PG to play with him. In today's NBA, the most important thing for defense is center, Yao did his part. The most imporant thing for offense is PG, where is the PG Rockets needed until Yao is down? It's easy to blame star players, but fans needs to look at owner and management more. As good as Tmac/Yao, they are not great enough to do everything by themselves. Even Michael Jordan had more help than them when he won.
Then watching Howard got dominated by Yao everytime they play each other. And knowing Les still wouldn't go over Lux tax, watching Howard's team missing playoffs after playoffs in West. Look at how much Orlando's owner spend after he got Howard and look at how much Les spend after he got Yao.
wait...i was FOR the trade? that doesn't sound familiar. I still have discussions with Refman occasionally about it (we're friends off the bbs)...because I know he was for the trade...but i recall being opposed and wanting to draft Yao...at least by draft night.
Assuming you are one of the posters who did regret drafting Yao because Amare turned out better, then the same logic would... Oh, what's the point? I don't think I've ever written anything that I feel you've managed to comprehend in the intended manner. Just assume I'm writing random BS stuff that doesn't make sense.
In hindsight the only other viable option would be Amare, but he hasn't exactly won anything, is pretty selfish and has been injured a lot as well. Plus, he probably would've bolted for New York like he did with Phoenix.
