Rocky Mountain News July 3 :Houston offers brent barry 4 year 24 million deal

I don't get the smilies?

The numbers look ok to me - it is a little bit of a gamble because of his age, but nowadays, people can still perform at the highest level at 35 if they take care of their body.

 

I think y'all seem to forget we do need a pg who can make a secure pass to Yao, who'll be double teamed or fronted most of the time. I expect Yao to continue to have trouble in receiving passes down low because of his relative short arms and problem with a shorter but more agile center/pf. It's just as important for our pg to be a good spot up shooter as a good passer. Barry has the touch as well as the LENGTH to do both.

 

Exactly Sane! Look at it position to position, we lose nothing defensively with Barry and Francis. Francis was absolutely horrible on defense, getting lit up regularly. But he made up for it be playing good team defense, like Stockton used to do. As much as I love Cat, McGrady could easily be a better defender then him. People are quick to forget, McGrady was a great defender until he was forced to carry the team and take over the offensive load. Cato is the big loss, but getting someone like Skinner or Foyle offsets that. If anything, this Rockets team is slightly worse defensively, but light-years better offensively, and definitely much more athletic and versatile. And this team would be MUCH more mature. Only an idiot would compare this team to the Mavs, the Mavs had ONE good defender in their starting line-up, Finley. This Rockets team has one guy, MAYBE two who isnt' a great defender. Howard, and Barry. And even then, Howard might be a much better defender with Yao backing him up. That's another thing, McGrady, Barry and Howard never had a shot-blocker like Yao watching their back. The Rockets are still going to be a great defensive team, especially if the Rocks add someone like Fisher or keep Lue.

 

The opposite of improvement could be...worsening? deterioration?

If we could get Keon Clark for little money, it would be great, but I doubt we can get him cheap.

The great thing about Barry is that he would really perfectly complement Yao and T-Mac, imho. He does not need many shots, he does not take many (which is good because we really do not need another 20-point scorer next to Yao and T-Mac), but those he does take are good shots, judging by his %% >.500 fg %, outstanding for a guard, and last season a staggering .452 3-point %.

I agree with you, Sane. Let's GET IT DONE. If CD pulls this off, my hat's off to him!

Rocket River, why do you roll your eyes? What's wrong with Brent Barry? You dislike him? May I ask why?

 

Very strange post. Sounds like someone is a little biased.

 

Ok, I'm down with this deal...

But does anyone else fear the Rockets curse?

At some point, you have to ask yourself, why did Pike shoot like crap and how come Boki, a Euro, didn't shoot so well either?

How come Steve Francis only hit 29% of his 3's after being mid 30's for 4 years?

Barring the crazy supersticion (sp?), I think this is a great idea. But is anyone else worried about this? Even Glen Rice shot poorly for a LOOONG time before going nuts towards the end of the season. Walt Williams?


To be fair though, anything Barry shoots above 44% from the field and 40% from 3-pt range is just candy. He'll need to focus a bit more on passing and defense, so slighty lower numbers than a marvelous 2003-2004 season would still be worth it.

 

Oh, and I agree with SJC. If the Rockets front office pulls this off, they're just adding to a great offseason. To me, it's good enough they went after Fisher, Arroyo, and Barry. Getting any of these guys would be great. The front office is REALLY working hard this summer and doing a terriffic job so far.

 

Wow I agree lol WONDERFUL I really think the Rockets are great now! Well..we need to get Brent Barry. He has to agree right?

 

Maybe Jimmy Jackson broke that curse last year with his sharp shooting! One could only hope!

I've been checking out a few of the Lakers boards, the Lakersground and LakersTalk, and they are REALLY concerned with the Rockets getting Barry. They really want Barry as a Laker, and the Lakers were chasing him, the Kobe thing is slowing everything down. Also, they're afraid of a Rockets backcourt of Barry and McGrady. That's a TALL backcourt. Heck, that would be a tall team! Props to the Rockets offices, they're doing everything to build a title contender NEXT year!

 

I like the idea of a Brent Barry and Tyrone Lue pointguard combination. Looks like a good chemistry fit. That tandem can show alot of different looks for opposing teams.

 

Question: Why would you pay Eric Piatkowski a 3 year $8 million contract when Denver signed Voshon leonard, an exact duplicate player for 1 year $2.5 million.

99% of the people said "Now he's playing on our team, he'll get wide open looks and be our starting SG/SF... All we need is a guy who can hit the open shot and space the floor, blah blah blah".

What happened? JJ had to play way too minutes because neither Piatkowski or Adrian Griffin did squat.

Now he is salary cap fodder and people want to dump Piatkowski's contract for the likes of Kevin Ollie. Hilarious.

Barry is a good player. And it's really not the $$ he gets rather than the length of the contract. Does he deserve $5-6 million. Sure.

Yes, he can probably stand out there and shoot forever. However, do we want to pay a one dimensional player $5-6 million to do that in 3 years?

As far as trading his contract, we had to give Utah our 1st round pick and take John Amaechi just to dump Glen Rice's final year I dont tthink there will be a long line waiting to take him off our hands in 4 years.

Barry is definitely better than Fisher. I still say we go for Arroyo, the younger player with greater upside. And if Utah matches, then get Barry as a quick fix and worry about it later.

 

I like Barry for his smarts, height, and shooting. I just think he is a 2 guard playing the point. he is not a true PG in the sense but i guess he gets the job done and doesn't make stupid mistakes.

I don't think he plays defense all that well as some say but i guess we will see. His injury record kind of scares me as well as his age and how long of a contract he wants, but i guess i will be happy with him as a rocket and as long as his shooting doesn't leave him, he will definetly stretch the defense.

 

At least towards the end of his career, he'd be a great 6th or 7th man.

 

4 yrs 24 mill is wayy to much id rather get the Fish or Aroyyo

 

why in dont' we use that money for Arroyo?

CD you did good with the T-mac trade, dont' pull a Mo-T or Cato..please...no more bad contracts....

 

one of the reasons that Pike shot bad is that Steve is not a good
point guard. Steve is below-average at setting up shooters.

 

He may be a lot of things, but I would not exactly call the guy one-dimensional - he is no Piatkowski!

I've had Barry on my fantasy basketball teams the last 5 years, and every year he seems to finish top 25 or at least top 50 - always underrated because he does not score much. The guy gets close to triple doubles a lot of times.

He had a .452 three-point % last year, and in 1996, he won the slam dunk contest with some spectacular dunks.

Does not sound one-dimensional to me AT ALL .

And yes, he is MUCH better than Derek Fisher, they are not even remotely close to each other in terms of performance in the past.

 

Someone said Barry/Lue would be a good combination - I agree.

Think about this backcourt:

PG: Barry (6'6)
SG: T-Mac (6'8)

Some unfortunate teams have that size for their frontcourt!!!!

When we play against teams with quick little guys, we can still use Lue, I watched the series where (s)he guarded Iverson, and (s)he did pretty well in that series!

 

I agree with the notion that this team will be a better perimeter defensive team with Barry and T-Mac in the backcourt instead of Francis and Mobley. I think T-Mac will be an absolute beast defensively under JVG. The guy definitely has all the physical tools to a be a stud defender and has talked about how he is looking forward to achieving this under JVG.

I think the area that definitely should not be overlooked, though, is the interior defense. As much as some loved to rag on Cato, look at the HUGE difference in the defensive stats for the games Cato played vs. the games he missed. The Rockets were basically the Memphis Grizzlies on defense w/o Cato, but with him in the class of Detroit and San Antonio. THAT is a huge difference. That being said, it is imperative that this team follow up the Barry signing with a defensive minded interior player like Brian Skinner (my #1 choice) or maybe a Foyle or Keon Clark. Worst case scenario, even Antonio McDyess would not be a bad idea for 1.7 mil.

 

With JVG's system, all the defense they have to play wear's out their legs. the first thing to go south for shooter is the shot when the legs aren't there. Look at Pike's & Francis' numbers from last year.

Maybe we have to have as many great shooters as we can find so JVG can rotate them into the game more and continue to have the highest rate of return on defense and shot %.

I am in with the contract. Plus, we still have the TE to use.