Yes, and good post by OP. I wouldn't mind having Dalembert on the team for next year. If the Rockets are really high on Iggy, I think a trade for Iggy and Dalembert would work out well. It would surround Yao with a good supporting cast next year for one last run at a championship, and provide us with cap space in 2011/2012. I think it is too much of a gamble to give Yao any more long term contracts at this point in his career. I also would rather give up Ariza over shane, as I don't think I could bear to watch Ariza for another four years.
All this speculating and you forget one thing. Yao may NOT want to re-up with the Rockets anyways. The team's style of play is not that great for him. That's just the fact. He is not a fast guy and a run and gun setup will not work. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious the big guy is missed on both ends of the floor. He is a difference maker on defense (if you disagree, you are not watching this season's Rockets). He will demand double teams. That is a proven fact. (note: Carl is just learning how tough it gets when teams start focusing their defense on him). Yao has done it in the past and with no more issues with that foot, he should be fine. Les will want to keep Yao, you can't get a better play with his money. Who's better that the Rockets can get? Remember, he IS part of the reason other players would want to come play for the Rockets. TMAC didn't just come for the nice weather. If you let him go, I doubt good players will want to come play with Chuck in the middle. OK, you get a good center. Really, how many out there is better than Yao? I am assuming Yao works hard and gets back on the court, of course. Perhaps you are thinking getting Bosh for the middle, or Demenbert (sp), but you can answer that youself. They are not better than Yao.
Welcome to the board. I seem to remember T-Mac coming to the rockets in a trade, so I don't know how much say he had in the matter. I do know he had worn out his welcome in Orlando and was happy to get out of there. If Yao comes back next year and does well, I can see the Rockets wanting to keep him, but only for another two or three years. It would be interesting to see what the interest would be around the league for Yao if he is demanding a four or five year deal. Houston has always been a popular location with free agents. However, if we decide to keep Yao, I don't know if we would have any money left to sign anyone else. Also, any team with Yao in the middle is forced to play at a slower pace which I think is unpopular with many NBA players. So I really don't know if having Yao on the team helps our chances to acquiring free agents.
TMAC came in a trade alright but he did have a little say in the matter. He wanted to come play with the Rockets (with Yao). He could decide not resign and that was a pretty big stick he was holding. As for Yao in 4 years. He may decide not to play anymore. The man is honorable and if he can't play, he would rather retire. No, I don't know him personally but if there was one guy in the NBA that would do the right thing, it would be him. Now, he is going to make what the market dictates. Players want to win and if having Yao gives this team a better chance in their eyes, then it's a good spot to play in. Can you argue that having Yao back, healthy does give this or any other team a better chance to win? Yao forces the other team to change their offense/defense. Can that be said for any other current center in the league? Maybe superman but he can't shoot to save his life. If dunking is the only way to score, he da man!
Milos, Good Post.... I have been saying this all long every since Morey made the statement about Players fitting the system and not distrubting what they have started... I have nothing against Yao, but it's hard for any player to come back from a foot injury... Walton, Bowie and even Toney... Foot injuries ended their career and it's really hard for a big man to come back and also come back to a team that has evolved into a motion offense. So I can see Morey looking at trades that will help him accomplish the big picture, as it was stated earlier Morey is looking at the next couple of years and the impact this upcoming trade will have on that.
Yeah we will see about that... I think a lot of people were talking about how honorable he was earlier when they said he would opt out of his contract early.... Well we see how that went. No matter how honorable he may be this is still a business and it;s a business that deals with a lot of money and unfortunately even honorable people can change.
The problem isn't Yao's skill level nearly as much as his health. No one questions that a healthy Yao is the best center the Rockets could possibly get. It could also be argued that there are less deserving all star level centers in the NBA than any other position, so having the best center isn't quite as impressive as having the best shooting guard, point guard or forward. In comparison to Hakeem's prime when you had a young Shaq, David Robinson, Ewing, ect, the center position is fairly weak across the league. It's one reason we can have a winning record with Chuck Hayes playing center. Yao's lack of mobility in conjunction with the rule changes which have made zones legal make things tough when he is your best player. Other franchise players can't be taken out of the game for quarters at a time just by fronting with role players. But if it were not for Yao's health problems I would absolutely keep him. Unfortunately the health problems are a huge factor and even if Yao makes a complete recovery from his current injury he is a high injury risk player. Tmac's injuries combined with Yao's were the biggest contributors to our current mess. If Tmac wasn't so injury prone he wouldn't be in his current situation, and hopefully Bosh would not have similar injury problems. Beyond that I think the current supporting cast is better than any we have had during any of the times when both Tracy and Yao were healthy at the same time. It's hard to imagine the 2005 supporting cast that lost to the mavericks in the playoffs would have won 30 games all year with both Tracy and Yao out for the season. But to the point, if Yao suffers another major injury after we resign him to a max contract then the team is going to suffer regardless of who else the Rockets might sign in the future.
Regarding free agents, I think if the money was right the current Rockets situation is EXACTLY what a potential free agent would be looking for. I would think a potential free agent would see what the Rockets are doing with no all stars and want to help push them over the top, rather than go to a team that tanked this year and gutted their pay roll to get cap space. If money was the primary motivation the player would likely resign with his current team anyway. So presumably swapping teams would at least partially be motivated by winning. On the flip side, I wouldn't think playing with an injury prone Yao would really be a big incentive for free agents to come to the Rockets because there is such a good chance they would be playing without him for big stretches. When we traded for Tracy and he extended his contract partially because of the chance to play with Yao, Yao had been relatively injury free up to that point.
I don't think anyone disagrees that adding Yao back to the current mix will improve the Rockets next year. What worries me, and it seems many others, is that the consensus among fans (and possibly bean-counters with the Rockets front office) has Yao automatically receiving an extension, assuming he comes back next year and plays close to his old level. My position is that even if Yao has his best season next year, I'm not sure it justifies extending him at $20M per season for even 4 more years. Instead, I think it could be a HUGE mistake that keeps this team in mediocrity indefinitely. The correlation I keep going to (and Houston sports fans can identify with best) is the Carlos Lee signing. It's not that Carlos Lee has failed as an Astro or as a big-money FA...he has been amazingly consistent his entire career. He is a guarantee to play 150 games, hit right around .300, crack 30 HRs and drive in 100 runs. If you thought he was a good signing then, you should not be disappointed with him now. The problem with Lee (then and now) is giving $100M to a 2-tool outfielder on THIS team. As soon as I realized the Lee signing meant Pettitte and Clemens were gone, leaving the Astros entirely devoid of pitching, the Lee deal became a monumental albatross on the entire Astros organization. His existence meant the Astros could not move forward with the top-to-bottom reconstruction they desparately needed. His untradeable $17M (plus Berkman and Oswalt's $15M apiece) locked the Astros into a veteran, high-payroll type of team. As a result, we haven't seen meaningful baseball here in 3 seasons, and the team has been plugging in expensive band-aids (Miggy, Kaz, Feliz, Myers) to keep up the facade of a contender to the fans. In essence, Lee's presence, while providing the middle-of-the-order punch it was intended, has also precluded the Astros from being able to add what they (and every MLB contender) really need....PITCHING. In baseball, pitching wins in the postseason, and all the Carlos Lee's in the world cannot change that. While other factors (horrible minor league system, poor drafting, bad trades...just generally poor management) have contributed to the Astros demise, Lee is the highest paid player, so he takes the brunt of the blame, fair or not. Back to the NBA, I think Yao's presence could do the same to the Rockets. While I'm not disputing that (when healthy) Yao is the best C in the West, one of the best players in the league, and worth $20M, I'm just not sure that for THIS TEAM he makes much sense. Like pitching in baseball, I think we can all agree that having that one HoF, top-10 player in the NBA is THE definitive trait to look for in a true contender. Other than the '06 Pistons (and maybe the Celtics, although I would put KG in that class), no team in the past 30 years has won a ring without one (Magic, Bird, Dr. J, Isiah, MJ, Dream, Duncan, Shaq, Kobe, Wade). For a contender with a top-10 player in place, Yao makes a ton of sense, even for 4 years at $20M. He could be to Melo or Paul or LeBron what Shaq was to DWade a few years ago....the missing piece to put them over the top. But the Rockets don't have that guy. In the beginning it was supposed to be Francis, then it was going to be McGrady, but now there is not a single player on this roster that even has the potential to be that type of guy. Brooks and Landry are very nice players, but neither is going to become a HoFamer. Landry could be David West, and Brooks could be Tony Parker, but neither wins anything without Paul and Duncan. Whatever happens with Tmac this offseason, unless it results in LBJ or Wade becoming a Rocket, it is basically irrelevant in the long run. Any team whose top 2 players are Yao and Tmac's replacement (Bosh/Amare/JJ/Iggy/Butler) isn't a contender and never will be. You can bet on catching lightning in a bottle with a bunch of very good players, like the Pistons did, but NBA history tells us that is the longest of long-shots. And you're also assuming Yao doesn't get worse. Since he has missed basically half the Rockets games the past 5 years, while in his 20's, and has only won a single postseason series, projecting him to become a durable, MVP-level player in his 30's who carries his team to a championship seems like wishful thinking at best. I think Morey knows this, so it could come down to money (Les) versus basketball (Morey). I hope Les listens to his boy-genius and let's Yao walk so the team can get down to the real business at hand....finally finding the guy who can take the mantle from Dream and get Houston back to the top. I can't fault him for not trying (Barkley, Pippen, Francis, Yao, Tmac, Artest), but if he gives Yao all that money, I have to assume he put profit above winning.
Well, I would disagree with this part of your post. If next year we have a healthy Yao and could add a (Bosh/Amare/JJ/Iggy/Butler) to our team without having to completely blowup our current nucleus, I would be happy. I think that lineup could make us one of the top five teams in the league.
This is an interesting perspective, Milos. Yao Ming is going to be worth, all on his own, whatever contract he signs to in the near future, for a lot of different reasons, of course. But I don't necessarily feel that fielding a competitive team around him would be that difficult a task, regardless of how much Yao potentially makes. Your Astros analogy is spot-on, except that I feel that baseball tends to have more specialists that comprise a team, as opposed to pro basketball teams (or any basketball teams), where there are several interchangeable and interdependent players contributing at the same time. It's why Shane Battier doesn't have to play offense if he doesn't want to, and be seen as a major piece of the puzzle. Balance is what all great teams have, in my opinion. You may identify with a team's offense or defense, but the teams that are balanced will win. That player balance that you'd need around Yao would be easier to accomplish (in my opinion), if you have the type of players around him that are playing for the Rockets now—versatile, tough and talented players who know how to play roles, and won't hide behind Yao when it's time to make plays and win. There's always the danger of handcuffing your organization if you place a lot of faith in a single player monetarily, Milos. But that's just an excuse, to me. It may be risky to expect anything like durability from Yao, especially with his injury history. It may call for some creative financing to piece together the rest of the roster (and make it a good roster, to boot). But that doesn't stop you from fielding the best team possible. A player like Yao changes the equation, Milos. So you've got to sharpen your pencilsand try to make it work. Anyway, Yao has earned more than enough good will to get on if he has another injury or five...... ....hasn't he?
Very soon there won't be much left of Battier to give up! This could be our last chance to make on effective trade. Ariza is young & full of potential, we are developing a championship team and are not in the WIN NOW mode. Ariza is presently playing slightly out of control due to instructions incorrect given him by the coaches.
They have chance to get similar salary only if they can improve much next season... At this moment, I think Landry can get 2/3 of Milsap and Lowry can get 1/2 of A.Miller.
