Should've never traded Rudy Gay. Morey never would've never made that trade.

I think gay is like Jason Terry. You are a bad team if he is your no.1 option, a good player when he is the third option.

 

Trades are sometimes to make you better in the short term, not 4 years later.

Do you honestly think the Shane-Gay trade WASN'T to make the team better at the time?

Then how do you expect to examine it in terms of today's performance? Look at the situation the team was in THEN. I don't hear enough people considering context when they debate this. Too many "stat junkies" post on these threads because they compare Rudy Gay's 09 averages with Shane Battier's 09 averages and immediately conclude that a trade in 2006 was a bad idea. Then they 'justify' it by saying it has now been long enough to criticize. Context was the key element of that trade.

 

http://www.nba.com/2009/news/features/john_schuhmann/11/19/numbersgame.battier/index.html

RUDY GAY WORST DEFENDER

mightve been posted. didnt go through all 11 pages

 

kwame, camby is a FA this year, gay next year. Even if Gay were a FA I don't believe they could afford both this summer. Gay wants 13 mill. And we already have Ariza, who's not a true 2 and neither is gay. Those two couldnt co-exist unless one of them severely limited their play. Like i mentioned earlier, Ariza gets you better D than Gay, about the same amount of points, only with worse %, although i'd like to have a better % from him, i dont think gay is worth 8 million more than ariza when the only difference between them is 10% shooting. Ariza will probably be more efficient after this year, and that gap will be closer to 5%.

 

Obviously you have never played on a basketball team, as you seem to have no concept of "team defense".

If I play the passing lane the entire game, I can end up with a few steals. What the box score WON'T show is how the 10 times I didn't get the steal, it led to a 5 on 4 and the opposing team got an easy basket

Gay is still a terrible defender

 

I like the locker room leader. You should too.

And how come you can't realize that we weren't taking Gay if we kept that pick? Thebo was going to be a Rocket, not Gay.

Getting rid of Stromile also opened up a roster spot to add another pf... Would you want Gay on this team instead of Carl or Scola? We weren't going to have all three with Stromile still here...

 

Anybody who uses Rudy Gay's fantasy stats as a plausible argument for why the trade was a bust obviously has no understanding of how TEAM BASKETBALL works. I can guarantee you that with Rudy Gay on this team, we would be giving up MORE points per game, players like Kobe would be able to play an EASIER brand of basketball against us, and that would cause opposing teams to be able to dictate THEIR style of offense on us. What does all this mean? It means our team would be defensively weak, and in the NBA, you can't win jack with weak defense. Are people seriously believing that this team would have taken the Lakers to a 7th game last year with Rudy Gay guarding Kobe instead of Battier? Yes, I understand that Kobe still got his points, but Kobe ALWAYS gets his points. That's why he's Kobe. The key is how hard did he have to WORK to get his points? This discussion needs to STOP.

 

stop making sense. the OP says he gets a steal and a block a game...therefore he's an amazing defender

 

The lack of championships have nothing to do with the Rudy Gay thread. The champs of championships have to do with health issues. Our best shot at a championship was 04/05 season and we definitely could have used Battier in that serious. And even then, if Juwan Howard wasn't injured we would have had a much better shot at winning.

Our next best shot was in 06-07, and I really doubt Gay would have been much help for two reasons: 1) JVG wouldn't have played him b/c of his D and 2) I just don't think he would have been much help in that series despite the lack of scoring on that team. Utah would have destroyed him w/ his "defense."

It was still the right call. We had (and still might) have two really good and dominating players. Outside of there injuries, they had an amazing record on the court together. So what was so wrong with management thinking that if they could stay healthy, the team could make a run with the right pieces around them. T-Mac and Yao's record together was never in doubt! Its the record with one of them out that was the problem, but management has done such a good job, thats not even that much of an issue now and neither is both of them out! :grin: We still have a winning record.

 

I had to highlight this. Looking at your date, I'm sure you remember all the arguments or threads about this during francis hey-day. This is the best example a person could use. I use to debate people about the better pg between miller,bibby,terry,davis and francis. Since the rockets had some success during those yrs and francis was on sportcenter alot and the others, other than davis didn't, francis on this board was declared superior because he was a winner. This is what i'm trying to get at when talking about young talent. Terry didn't just get good when he went to dallas, nor did bibby get better when he went to sacramento. Davis led the hornets to the 2nd rd a couple of times and had the stigma of being cluth on him early and all miller did was lead the league in assist on a poor cavs team. Those guys were good, but on young teams sometimes they're forced out of their element because they are high draft picks. Like I've said before, it didn't have to be rudy, it couldve been brewer, but there is no way in hell that pick and a player shouldve been trade for shane battier and that was the end. I kept waiting for the other player or pick to be mentioned, but it never happened. Like i said also, its not that shane isn't a good player, but he wasn't worth the compensation by a long shot.

 

So you think the rox were going to win a ring with the roster they had?

 

That trade was based on the expectation that Yao-TMAC can win something with the help form veterans like Battier....This expectation is painfully wrong, so was the Battier trade.

The Artest trade shows that Morey is still on the Yao-TMAC track. He would do the same Battier trade too.

 

I think we would be in the same position with or without Rudy/Shane. Rudy would have given us more O and less D. Bottom line, I still think Shane can give Rudy fits when he guards him. We underestimate Shane's BBall IQ, which is 1000% better than Rudy.

 

You keep posting this...

Why don't you take a close look at the 2007 bracket and tell me we didnt have a legitimate shot at a title that year.

 

Consider them healthy, no doubt... IMO, health issues are the biggest reason of not winning a championship. We had a chance again last year if the team is completely healthy. No Yao, no TMac, and poor performance by Ron Artest but still took the Lakers to Game 7.

Go back to Gay-Battier trade. Gay is a good offensive player, but Battier is better team player. Memphis never made it to the playoffs after they trade Shane Battier. Team wise, so who do you think gets better after the trade? I'll let you guys answer that :grin:

 

I think leebigez is really underestimating what the Rockets had. Even with all the T-Mac drama and the injuries fans have put up with during the Yao/Mac Era, you can't deny the fact that when the two were healthy on the court, we were close to being a dominant team based on their production alone alongside an aging Ju-How, Sura, Barry, and Ryan Bowen! You don't think we could have used a Shane Battier on that team to help contain out with Dirk, Finley, or one of the other wings? You don't think Shane's amazing ability playing team defense would have helped out? Or his 3-point shooting?

I am not saying we were going to win a championship with that roster. What I am saying is management's thinking was that if you can push a very good Mavs team to 7 games in the first season of having the Mac/Ming duo with that roster, then why wouldn't you be able to build a legit contender if you could add a piece like Battier? So please give me your best counter-argument to that line of thinking that I am presuming (but am pretty sure) management had.

The problem with the duo of Yao and T-Mac hasn't been their production (with the exception being T-Mac's season or whatever you want to call it, last year). The two put up good numbers and had a very good winning percentage when both were on the court. The problem was health issues. I don't think Rudy Gay was going to help in that department unless he is a Shaman or something. So at that time, when the season before, you push a team everyone thought was going to sweep you in the first round to 7 games w/ a very weak supporting cast, why would management not chuck up the next losing season to injuries and think that once we get our two key pieces back, we can build a contender with someone like Battier along aside Yao and Mac?

 

It has been a few years now, can we leave the Rudy Gay talk in the past?

I mean unless he is the guy we pick up during the 2010 FA period, I say forget him. Boy, is so weak defensively, some of the close games we are currently having wouldn't be close and I don't think it would be in our favor either.

 

I think Morey would have insisted on getting the 24th pick instead of only settling for Shane. He knew how badly the Grizzlies wanted Rudy Gay. We could have developed Kyle from the very beginning and added to our depth.

 

He's soured on the Battier deal since then, but his opinion on the Rockets was pretty high apparently in that offseason:

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=2410772&postcount=43

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=2534941&postcount=42

 

That's the perfect description for Trevor Ariza.