Lowry is a good fit for this team. At an given time we could have three or more defensive stoppers in the lineup. Without being completely stagnant on offense. Defensive line up Yao Hayes Battier Artest Lowry Thats blocking, pestering aggressiveness, Defesive IQ, and steals. Thats a deadly line up.
Also, it looks like Alderman didn't speak? I'm curious. Maybe the plan was Alderman would speak if a different trade went down?
Here are the numbers per 48 minutes: PPG APG RPG TO Lowry 16.6 7.8 5.0 3.5 Rafer 16.7 7.8 4.3 2.6 Rafer has always been pretty good at protecting the ball, but he is having his best year in the turnover department. And Lowry is shooting 41% while Rafer is shooting 37%. Lowry is much younger and I expect he will do nothing but get better with more playing time. This is not the catastrophe I think most people are making it out to be (and I was one of them at first).
I think you are reading too much into the comments. they just need to fill tracy's void one way or another. if they were convinced they would not keep artest and lose him for nothing(or not be able to find comparable talent this summer) they would have moved him today.
Look at these numbers. Lowry doesn't shoot 3's often and that's fine - he's not good at it. (17-69, 24.6% this year). Rafer's not either, but he launches all the time (80-230, 34.8%). Eliminate those shots this year and here are their respective 2-pt field goal numbers... Lowry...95-203, 46.8% Alston...113-292, 38.6% That is a BIG difference. Lowry is a much, much better finished and he can definitely get to the basketball at least as well as Rafer, but that's really just being kind to Rafer, since I'm sure Lowry will show he's better at getting to the goal and finishing.
so how do you sign any top play without removing either Ron or Tracy? Or is that MLE player are considered top player now?
I wonder if Tmac gets it... he's no longer popular... no one likes him anymore... and YES, it's his fault.
artest is a possibility to be that guy next to Yao. this is his audition. if they don't like what they see in the next few months, guys like bibby, rasheed wallace, etc become realistic possibilities. don't forget this summer tracy becomes the biggest expiring contract in the 2010 sweepstakes, so they could easily trade him for his replacement. to recap, they could keep mcgrady if they feel he will be healthy again, and resign artest. or keep t-mac and replace ron with bibby, andre miller, turkoglu, marion, wallace, kidd or odom types. or keep ron, but trade mcgrady this summer for another star not on an expiring deal. or replace ron in FA, but still deal t-mac to a team injecting themselves in the 2010 sweepstakes.
One other stat that I left out here was that Lowry gets to the free throw line over twice as much as Rafer (per 48: 7.2 vs. 3.3). That is pretty significant in my book.
I'm a little worried about all this Lowry defense talk. The elite PG in the West are going to get their numbers no matter who is in front of them. Lowry isn't Gary Payton in his prime. The emphasis should have been on getting a PG who runs the offense and scores. Instead, we got Lowry who will make Chris Paul and Deron Williams have to work just a little harder when they carve up the Rockets defense and drop 25/12 on them. My favorite part is that they got a PG who can't shoot but are bragging how they got a scrub PF that can. Talk about getting things backwards.
Morey's proven me wrong a few times. He's made moves that didn't pan out, but he's never made moves w/ a net negative effect. I was scratching my head at first, but I'm sure we'll see positive results on the court.
Well they said we were after a top player by the trade deadline. Now here comes Lowry. So you never know... Oh wait, maybe Cook is THE ONE...
Because the Grizzlies have been shopping Lowry since 2006, he's never been long for the team, and they're not going to go along with the embarrassment of starting him while the hot shot lottery pick comes off the bench? Why doesn't anyone ever realize that, shock horror, coaches don't always make the right decisions for their teams?
If you think Lowry's a better one-on-one defender than Alston, you might be right. As for team defense, especially in our system, he won't be even close. Not for this season, anyway.
