If Steve ever wants to be an all-star again Houston is his only choice. As long as he can play at 70% of his former self the Chinese vote will get him there. I'll do my part if he comes here
If SF3 is willing to sign for the veteran minimum salary that would be great. I don't think he is old, besides the prime years(for an NBA player) are ahead of him.
i'd bring him back as long as we can still get a legit PF..then we are set!!! can't wait till October!!
Hard to disagree. Having said that, because of the style that Adelman plays Stevie might be a perfect fit. I know the guy has talent and I also know the guy has his defincincies. I don't like Rafer...he is just a bad fit for any team that wants him to be something other than the 5th option. If Francis still has his jets (which I don't know if he does or not) then he might work very well as a scoring point guard (what Adelman uses) as opposed to a distributing point guard.
As usual, people are just spouting FUD. I'll just quote TTRocket's post in another thread: As for bad shooting %, James does have better percentages, but falls short in draing fouls, rebounding and passing. 06-07: http://www.82games.com/0607/06NYK3A.HTM http://www.82games.com/0607/06MIN1A.HTM 05-06: http://www.82games.com/0506/05ORL5A.HTM http://www.82games.com/0506/05TOR2A.HTM Numbers don't tell the whole story, but they also don't lie and aren't colored by misconceptions. I think the risk of him being a cancer is low (no more than when we picked up Bonzi and we could bench him if that's the case), and not dribbling the ball away can be taught. When he was with Houston, he was the man. He was the go to guy. Without that burden, he won't feel the need to blow by the person guarding him and make every play himself.
I would have to say that the prospect of having a legitimate 3rd scorer beside Mcgrady and Yao is very exciting and there won't be the franchise preseeure on him.. He is not the greatest defender but coach adelmans system could support that and i think if we can get him for a little less then the Mid level exception it would be ok for the veteran exception would be great.. Then trade our other PG and Head/ Sura Contract anything else we can find for a decent PF..
wait we have way to many pgs, i say we use the money we have for a foward. There are still decent fowards in the free agent and i know some teams would like to trade theirs. no steve francis as cool as it sounds, it wont help us as much as a good foward will.
We can trade for better PFs than what is in free agency now that Lewis is gone. Getting Francis allows us to trade off more bench warmers than we would be able to otherwise. With such a poor PF free agent market now, it is better to have a player for $3 mil than to have the MLE/LLE/$3 mil of cap space. It's also a low-risk, high-reward type of move since Francis would be a steal if he could do 70% of what he did for us from 1999-2004.
LLE would be low risk with a potential high reward but come on this guy does not make his teammates better, he cant catch a shoot and he has not been healthy. Also how will Francis fit in when he is only getting 25 min a game? Will he b**** like he did in New York?
if morey is a man of numbers and stats, he should go after stevie at a low price. theres no doubt a trade is in the works somewhere and we're going to eventually unload some some guards. not having a premier PF exposes a weakness for sure - but i dont know there are much chuck hayes upgrades available now. id absolutely love having the problem of an inadequate 4, and 3 weapons in franchise, tmac and yao. thats when you put trust in the coach, and the work ethic of chuck hayes, and uuuhhh ... steve novak. if they picked up big baby on draft night, this would have been a total no brainer....
For those of you who rejected the return of SF due to one reason being that we are having too many guards are just not BB sound. (of course, i understand those who dislike him base on his game). First of all, we have no trading asset or value beside tmac, Yao and battier (head's contract would not get us anything good in return). Morey made it clear that we want to get our PF thru Trade, so one may wonder how we going to getthat piece without trading away battier, or head? This would be why SF would proven so valuable to us now. With him, we have excessive guards that we can get rid off and worth something in a trade. now alston is expendible along with sura, Jl3, Span's contracts. not to mention head, synder, reed, and battier. Which if morey is smart he would try to keep head and battier. SF/James/Brooks Tmac/Wells/Head Battier/Novak/ (PF)/Hayes/Laudry Yao/Deke with this many guards available, i am sure we can get a call or two from other Gms on them. Alston still got some value left in him.
1. Sign Francis 2. Trade Rafer Alston and Steve Novak to Miami for Udonis Haslem 3. Sign Matt Barnes Yao/Mutombo Haslem/Hayes Battier/Wells (even though I know he'll be at Thelma's instead of at practice) McGrady/Barnes/Head Francis/James/Brooks Done and done
Good luck to them next year not having a starting point guard and a three point shooter then because their point guards are far worse than Rafer and Kapono is busy singing "Oh Canada!"
Great Francis can dribble the ball for 20 out of the 24 seconds on the clock and then Mac/Yao/Wells or Battier can jack up a shot off one of Steve's off target passes. Then when Yao gets a board Steve can screw up the fast break like he used to! Great times
We could toss in Reed/Snyder or our expiring contracts to sweeten the deal too. Also, we've got Landry as our 3rd string PF. Not sure if Mutumbo is still going to be around though. I haven't heard much about him coming back.
I'm assuming you loved our starting point guard play of last year enough to think Francis wouldn't do any better if put on a team with McGrady and Yao.
He would not be better for this team IMO, Steve can't run the break is not a good passer and has low BB IQ. He can't catch and shoot and his assets of getting to the hole/playing with heart and working hard on d is a role filled by Mike James who has been healthy over the past few years.
