Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel Time for Rockets to deal,ship top pick Published May 26, 2002 You have to go back to 1993 to find the last time a team traded the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. Next year, you'll only have to go back to 2002. There is no way the Houston Rockets should be willing to take this gamble. This is not a case of passing up a Tim Duncan or an Allen Iverson or even an Elton Brand. No No. 1 pick would arrive with more baggage than Yao Ming, not even David Robinson and his uncertain status coming out of the Naval Academy in 1987. Save for a formal workout in front of group of NBA scouts, private workouts for the Knicks and Bulls, and time in the Olympics, Yao remains a great unknown. And enough of those ludicrous statistics from the Chinese Basketball Association. When journeyman NBA forward David Benoit is the second-best player on your championship team, the competition hardly can be all that telling. For Robinson, Duncan or Shaq, you jump through hoops. But for the second coming of Rik Smits? For a team loaded with bad contracts (Glen Rice, Maurice Taylor, Kelvin Cato) and holes (a power forward who rebounds, a center who can walk and chew gum at the same time), this is the Rockets' opportunity to deal with multiple concerns. From a standpoint of need, Yao appears the perfect fit. But this is the most imperfect of situations. According to Li Yao Ming, an assistant to the general manager of Yao's Shanghai Sharks, plenty of strings will come attached. "The negotiations are not easy," Li said. "There must be nine signatures on his NBA contract. The signatures will belong to Yao Ming, his parents, the Shanghai Sharks, his Chinese agent, his NBA agent, the city of Shanghai, the Chinese National General Management, the Chinese Basketball Association, and his NBA team. These are our rules." Of course, a city with a large Chinese population also would help. There also is the request for joint training sessions between the Shanghai Sharks and Yao's NBA team, an exhibition game by Yao's NBA team in China and a reciprocal player agreement between the teams. Further, there is the matter of recalling Yao at any time for duty with the national team. So how exactly was winning the lottery a good thing? The answer is a trade, like the Magic did in 1993 with No. 1 overall pick Chris Webber. Auction off the rights to Yao or Jay Williams. Get a top-10 pick. Get a player. Unload a bad contract (a wide selection is available). Retain your sanity. Already, word is the Rockets' player of choice is UConn small forward Caron Butler. "It's hard to trade it because the unknown value of what you're getting is hard to rate," Rockets General Manager Carroll Dawson said. In this case, it's easy to trade exactly for that reason because getting Yao is only going to create further headaches for a franchise already dealing with Steve Francis' migraines. "It puts us in a position where we have a lot of options to look at," coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. Fine, use them. By moving from the No. 5 lottery seed to the No. 1 pick, the Rockets got lucky. Now it is up to them to make the most of that good fortune. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ i think he makes some good points but doesnt know the latest of what is goin on with our team.
i know, i know NIKEstrad beat me to it by 1 minute. you dont have to send any links to his thread to tell me it has been posted.
