oh good lord dont encourage him. btw, has anyone else besides me enjoying NIKE owning Hillboy? he has been as overmatched as Earl Boykins guarding Shaq.
another thing i forgot to add, i'll just put it in here... when did conventional wisdom suddenly gear to us "needing to get younger and more athletic?" was it after kenny smith kept drilling it into our heads with his little "kenny's pictures" that we had no 'guard speed?' i don't recall this ever being a problem during the regular seasaon and it certainly wouldn't be thought of as an issue had we held on during any of games 3,4,5. we didn't lose because of 'guard speed' and we don't need to add athletes - it'd be nice to have that luxury, but it's not the pressing need some of you have made it out to be as if it was the reason for our demise. we should have been 6-0 in the first 6 games, choking big leads in games 3 and 4, and becoming the victim of a bad call in game 5 (though missing those FT's didn't help matters any). throughout these games, dallas used 4 quick, athletic swingmen while we countered with aging 6'3 shooters and we still led the majority of the way. one 40 point ass whooping later, and 'guard speed' is suddenly our major weakness. first of all the reason we lost this series...well, there is no reason really why we lost, we should have won, but i guess you could say the main thing we were missing that would have closed this out is obviously a halfway decent power forward out there. games 3 through 7, we were starting out the games playing 3 on 5 on BOTH ends of the court with both Padgett and Sura out there! they were giving us absolutely NOTHING on either end yet we somehow hung close or led. bring in ryan bowen and it gets even worse. 'guard speed' is not the reason we got our asses whooped in game 7. get a rebounder out there and the mavericks aren't even able to hang around in games 3-5 off the offensive glass. we would have put them away by then. and besides, dallas is the only team in the L with the capability to go small and athletic like that and they still barely exposed us. while it would be nice to get more athletic along the perimeter no doubt, it's not like it's some huge need.
I think Hillboy is right concerning CD's offseason last year after the T-Mac deal. It seems to me most everyone on this board was wondering when we would sign a point guard. As the various FA PG kept coming off the board it was thought CD was waiting til we could get someone on the cheap. After Damon Jones got signed for 2.5 I was thinking how cheap are we looking to go? Now granted it takes two people to have an agreement. And maybe CD tried but just didn't get lucky on the deals we never saw. I do overall think, post-Rudy, CD has done a super job. The one excetion is Ward. And I know we all want him to fill every hole this offseason. But a systematic approach of adding 1 or 2 solid players each year would in the long run be better.
Yes, set them back so far that they only became contenders (your description) in the 4th year post-Hakeem. I'd be interested in any plausible scenario you could come up with in which they could have done so quicker.
I never said the damage couldn't be slowly repaired. I said they went from "shambles" to a "good situation." I take that back, they aren't even in a good situation yet, but you can see light at the end of the tunnel, thanks largely in part due to some shrewd manuevering POST Rudy. you have things confused. they're a good team, but that's due to the star duo. the roster situation still isn't too pretty as they didnt have much flexibility but CD did the best he could last year with what little he had to work with. if you feel having no first round draft picks, mo taylor signed at $8mill/yr, Kelvin Cato $7mill/yr, Moochie Norris 6 year deal, Matt Maloney still on the books, Glen Rice, nothing to show for Glen Rice's expiring contract, nothing to show for your last few 1st round picks, nothing to show for the last time you had significant cap space (except squandering it away on the likes of Mo Taylor and Moochie Norris) is a good situation, then like i said, we have no starting point to argue.
i actually really agree with this. PF is by far the biggest need we have. eveything else pales by comparison. and as cabbage implies, if we had a decent PF, we'd still be playing now.
No, I believe you have things confused cabbage. There are a handful of teams that are contenders in the NBA in any given year. If you think the Rockets are one of those teams, that is a GOOD situation to be in. Do you dispute this? It doesn't matter if it's because of the 'star duo' - that's precisely what makes their situation good. The Spurs can make perceived shrewd moves all day long but it wouldn't matter if they didn't luck into Duncan. He's the reason all their moves look good. One or two of the 'blunders' you mention above don't happen, and it's possible the Rockets don't even have their star duo. You are aware that Kelvin Cato led directly to the acquisition of McGrady, right? Yet you claim that signing contributed to the Rockets being in shambles. All you're doing is listing off every move you think was bad and saying the Rockets are messed up because of it. Nothing to show for any of the above? How about Yao & McGrady? You can't just say they don't count. Listing off only the mis-steps is going to make ANY team look bad. How about some evidence that the Rockets are even in a bad situation? You're not even accurately describing the situation they're in, just naming off past transactions (only ones that didn't pan out). How about a scenario where they could have contended faster than they have? How many teams in the NBA are in a BETTER situation?
Not Hillboy, but since you brought it up, the biggest major screwup, I recall, is not drafting Rashard Lewis after they told him they would. Passing on him not once, not twice, but three times, for what (Dickerson, Drew and who?)? I know it it was CD and Rudy and not JVG, but IMHO this was the organization's biggest mistake in the last 10 years.
I guess Kenny missed James owning Terry and company up and down the court. It was comical watching James fake right or left and watch Terry, etc. pull a Bryon Russell and go about 4-5 feet in the direction of the fake practically falling down. I don't think Houston has ever had a quicker guard.
I might have been a big mistake for us but it probably was the best thing for Rashard. I mean can you imagine Rashard in houston @ 18 with all that gauranteed cash. His Posse et all. I'm telling you it might have stumped his growth and ambition. I mean look at Curry in Chicago. So far Lebron has been great except for putting his boys in charge of his millions. No I think Rashard way the hell out in the NorthWest was the best thing for him and his growth. PS My sister went to elsik with him, graduated the same year, and everyone knew the boy couldnt get test scores needed for a good college.
You think it was even bigger than trading those three first rounders for Eddie Griffin? I'd have to disagree. We used Michael Dickerson in acquiring Steve Francis, who we used to acquire Tracy McGrady. We got absolutely nothing out of Eddie Griffin, so we got nothing for all three of those draft picks.
I don't consider the drafting of Griffin as a major screwup, because most everyone would have done the same thing. He was expected by some to go #1 in the draft. Everyone thought that was a steal. That's not as bad as ignoring Lewis, who was a home product, and everyone was screaming at them, including me, at every pick to take Lewis. When we traded for Griffin, even though I had some misgivings about not drafting Jefferson, Randalph and a PG, I pumped my fist in excitement, that we had pulled off the steal of the draft. Who knew what was going happen. Its only 20/20 hindsight that makes us regret the Grifin deal, but many of us have memories of groaning at each pick after Dickerson, and that's why we consider it our biggest blunder in the last 10 years. As far as the issues that thacabbage is mentioning, I agree that the problem was we were going 3 on 5 in those middle playoff games, and even though Howard would have been better, he wouldn't have been enough. IE., there is a glaring need of rebounding and toughness at PF, but there is also one at PG. We need a playmaking good passing high IQ guard who sees the floor like TMac and Yao. James is great off the bench, but he's instant offense, not a playmaker. He took forever to pass it in, dribbling way too long, and Sura's back isn't going to be at full health for another year. With Yao improving, we need someone who can quickly get it into him, back out and around to the open man.
i love rudy and all but he totally screwed up the rockets with some bad moves. could you imagine how things would be now if we didnt get lucky by getting that number one pick? we would have no yao or tracy, and be stuck with Stevie, cat, kato, mo taylor, and moochie! nice line up huh? hahaha we all should be thankful that we have one of the nicest one two punches in the nba today in yao/tmac.
Even if we still picked Dickerson, we still passed on him two more times with nothing to show for it.
And how did they get Yao? They lucked into him. How did they get T-Mac? Through Yao. Now rewind back to draft day, and we actually have the #5 pick like we were supposed to. We take Mike Dunleavy or Caron Butler or whatever. Fast forward to today. Things don't look too good now do they? Look, I really don't know what we're arguing about. The point of my post was to say that Rudy made some terrible moves and JVG has been cleaning it up. Unless your Rudy himself, how can you NOT agree with that statement?
well technically we got tmac b/c we seemed to have spectacular hits and misses and we got tmac with the hits. for all the picks (3 in one draft w/ rashard and 3 for eg) and signings we did nothing with, we got steve francis for what turned out to be nothing (i think only othella was still in the league in 2 years, much less producing) and mobley for essentially nothing in the 41st pick (and hey we got cato for that big fat nothing quitten). so basically, for all the HOFers we lost and all the draft picks we wasted and the stupid moochie and mo contracts, we managed to stay afloat as a respectable, slightly above .500 team thanks to those two moves. as far as being lucky with yao, welcome to the club. we got lucky we sucked and got hakeem, chicago got lucky that portland didn't draft mj, orlando got lucky that it got 2 straight #1 picks, LA got lucky they made one of them mad, SA got lucky to have an injury that knocked them to 5th from where they won the lottery, and we got lucky to have almost the whole team get injured to knock us to 5th from where we won the lottery. and then we got lucky orlando pisssed their star off right when it became apparent out star wasn't going to stay and we just happened to have a star tmac wanted to play with. i'm not going to say our roster moves weren't below average for a while there, but being a contender like we're going to be for a while is about luck as much as anything else.
Ok, now I understand your comment and that's fair. I was excited when we traded those three picks for Eddie Griffin too. So yeah, if we're ruling out hindsight, I can agree with that. I was groaning everytime they passed up Rashard Lewis too. I remember convincing myself that Mirsad Turkcan must be an amazing player that they just couldn't pass up. Yeah. The truth hurt. My dad said it was worse when they passed up on Clyde Drexler for Rodney McCray. (Is that right?) Right, and that's a huge mistake, but in lue of hindsight, it's still not as big as not having anything to show for three first round picks.
The Dickerson deal (retirement due to injury) is sad. That kid could play. The other two - not so much. But the Rox were not the only team to pass up Rashard L.
