I was thinking that same thing. A healthy Tmac and Yao still and we would have beaten the Lakers. I never saw any way that Denver beats us so that would have put us in the Finals. Magic wuld have been tough but ultimately our insurgent Rafer would have undone them with his tear drops and untimely threes and Rockets could have been the Champs last season easily.
My whole thoughts when we had Artest were that he's really not a #2 guy, he's a #3, we just didn't have a #2 at the time, so he fit that. So, to me replacing Artest with a younger defensive version that may not score as many points, but will hit a better % is an upgrade. Especially since LA gave him 5 years! 5 Years of Artest, are they crazy?! We obviously still need a #1/#2 on this team after we signed Ariza, but I think Scola/Brooks will pick up some slack while we wait for Yao to come back and I could see all the players really improving b/c its a fairly young team. If Tmac, does come back this year, like he/his trainer are saying, than I think we are good enough to challenge for 8 seed, nothing more really, but good enough to challenge. Morey has definitely done the best he could do with the situation.
The dearth of talk about the team aspect of the game continues to rub me the wrong way. All you hear is talk about superstars. If the team does not have enough of them, they are automatically bad. This pisses me off. Did we know Rip Hamilton, Chaucey Billups, Rasheed Wallace, or Tayshaun Prince prior to Detroit's NBA championship and period of Western Conference playoff dominance? I know I didn't. But you know what? They played as a team, and each player because a star on their own because of that. I can see a similar thing happening with Scola/Ariza/Battier/Brooks. I remain ignorantly optimistic, according to the narrow-minded media.
Losers of the 1997 offseason: San Antonio Spurs We're mostly "losers" because Yao is out for the year, not because we didn't re-sign Artest and got Ariza instead. It's stupid to say somebody had a bad offseason because they lost a player due to injury. What? Were we just supposed to get a replacement superstar for what was left of our MLE? Give me a break.
If TMac would be able to lead Rox past Portland, he would have done it in 05 against Mavs. In reality, he came short every time, even with homecourt advantage twice against Jazz.
You are wrong because we where not better than the Mavs. We where better than the Blazers. We just got a good matchup. If we had gotten Utah we might have lost in the first round again. Lets not forget Sura was injured that year and we had David Wesley at guard who stood all of 6ft. Not comparable to this year when we had a actual contender if healthy. We didnt ever have a team with Landry and Scola ahead of him at PF. We never had a scoring Point guard that gave people problems like Brooks did. We didnt have a Battier back then or backup any good like Lowry. Different circumstance for every single playoff run and year. Injuries and team depth wise.
Where we ever considered good enough to get to the Finals before last season also? The answer is no. Yao was healthy this year was the big deal and we had a very deep team and Artest was similar enough to Tmac to stand in for him. I feel with Tmac we would have been better than with Artest though with the kind of team we had finally.
I am sick of excuses. 90% of teams won game 7 at home. 95% of teams won the series after 3:1. At least 80% of teams won the series after 2:0 and only 2 team ever lost after 2:0 on road. TMac just constantly made history in playoff, in the wrong side. One time failure can be called bad luck, 3 times up 2 games in the series and blew it. That's epic choking. TMac couldn't buy a basket for his life in game 7 at home for final 5 minutes until garbage time. I am not sure there's one player more overrated in NBA history.
Yao made 2nd round with Artest. TMac couldn't. That alone made Artest a better player in playoff, case closed. When you have 2 all stars in the team and couldn't make 2nd round 4 years in a row, it's choking, no excuse.
We wherent the better team though still. In either case we lost. Thats just all there was to it. Dallas was better and so was Utah in them years. Excuses where on his team. tmac played well. He never had a good team and Artest did. Thats all facts. He even had Yao, Battier, Scola, Landry, Brooks all peaking in the playoffs and Brooks finally starting while Lowry being the backup. Tmac had a hurt Yao every year. Battier who needed surgery after the playoffs Scola a noob, Landry a rookie, Aaron a rookie behind tear drop Alston, and no Lowry, no Wafer, and all of them without Yao in the first round. Then they lose Yao in the second round this year and just like last year they lose the series without Yao. Artest couldnt get it done without Yao either once he went down.
Point being Artest didnt get past any round without Yao either. He didnt carry us into round three once he went down like Tmac also didnt in a year they won 54 games with Yao missing half the season. Artest just got lucky and drew Portland in the first round who we always beat.
Point being TMac didn't get past any round WITH Yao either. And all it took was just to win one game at home. Or take it this way, TMac had 5 games in his life to win and made 2nd round, with 2 games at home. He lost all 5 of them. If that's not choking, what's choking? No excuse, superstar can win one game all by themselves, once a while. TMac even had best center in the league on his side twice.
