Thats not to say I wouldnt mind a Bosh for Tmac trade or Tmac for Joe Johnson or some 2010 free agent. I would also consider keeping him if he came back in full health and ability. Tmac isnt the problem. Yao is. He is too undependable and proven he has cost us every single playoff by simply just breaking down or letting his teammates( Tmac) do all of the stepping up in the past playoffs while he gets shut down. He cost us the Championship even perhaps last year by breaking down and playing for China. He cost us in the past two years prior by not making it there and in the year in Dallas playoffs by having Tmac the only star who showed up that year. I think Tmac is the most consistant star we have and Artest just was not injured last year to go with an uninjured Yao to the Second round all year until again his body cost us the series. We can have this discussion all day but what is apparent is that one or both need to go to lessen the chances of them doing the same thing. You cannot have two injury laden superstars and especially max them out if they 7ft 6 and hope for them to play 33 minutes a night and expect them to make it the whole season. One or the other maybe even both has to go. I would go both if we had max value but we probably dont.
Yao had alot of those games. He also didnt participate in because he was injured. That isnt even choking thats not being there. When he was I dont even remember Yao playing in the Dallas series which tells us how he was doing while Tmac was going off on the whole team by himself.
Yao made up to win couple of months ago. TMac had lots of chances and he blew. Until he's proven otherwise, he's the biggest choker in this league.
Dallas and Dirk would be worse with that 65 or 67 win team losing to Golden State and also the Miami loss to a worse team in the Championships. Thats real choking
They're equally bad. Both made me pull my hair out. Tmac gets less grief, because he misses prettier...
any team which has $45M of their payroll sidelined for a good part of the season because of injuries no doubt is the biggest loser
True. Artest has this uncanny habit of throwing those weird looking 3pt shots. He depended on it too much that he regress from his strengths which was driving the ball to the lane and put backs.
Cant argue regarding the injuries. A really bad case of bad luck. The important thing now is that the team SHOULD NOT be branded later as the " Biggest loser of the NBA season 2009-2010."
Call Dirk choked but he had quite some success, he at least made finals. In pro league it's all about winning. It doesn't matter if you choked couple of times, you are remembered for your best achievement. TMac had choking and no success whatsoever.
goodbye artest...would rather have von wafer or even lowery shooting the shots he was taking...i feel sorry for the lakers...hahahahahahahahahahaha...kobe dont know what his team just signed..hahaha...i dont really feel sorry for them....i hope they implode!! Artest in the stands at staples center!!! Root for it!!
How did he blow his chances? 04-05 playoff against Mavs: Tmac was the only player on that Rockets team that kept us alive. We had Ryan Bowen as our starting PF, we had David Westley at the 2 guard guarding Jason Terry. Our scorers off the bench was Jon Barry who is aging, and Mike James. Yao wasn't effective at all during that series. So Tmac was the only one that did the damage to the Mavs and we took them to game 7. 06-07 playoff against Jazz: That was suppose to be "its on me" playoff series against the Jazz. Tmac played well. Actually he was good, really good. They used different players to guard him every time. Yao, he did well the first game and after that, he was shut down. Okur mentioned that after one game against Yao, he had figure all of Yao's moves. He said he can read Yao like a book, saying Yao is very predictable and Yao does not change up his moves at all. Rafer was decent but against D-Will, he had no chance. Yao had to guard Boozer for defensive purposes and oh boy did Boozer schooled Yao. I mean this guy Boozer looked like a bonafied superstar against Yao. He scored at will, and rebound at will. Yao was hopeless against the Jazz. Game 7 rolled along and man the Rockets couldnt hang and Tmac was the only one carrying his team but it wasn't enough. 07-08 playoff against Jazz: Yao was out, Rafer was hurt, Aaron, Landry, and Scola were all Rookies at the time. Tmac was the only one carrying this load by himself and he did a good job given that he really didnt have any help at all. In the elimination game, only 2 Rockets scored double digits and it was Scola and Tmac. Tracy scored 40 and I believe Scola put up like 15 and that was it. So again Tracy was short handed. This season was a different story. Even though we didnt have Tmac ( we would be hella strong with a healthy Tmac) Aaron Brooks was great, we had Lowry, we had Von, Landry is being Landry, Scola got better, we had Yao, we had Artest. Man we were a deep ass team. That is why we beat the living hell out of the young talented Portland Trailblazer. This is probably the deepest team I've seen from the Rockets in over a decade. That is why we made it pass the first round this year so guys....please don't say because Tmac wasn't playing.
Agreed. One thing I noticed about Artest is he completely stopped trying to stay in front of guys on the perimeter. He would just load up on their strong hand and encourage them to drive with their off hand. That isn't great defense or even good defense unless you're defending a guy who is a deadly jump shooter and deadly slasher with one hand but relatively useless handling the ball with the other hand. If we go back and look at all the time the Battier/Artest combo shut down a great player it's almost always Shane who did the "shutting down" while Ron is the one that usually got scored on. Perimeter defense should be better now than before. Ariza can't defend big wing players in the post like Ron could because Ariza isn't nearly strong enough but as I've said before, Shane is nearly as good defending the post as Ron was so it isn't like we are losing much.
Why the hell does everyone question Lowry's shotmaking ability? From all the games I've watched him play he has a decent mid-range jumper (free-throw line about) and a slightly less than average 3-point corner shot. His stats in Memphis lie!
i love how he left out the fact that we got 3 2nd round steals without even having a pick in the draft! idiot.
Indeed, Lowry's perimeter shot is decent. It is his ability to take it to the hoop that makes him a good player.
