please the aaron brooks lovers/rafer haters (if they havent jumped off his ship yet) only know to blame rafer.........they dont care about this stretch, if he goes 5-13 in the next game, they'll be back to hating him.........i mean the only thing they'll say today is "he took too many shots"
rafer has been extremely solid these past games. I dont even want to imagine how bad we would be if brooks had to start in his place. Dude is colder than that cadaver in my fridge.
I SEE THE TREND Rafer can only perform well during the second half of the season. Rafer and Brooks cannot both perform well at the same time.
Rafer always play very well without Tmac. Hell, most Rockets players play much better without Tmac. Some people make their teammate better, some make them worse.
You guys too excited too easily. We only appreciate Rafer temporarily when he's shooting above his average of 36% from 3. In other words, this is a statistical deviation from the mean, because I highly doubt that he's suddenly going to shoot 40% from 3, and 70% of teardrops. If anything, its the other team that appreciates Rafer Alston more than we do, because i guarantee they would love for Rafer to jack up shots if they had a choice. Nothing has changed, so they will clap every time they force rafer to shoot the floater and say "good defense".
I disagree, Rafer is entering his second half season mode. You can say the same for last season when Yao when down. Rafer went god mode in the second half. We'll just have to see how he performs when Artest and T-Mac comes back.
Great games by Rafer and Wafer that made up for Shane and AB who were complete dogs out there shooting the ball. I'll take this shooting from Rafer while it lasts.
lol, don't people watch rafer every year? he has 2-3 hot streaks EVERY YEAR. relax. until he can be consistent shooting for 2-3 MONTHS, then we can start talking.
I think Rafer plays better when only one of the "big three" is active. He needs the ball in his hands to get in his shooting rhythm, I think. If he's sharing the court with Yao and Tracy (and, perhaps Ron) he won't have that same comfort level.
I bet you thought it was the real thing, huh? Rafer does this every year. A few good games here and there are not enought to offset his poor play for the majority of the season. Also, another terrible game from Battier.
I thought about that at one point too then remembered that he's been doing the same thing throughout his NBA career on a variety of teams. He's in the midst of one his rare hot streaks right now while Brooks has hit a wall. Alston will eventually come down to earth and Brooks will eventually get past this wall he's hit. I never said Brooks would be a superstar. The only argument I ever made was that Rafer is so bad that we should go with Brooks until we can find a better option than both. I didn't think Brooks would hit the wall this hard but he has so it's hard to argue he should be starting over Alston right now. Let's see how things look in a few weeks. My guess is the Rafer bandwagon will be crashed and burned and people will either be clamoring for Brooks to start or praying for GMDM to make a trade for an upgrade. t_mac1 said it best a few posts up. Rafer has streaks like this every season but when all is said and done, he's one of the least efficient PGs in the league, if not the least. I'd be optimistic about Rafer's good play if I hadn't seen this play out for so many years and if it weren't for the fact that Rafer is at the tailend of his career where real improvement is highly unlikely. I don't hate Rafer, I just hate his game.
I don't really care about Rafer's hot shooting, we know it probably won't let it last forever. Thing is, what is good about Rafer was that stretch when Yao was out of the game. He dominated the ball, set up Scola on the pick and roll a few times, or passed the ball around the key and someone would be open for 3. I don't think Rafer made a shot during that stretch, but I'm sure if it had been Brooks in there instead of Rafer, they would've been able to come back. Brooks just doesn't have the confidence or leadership ability to hold a team together like that. Sure, Brooks will probably light it up more than Rafer in the long run. But until he can gain the confidence to lead a team I'll always take Rafer in that situation.
Cmon with a name like BMoney I would think you would know how to tell the difference between pyrite and the real thing, but I guess you've been fooled as well. The truth hurts, but hopefully it will set you free.
that's the thing though. we've been living on rafer's hot streak. opponents still has the idea that rafer can't shoot. so they leave him open because of the double team yao. luckily, he's been hitting his shots. what i mean is, even if he dominates the ball and passes it around, it will end up in his hands eventually. i think his shooting streak is a bigger part of us winning then most people realize.
We are not saying he is turning into a superstar , he is just helping the Rox win games. He is hot during the time we need him the most.
i'm not saying he's more important... it's just that yao, wafer, hayes, barry are relatively consistent and their performances are pretty predictable. they're the constant in this equation and rafer's shooting is the variable.
