So his contribution is to be tracy and yao's excuse? If that's he strongest attribute, then we're in trouble.
His role is not to shoot the ball often -- not when Yao, Mcgrady, and Artest are on the floor. It's to make plays. We can tolerate Rafer shoot 3/4 for 10 every night as long as he runs our offense well. It's like judging Aaron brooks from the amount of rebounds he pull down or judging Shane Battier from amoount of points he scores. If we use your method of judgement, then yes, we are definitely in trouble.
First of all, that's the problem. Second of all, that's not his contribution. It used to be that he needed (or felt the need) to chuck up shots because no one else would or could. So we brought in Artest. BROOKS IS NOT A PG. HE'S A SCORER. It would be best to utilize him off the bench for instant offense. I have no problem with giving him more minutes, but Alston is better at handling the ball and controlling the tempo. Alston shouldn't be taking more than 7 or 8 shots now. So it really doesn't matter if he shoots 2/3 for 8. If we can't muster up enough offense with T-Mac, Yao, Artest, and Scola on the court that Rafer has to chuck multiple shots then we definitely have a problem not even Aaron Brooks can solve. Rafer isn't the best. He's not even good. But say what you will, he will shoot if everyone else is going to be a little pussmuffin about it. He has the balls to take a big shot or try to make a big play. He has the balls not to get punked by some nobody in Matt Barnes or some superstar in Chris Paul. Call it hotheaded, stupid, or fake if you want, but Rafer's pretty tough. If you can't see that you're blind. If our stars had that kind of mentality, we'd be sitting on a couple playoff series victories and possibly a WCF trip by now.
And for a self-proclaimed scout, you should know that for Rafer we should really be looking at his assist per turnover stats: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/statistics?stat=nbaassists&sort=astto&avg=pg&seasontype=2 Sure, Chris Paul is leaps and years ahead, but Rafer actually isn't doing too bad. In fact, he even improved from last year.
I don't even get the argument anymore. It should be plan to see that out of all the Point Guards on the team right now that Rafer is important to how far this team can go. It shouldn't be that hard to understand. Nobody is saying that through a trade or signing that we shouldn't try to upgrade over Rafer but the chances of us trading for a better pg than Rafer is unlikely at this point.
Rafer apologists will remember who he really is by the end of the week. They have a little ammo right now because he missed the Spurs game and we lost, even though they try to under emphasize how bad McGrady was in that game. If I remember correctly, Brooks almost single-handedly bumped that lead up to about 14 and it was at about 10 when McGrady re-entered the game. Of course, McGrady did nothing down the stretch when he was supposedly the best guard on the court. Maybe if Brooks just got selfish enough to not defer to a struggling Tracy, we are sitting at 2-0 without Alston.
And maybe if Brooks could stop George Hill we would be sitting at 2-0 without Alston. Plenty of blame to go around in that game.
Interior defense was crap. Alston is not very good at stopping penetration either. Watch him closely next time he plays. Guards burn him on a regular basis. There are few shut down defensive PGs in the entire league. With no hand-checking, there is only so much a perimeter defender can do to stop a guy with the ball. If anything, you just have to try to force the ballhandler to go where you want. Brooks can learn to do that and you saw significant improvement against the Hornets. On the other, Rafer can't stop bricking. Hill was bound to have a big game considering it was one of the first starts of his career and the team was without it's two primary scoring guards. Yao had zero blocks in that game and barely contested any shots. I would blame part of Hill getting off on Brooks but more so on our pathetic interior defense in that game. And it's not like the Spurs offense was clicking. They only scored 77 points or something. We played good enough defense as a team to win that game. The no show by McGrady was the biggest problem. If he even hits 3 of 12 instead of 2 of 12, we win that game.
Most people are not arguing about Rafer being better than Brooks. At least I'm not. The argument is yes we need Rafer because without him we don't have another pg besides Brooks. It's the same argument as to why we would be in trouble if we lost Brooks.
Did you even watch that game? George Hill got by AB because of picks from their center and then Yao being unable to shut down the lane. That is not ABs fault....it is Yao's fault. Then, with 5 minutes to go and the Rockets up by 10, Tmac comes back in, and dominates the ball, Brooks goes to the SG spot on offense and Tmac bogs it down, and the team stops scoring. If they let AB continue to put pressure on the Spurs defense with his penetration, I have no doubts they win that game going away. Lesson learned...I HOPE ! As for Rafer being needed....only as a backup PG, or a starter that plays less than Brooks unless he is shooting well. DD
I agree we need more than one PG, like every team. The bottom line is what is ultimately best for this team will end up happening. If Brooks is the better option, Adelman will eventually give him the majority of minutes. Maybe it's worth keeping the peace and letting Alston start until we can finally get rid of him/bring in an upgrade. Maybe I'm wrong and Alston really does fit better with the starters. I am not convinced yet that this is the case though. I still believe that the starting group would play better in the end with Brooks starting over Alston. I also think that Brooks is ideally a backup on most any other team. I just think that Alston is so bad that Brooks is the better choice right now. I'd rather have a PG that is better than both. Until then, I would prefer to see Brooks start. I have no doubt that Adelman will continue starting Rafer though and I know nothing compare to him.
It is also fairly irrelevent in the Rockets offense where Tmac dominates the ball, the PGs role in Houston is to bring the ball up, and get it to Tmac...and then be able to score the ball if counted on... We do not need a traditional pass first PG.... DD
A/TO ratio also has to be taken into context. A guy like Calderon has a great A/TO ratio but he also shoots efficiently and can break down defenses to create easy shots for his teammates. If Alston had a bad A/TO, he wouldn't have a job in this league. He does protect the ball well but he doesn't do enough of the other things you need out of a PG. I don't buy the theory that "the starting PG on the Rockets doesn't need to do those other things." One of the reasons Rafer commits fewer TOs than some of the better PGs in the league, like Nash and Kidd, is that he doesn't handle the ball as much or penetrate and create for others. If that is his basic job description, he should at least be able to shoot league average since he more often than not just camps out on the perimeter waiting to heave up a brick. It's easy to avoid TOs when all you do is hand the ball off to another player on the perimeter. It's not like he gets a lot of assists either. He basically gives you average, at best, assists and low TOs. The reason both of these numbers are low is that he barely does anything that a typical PG does.
It is a bit out of his norm. I thought he was only into scrubby or unathletic white players: Redick, Scola, Spanoulis, Leunen, etc... There is probably a psychological explanation for those infatuations. I kid. I actually thought Spanoulis could have been pretty good despite what his limited statistics showed.
