We need help bad! Dallas and San Antonio bench seems like it never stops sending out shooters. It seem like half the bench players were better than 3 of our starters. When i watch dallas and phoenix and SA, I be like how in the hell did they get 5 ballers and 3 good bench players, while the rockets have 2 great players, 2 good and the rest CBA material.
With all new tires on the car. Also, I would like to point out that the bench is not the problem, we have servicable bench players, like Luther, and Bogans, and Swift etc...the problem is with our starters. If we have to put bench role players out as part of our starting 5, we get hammered. A bench is important, but starters play about 75-80% of the game, and it is there that the games are won and lost. We have Yao & Tmac as solidified starters, the rest of the positions need an upgrade, we don't need bench players, we need starters. DD
How about Mutombo, Sure and Barry? If I recall, nobody thought those guys were going to contribute. Same with Wesley, who played great for us most of last season. Not every player we've picked up has been great, but we have gambled on some guys that gave more than was expected.
I agree with Will’s analogy. I think the main problem with management the past couple of seasons is they thought the team was a lot closer to being a championship caliber team then they really were. They brought in players (Alston, Swift) hoping that those players would be the final piece to the puzzle when they haven’t even started assembling the puzzle yet. There are certain phases that teams must go through before they can even start thinking about contending for a title. You can’t just build a championship team all in one offseason. The past 2 seasons should have been solely for stockpiling talent and developing young players. THEN make some roster tweaks (trading for better fits, adding veterans, defenders, etc.). That’s the way elite teams like Dallas, Phoenix, Detroit, and San Antonio were built. They got their young core players established first and worried about their weaknesses and adding veteran players later (Finley, Van Exel, Adrian Griffin, Kurt Thomas, etc.). The Rockets did things backwards. They skipped that whole phase of bringing in young talent and developing them and went straight to what they thought was making the final tweaks to a championship team.
I couldn't agree with you more! The rockets had no plan they just wanted to win now and not be bothered building the team's core with youth and talent. By the way for this to happen don't you consider that JVG and staff would not be a coaching asset?
Want to enlighten us all as to why? We (just as TOR does) would have had James' Early Bird Rights meaning we could have paid him up to 175% of his current salary or just under $6m for Yr 1. That's more than the $5m MLE that 26 NBA teams have to offer. Only CHA, CHI and ATL have cap space and only ATL has a need for a PG. And ATL is building around young players. Further, an Early Bird starting salary for James is only $2.1m more than what we'll be paying Alston next season. Of course, we wouldn't want the facts to get in the way of a good anti-James rant.
DD, I agree. When it comes to improving the talent base on this team, I think we mean the starters around Yao and Tmac. This team so desperately needs a servicable 3rd scorer at 2/3 (Ricky Davis, Mobley, Mike Miller etc etc) and then a solid rotational player at PF (Udonis Haslem or Troy Murphy etc). I am not necessarily bringing up those names as potential Rockets, but as the types of players this team needs to bring in to help augment Yao/Tmac's game. You put those types of players around Tmac and Yao and this team is off and running. And furthermore, this team then could withstand some minor injuries during the season and not feel like we are going to lose ALL of our games during that stretch! More than anything that killed us last year! I mean if Yao/Tmac go down we have to still be very competitive during the "regular" season. If we aren't, then that is a sure sign we dont have enough talent.
ARE YOU SCREAMING AT ME OR WHAT?? Look Padgett hit plenty of nice shots when he was with us. I don't know who in their right mind has EVER compared him to Larry Legend... We do need players that can stretch the defenses. That can make teams pay for the double team.
Believe: Sorry if it seemed that way! I was just being emphatic because I am mystified by our members that say that they would like to see Padgett or Padgett type of players back on our team. I wanted to point out that we must have a much higher standard than a 37.9% 3 point shooter. If we set out sights so low then we will end up with another season much like the last.I realize that if the Rockets make a serious rebuilding plan that its going to take another two or three seasons to catch up with our other Texas Teams.I only expect about two major changes this season .The big concern for the Rocket's future is if they will be stuck with a lame Tracy Mc Grady.We all hope that Tracy will be OK but if not then our team is doomed for years.
JVG sold out the future of the franchise for a few more wins in his first year or two extracted from old rent a guys on literally their last legs.
I agree so much. You can't lose 8 or 9/every 10 games every time either Yao or Tracy is out. With a third scorer we could win close to half of them. My big question is: if JVG is such a good defensive coach, how come he has to only acquire good defensive players --EVEN IF THEY HAVE NO OFFENSE, such as Bowen, Goggins etc. Anybody could play good D with those guys.
The Rocket's strategy on building a championship team over the years is to aquire a couple of all stars and surround them with cheap one dimensional role players. How many expiring contracts and trade exemptions have they let expire? To me, Les isn't willing to go over the CAP to get quality players around TMac and Yao.
Please get your facts straight. The Rockets have been over the cap by a substantial margin ever since Hakeem's $16m salary came off of the books in his final season and they signed Mo Taylor, Shandon Anderson and Moochie. Maxing Francis added to that total. They will continue to be over the cap as long as they have two max players (Yao and TMac) and need to fill out 13 remaining roster spots. One of the spots being Howard who was needed to acquire McGrady. Further, they used a portion of the Glen Rice trade exception in the Francis-McGrady trade which gave them another trade exception which was why they were able to trade Reece Gaines for Mike James who was traded for Alston. So (whether you like the Alston trade or not), it has direct roots back to the Rice TE. Les Alexander is on record in the media that if the Rox had players the Pacers wanted, he would have taken on Artest's contract. Like any good business man, Alexander does not want to pay a huge Luxury Tax bill. But when it comes to acquiring quality talent, he will spend the money. But he does have to operate under the Collective Bargaining Agreement and he's not going to toss money into the wind like he's a poster on a fan board.
We have trashed this out many times over and I have no interest to go through the whole thread now to see if it has been touched on. But the point you make will be fine if we were under the cap. People tend to forget that part of the deal - with us being over the cap we would have been in more hole if Mike James walked which is very likely since he signified he wanted to get paid. The point is since we were already over the cap, we would only have MLE to spend this summer. So tell me how we fill our PG void (especially now that that the good ones are rare), SG void and then PF with only the draft and MLE? Having Rafer in the fold for 4 more seasons (that we will not be under the cap) was/is a very prudent move.
I haven't dug through this thread yet, but after watching this Clippers/Phoenix series, the premise REALLY hits home. When I've made posts in the past about our lack of talent, I've used Dallas, Detroit, and San Antonio as examples. Now, I'm not even talking about those three. I'm talking about Phoenix and the Clippers - teams that aren't even legit contenders, and their talent level absolutely blows ours out of the water! And these aren't even serious contending teams! These teams just come at you endlessly with talent - forget Nash, Stoudemire, and Marion - any of Diaw, Tim Thomas, Barbosa, or Raja Bell would EASILY be our 3rd best player. Hell, even a clown like James Jones would start for us. Brand, Maggette, Cassell, Mobley, Kaman, Livingston, Ross, Radmonovich, the list is endless. I don't even want to get into Dallas, SA, and Detroit. For the Rockets to even compete in a 7 game series with any of these teams, McGrady and Yao would have to play absolutely FLAWLESSLY. Even Kobe and Shaq in their prime were obliterated in the finals with no help. And Yao and T-Mac are not Kobe and Shaq. Yao in his best years will never be even half as good as O'neal, and I don't think McGrady's health will permit him to ever be at that all-time great level again. While at the end of last year, I felt really optimistically about this team, I don't think I've ever felt so down about our prospects. The majority of this is centered around McGrady's health but our roster is absolutely dry. It's ridiculous seeing who these playoff teams are bringing off their bench and then remembering that Juwon Howard, David Wesley, and Ryan Bowen were all starters on this team and major contributors. I cannot stress how mind boggling and depressing that is. One of those guys shouldn't even be in the NBA and the other two would not be seeing minutes for any playoff teams. You see how washed up vets like Brian Grant and the like don't sniff court time on halfway decent teams? That's where Wesley and Howard should be but our talent level is such a joke that they're starting. You see Devin Harris and Jason Terry carving up the defending champs and the best backcourt in the NBA, and I cringe to think how we would fare against them. I think it's futile to argue over what we need. Just get whatever talent is out there because we can use help everywhere.
The only way we can even out the playing field is by hitting a home run on both our draft picks and a MLE signing. We absolutely need to add 3 quality pieces this summer. (I guess we could do some smart trades too, but our assets are so low right now) If we can land Gay/Roy with our first rounder, another athletic swingman in the 2nd (maybe Hassan Adams, Maurice Ager, Denham Brown, or Sun Yue), and bring Mike James back, then maybe we'll have a legit chance to contend. If Luther can improve his handle and consistency, then that would huge, and if Bogans could learn to shoot that would be nice too. We'd have a trio of interchangeable small guards with different skills (Alston, James, and Head). And a stack of athletic swingmen (Tracy, Roy/Gay, our 2nd rounder, and maybe Bogans after 25,000 treys this summer). All the depth and talent in the league is in the backcourt. We need to build that if we're going to compete. Once we add some quality back there, then Yao can be the hammer to overwhelm them upfront.
Agree on that. Even with a healthy Tmac and Yao, chances of beating Spurs and Pistons are really low. People keep talking about 21 to 10 the ratio, they never look at to which teams Rox had the 10 lose, and 21 win. Hopefully, the team can do a better job in drafting this summer.
I said that same thing last night, I was watching the game and they just continued to score. I was saying that if the rockets were playing we would have been raped! I just realize how much work the rockets have to do.
