No doubt the Rockets would have made the playoffs if we had Chandler. How far we would go? No telling, but we would have been in the dance.
Anything that "the Mavs winning a championship" proves regarding the Houston Rockets could have been proven before the Mavs won it. Essentially, Dallas winning a ring last night does nothing to prove how close the Rockets are to winning one. The logic for this thread is completely off-base. ============================= A pidgeon can fly for prolonged periods of time. Both a pidgeon and I have a heart, eyes and lungs. That must mean that I am only wings and a beak away from being able to fly for a prolonged period of time. A chicken would disagree.
Dallas won because the have a healthy superstar to build around. It's not any more complicated than that.
There is much more than that. Minnesota had a healthy KG to build around, Orlando had an healthy Tmac to build around. But the owners didn't spend money to build. Spending doesn't guarantee rings, but it gives the team more chance to win the whole thing. It took Cuban 10 years of spending before he got one. Think about this way: on a scale of 1 to 10 in both talents and salary, and you have two deals on the table: one talent level 4 players is asking for level 3 pay, one talent 5 level is asking for level 6 pay. Which deal are you going to sign? Most GMs would sign deal number 1, because it's cost effective and there is only so much he is allowed to spend due to lux tax limitation set by owners. But when you have an owner like Cuban, the GM can do the deal number 2. It's true that the player is overpaid, but for the team, talent level 5 is always better than talent level 4. When you accumulated a lot of those talents, the team will be better than most of other teams in general. An owner who is willing to pay a lot extra money to improve the team is a good owner. Mavs is fortunate to have one owner like that, current Rockets isn't lucky enough. .
Most of the NBA teams are two players away from championship (some are even one player away) anyways.
It took dirk 13 seasons to mature, learn the nba defence, work hard and win a championship, i wonder if this guy has what it takes? He's tall and he is an offensive player. Im seriously leaning towards this guy.
Rockets are two players away from being interesting in NBA. Rockets will never win another championship under Les and Morey.
I hate to compare him to Dirk because it seems every euro big man is deemed "the next Nowitzki" but I really think their games are simialr...who knows? I hope the Rockets take a chance on him.
this is what i'm thinking. we need 2 centers - a shot blocker and a good backup. we also need a slasher, either a sg or sf. only one of them needs to be an all star. and we need to do that without giving up martin, chuck, patterson, kyle, dragon, or lee.
much easier to spend when you have a good foundation in place (dirk). otherwise, its stupid to overpay for role payers before you get your superstar. also - cuban let nash go because of money. so you're wrong anyway.
No doubt it's easier to build a round a superstar level talent. But not every owner will spend money even if they have a super star. KG was the example. Also it's gonna be too late to build until you get a superstar. This scenario might happen: You traded for a super star using talent on you team. If you didn't started accumulating talents already, you'd be in a situation with superstar + bad supporting cast. See how Rocekts traded for Tmac and got no quality role players to support them. BTW, Cuban made a bad decision on Nash, but not just because of money. Cuban didn't put the money into his pocket. He used the money to sign Dampier because he didn't think Nash would develop even more at that age and Mavs needs defense presence in the middle more than anything in playoffs at that time. It might be a bad choice at that time. But in the end, that terrible contract turned into Chandler and pushed Mavs onto the top.
And now Nash has two personal awards and no rings...maybe Cuban was on to something, not trying to defend, just trying to analyze. I've read that Cuban is big in to stats and such also, maybe Nash didn't have what he was looking for so he chose not to keep him for the money he wanted....
