4) joe johnson - he avg only 20ppg, 4rpg, 4apg in the playoffs. the reason the hawks won those games were more of a credit to josh smith than joe johnson. i can't believe you put guys like arenas, iverson, melo under joe johnson. The only reason I put Joe Johnson above these guys is because he does a little bit of everything on the offensive end atleast, and he actually has a pretty good shooting %, unlike A.I. or Agent Zero, who both love to take every shot they can. Carmello shoots well, but can't do anything outside of scoring and is an idiot when it comes to understanding basketball on both sides of the court. Wonder when ABC and ESPN will start showing a diagram of Melo's 1st round failures, instead of Tmac's like they did in every game this series. They even showed the Toronto series when he was the 2nd or 3rd option on that team!! Melo was actually favored vs. the Clippers and has had much more talent around him overall than Tmac ever had outside of Yao. At least Tmac elevates his game in the playoffs, Melo just disappears most years in the playoffs...
Tmac is more athletically gifted, but Pierce has a higher basketball IQ. He is also better conditioned and a much better shooter. While he may not be on the level of Tmac, he's pretty close. For a "2.5" option, he sure does take a lot of game winning field goal attempts. Like Pierce, Manu is very close to Tmac's level. During the regular season, Manu was at least equal to (if not better) than Tmac. Please Please PLEASE explain to me how the game 4 victory by the Hawks was more of a credit to Josh Smith as opposed to Joe Johnson.
joe johnson can't dominate a game like those guys offensively though. he only put up 20ppg in the playoffs. joe shot 41% for the season, 42% for the playoffs. joe is like a 3rd/4th tier star
You make a good point, I guess I just got a little hyped after watching a couple of games vs. the Celtics, but those games did impress me, but I've always been a fan of Joe Johnson's game. I think he deserved to be an all star and I think he will get better once he gets better coaching. But I would have to agree with you after reading your posts that he isn't on the same level as Tmac, but I think he can be close one day, IMO.
Lol the rule for being all-star is simple. Dunk, versatility, be known. Be at least 40+. (Wade was once 40+) Johnson played great against the celtics, but he was very inconsistent. Sure McGrady hasn't been all that consistent, but the assist and rebound numbers he put up is pretty impressive.
Josh Smith carried the Hawks on both sides of the court from the 1st-3rd quarter. JJ was the finisher. Are you going to imply that his 28 points 6 rebounds 2 assists 2 steals 7 blocks wasn't a huge factor in that game? Smith was just as important as Johnson - if not more so. Hell, even Bibby got in on the action. If we had someone next to McGrady who was capable of putting up 28/6/2/2/7 let alone a PG who can give us 18/6 or a big who is one of the best young rebounders in the game this Jazz series would of looked completely different... but I digress.
It was a huge factor, but Johnson's 20 pts in the 4th was more important. The 4th quarter is the most critical quarter. Why do you think Tmac gets so much criticism when he plays for 3 quarters and disappears in the 4th?
Tony Parker, Deron Williams and Chris Paul are 4 years, 6 years and 7 years younger than TMac. All are currently on better teams than the Rockets. If the Rockets can improve to where they are better than those teams in the next few years with out trading a key player I would like to here it. TMac could go to several teams in the East and make them imeadiate contenders to win the Eastern Conference and we could get peices from most of those teams that should help us be superior to what we are now with in a year or two and possibly put us in a position to challange for the West.
It doesn't matter, give TMac someone who is able put up Josh Smith's number in that game - 28 points 6 rebounds 2 assists 2 steals 7 blocks, and trust me, TMac's team will win against MOST teams. It is idiotic to say TMac disappeared in the 4th quarter. He carried us alone at least for 3 quarters in every single game in this series, but sadly this is the NBA, you can't expect one guy to single handedly beat an opposing team. Especially great teams like the Jazz. I WILL SAY THIS ONE FINAL TIME, THE ONLY REASON WHY 4th Q (3rd Q in game 6) REMAINED CRITICAL WAS BECAUSE OF TMAC! If not for him, none of those quarters would have mattered, got it?? For the Rockets very single quarter was critical because we were losing and he delivered. Funny how haters would try to find anything to find faults in TMac.
pierce has a higher bball IQ? first time i ever heard that from anybody. he shoots better %s yes, but he does less things on the basketball court than tmac ever does, including when he was the main man. manu takes a lot of game winning fg attempts b/c well, other teams are more focused on duncan and parker. did you see the suns series? hornets series? they both focused on stopping duncan first, then tony parker. manu is on their radar as the THIRD guy to stop. isn't that the definition of a THIRD OPTION? joe johnson scored well in game 4. but he only did well in the 4th (unlike you, i look at the entire gam). josh's smith stats (he scored 12 pts in the 4th too you know), he scored 28 pts, 6rebs, 7 blocks. he controlled KG defensively and shut down the paint defensively at times. joe was huge too, but in all of their wins, josh smith played a bigger part. joe played a big part only in the 4th quarter of game 4. josh's smith game 3 - 27, 9, 6 game 6 was a superbly balanced game by their team (both josh and joe struggled)
we're closer to winning with tmac alone than we are with yao alone. we proved we can beat a jazz team that went to the WCF if rafer just stayed healthy all series, along with tmac/battier. you think we could do that with yao in right now and tmac out? we already have developing big men in landry/scola to man the PF. now if we can trade yao for amare/howard (which won't happen), but yao can yield us a lot of stuff that we can be RIDICULOUSLY WELL-ROUNDED, we'd go off like crazy. tmac won't yield us much simply b/c he'll be going on 30 and did you see how teams hesitated even trading for kobe bryant, the best player in the L. how the hell you gonna get equal value for tmac? you get more equal value for yao.
I would do a Yao for Amare or Yao for Dwight trade in a heartbeat, too bad the other teams wont Les should of offered Yao for KG. We would be playing the Lakers right now.
again, i'm not syaing those players are better than yao b/c you can argue about that. what i'm saying is we've seen how our offense reached a whole other level after yao went down and landry was still healthy. and landry is nowhere a star player. now if you can add a player where you can legitimately do a pick and roll with tmac, you're good to go. the reason we hate the pick and roll now is b/c he has no one to pass to and gets doubled for no reason. and that would make our defense better also b/c again, our rotations would be quicker. notice how we shut down boozer with relative ease in this series.
This is quite possibly the stupidest thread I have come across. Stop reading foxsports.com. What else can one man do? I'd get tired too if I was carrying four other guys on my back.
First off I would discuss trading any player (including Yao) if it made the team better. But I thought the offense really started coming around when TMac was out mid season and the team really started moving and passing the ball. Even TMac said the Rockets were playing better as a team after he went out. I thought after TMac came back from his mid season injury that the Rockets slowly started to revert back to the offense where everyone else just sort of waited for TMac to make things happen.
I won't say that because McGrady has been every part of the Rocket's 22 game win streak. So I guess the JVG offense was undefeated 22 games in a row, and 10 games in a row without Yao?
our best offense in the tmac-yao era was the 7 games after yao got injured. that was the best offense the rockets have played in the last 5 years. we reverted back to tmac offense a little bit b/c landry got injured. you saw we went back to adelman's ofense in game 3/4 when alston controlled the offense. that wasn't the case in games 1/2 b/c tmac was the PG and SG.
who the hell is going to score? Besides, no one will want someone who is injury prone and about to have surgery on his knee... That being said, I don't think we should trade t-mac, or can't...Yao shouldn't be traded either...Again, the injury factor plays into this and we won't be able to get fair value for him...
