the best thing going for him is that he'd be on a rookie min contract making his salary nearly half of what harris, wafer, or strawberry are getting.
Morey talked about Starting with 14 possibly with the thought of signing Deke later. To me the guy you have to trade for Draft Picks is Luther Head based on lack of performance and also the contract size. Harris and Strawberry stays Wafer gets cut and you have your 14 players. 1 Rafer Alston 2 Ron Artest 3 Brent Barry 4 Shane Battier 5 Aaron Brooks 6 Joey Dorsey 7 Steve Francis 8 Mike Harris - Inactive 9 Chuck Hayes Luther Head -Trade and sign Deke 10 Carl Landry 11 Tracy McGrady 12 Luis Scola 13 D.J. Strawberry - In active Von Wafer - Cut 14 Yao Ming
the rockets are worried the lack of size behind yao. steve is going nowhere. if he's done they won't be able to trade him. also they won't waive him just to add another player/more salary bacause of LT.
I don't think there has ever been a post where I've talked about Head without putting him down. This will be my first. Ignoring the fact that we owe Head his guaranteed contract amount still and that the other two have non-guaranteed contracts (Strawberry's would activate if we kept him for even the first game of the season), I still think Head is more valuable than either player. First of all, Head's regular season PER is consistently over 10 (IIRC it was around 13 last year), which means he was slightly less than the average NBA player (supposedly at 15). He's performed around this level for three years now, so we know what his value is. Neither Strawberry nor Wafer have ever put up PER's above 7. If Wafer looks good it's because he's playing against inferior competition. The important thing to look for always is efficiency. In my opinion, Head's three point shooting (in the regular season!) makes him a head-and-shoulders (unintended) favorite over the other two options. Strawberry seemed like he was a better finisher, and he shot a good portion of free throws which was nice. I didn't notice any defensive advantage he had over any of our guards however. And his perimeter shooting is a problem. Wafer has a slightly better outside shot, no defense, and not much bball IQ from what I've seen. Head is also used to the system and the players so he has that going for him. So if I had to order the players by skill and ability to contribute on our team, I would place it at: Head, then Strawberry, then Wafer.
What's all this about Strawberry's defense? The whole time he was in there, his defense was pretty nondescript. And refresh my memory... who was it "guarding" Kevin Durant when he torched us for 20 points in the last eight minutes? I know he's got 4 inches on him, but still, that was pretty bad.
What's so hard? Strawberry and Wafer played hard, but nothing to be excited about him. Rarely does a low ranked journey guy shine in the league. I don't see why we can't cut them. Mike Harris is the guy I would like to keep around.
Keep Harris and Strawberry. Luther's never going to change, so we know what we have with him. Harris, though, looks like he can be a solid player in the league given the chance.
cut strawberry? were we watching the same game? he CLEARLY outplayed wafer that game...to me it seemed as if wafer kept forcing his shot and just kept shooting every chance he got and he kept BRICKING! strawberry did pretty good offensively as he drove to the hoop and tried to draw contact, which we need more of! strawberry should have slowed it down on the last play, but that was one bad offensive move for him, as oppose to wafer! wafer just takes jumpers, and we have alston tmac head brooks and barry to do that. Wafer wouldn't and should not get any PT on our team. strawberry on the other hand could and should because our only good defenders are artest and battier. barry and tmac cant really defense much, but they can shoot, which is what wafer brings to the table (something we have a lot of). its true kevin durant tore strawberry a new one...but durant is like 6-10 and can just rise up over strawberry, not like strawberry was playing BAD defensively, durant just got on fire and strawberry couldnt have done anything, they kept running screens for durant. so in terms of needs, we should keep strawberry and cut wafer!
