That is Aaron Brooks to me. He can create his own shot. If you look back at game 6, he made some shots after we lost our 18pt lead. He definitely is an able passer. The Lakers had to double-team him in game 7 to stop our offense.
artest isn't a shooter and shouldn't be. his role is to shave rocket symbols into peoples heads, or if were on the road he can punch all the fans.
I think the NBA's days of inefficient volume shooting are over, for the time being. Those were star players that became stars in the Allen Iverson era, and Tracy was one of them. Even then, though, they still didn't win. Take your NBA champions...going back, starting with last year, with the team that won and their best backcourt player, you have: Celtics (Pierce) Spurs (Parker) Heat (Wade) Spurs (Parker/Ginobili) Pistons (Billups) Spurs (Parker) Lakers (Kobe) Lakers (Kobe) Lakers (Kobe) Spurs (Elliot / Avery) Bulls (Jordan) Bulls (Jordan) Bulls (Jordan) Rockets (Drexler) Rockets (Maxwell / Smith) Bulls (Jordan) Bulls (Jordan) Bulls (Jordan) Pistons (Isiah) Pistons (Isiah / Dumars) Lakers (Magic / Worthy) Lakers (Magic / Worth) Well, I could go on and on. The point. Inefficient "star" backcourt players don't win championship. Talented volume shooters don't lead their teams to Finals wins. I've listed 22 seasons - this year will be another. I haven't gone back and checked all the stats, but just a little research, the only time you find a championship team with their best backcourt player being as bad a shooter as Tracy's regularly been since the 2003-2004 season is potentially with the Spurs, where Sean Elliot was horribly inefficient that year - though Avery finally put together a very solid FG% year, and the team won with the Duncan/Robinson combo, or the first year the Rockets won, when Mad Max shot 39% from the field and 30% from three (though again, Kenny Smith, who shot the ball almost as much as Vernon, had a solid FG% year at 48% and 41% from three). And again, that team had a dominant low post threat like the current Rockets don't have - the MVP. So, short of Yao turning in an MVP performance throughout the playoffs (and Scola becoming even better to reach OT levels, and Brooks shooting even better ala Kenny) I just don't see how the Rockets will be the exception to the rule. Efficiency matters...a lot. I'd try and trade Tracy for anything valuable in return. If you can't do that, let him continue to rehab - by all accounts he should be out more than half way into the season - and when he comes back, let him come off the bench, don't rely on him to lead you anywhere, and pray for the best.
If he is motivated on the defensive end, then I say yes he would improve the team. Because he wouldn’t be hurting the team on both ends of the court and the team could use his floor vision and basketball IQ. But we all know he hasn’t put the effort on the defensive like he should so what would make me believe this would change? Especially after microfracture surgery … All the issues you can think of that would affect his offensive approach and mental state on the offensive end would actually apply on the other end as well. Tough question Clutch …it’s not a no-brainer like it used to be. I think Morey is going to move in another direction before it is all said and done.
That's right, IT IS just the numbers. If you want to talk numbers we could just look up the playoff numbers he puts up. Oh no? You don't want to talk numbers anymore? Not to be offensive clutch but mcgradys basketball IQ is very high and he can get the to the more efficient shot may that be a open 18 footer to scola or a open layup to chuck hayes. He's calm under pressure, something we lack. So I do think a healthy mcgrady would improve this team. He shot the ball a lot because he couldn't move this season and could rarely penetrate. If he didn't have this bad season this discussion wouldn't be up. Oh and he can get the bal to yao.
If I could rep you 100 times I would. I've been on this for a long time. McGrady is too bad of a shooter, too inefficient to be your best backcourt player. I just don't think in the end you can win with the guy who takes the most shots on your team being a jumpshooter who shoots as poorly as T-Mac does.
He hasn't shot 45% from the field since the 02-03 season. Since then, he's been 41, 43, 40, 43, 41, 38. Those are bad numbers for a shooting guard. He's been one of the worst shooting "shooting guards" in basketball. He's been Ronald Murray with better bb iq.
Sorry, but I feel T-Mac is the better passer and makes better decisions than Brooks. Being able to let T-Mac handle the ball in crucial moments as opposed to Brooks or Artest is a better option. To me, Brooks is at his best when he is trying to score. As in this series, Artest actually lead the team in assist and not the PG, Brooks. If Brooks is able to just focus on scoring instead of running the offense, we would see even more big games from the little guy. T-Mac can help give us that option. We can have plays where T-Mac brings the ball and sets it up, while Brooks runs through a few screens and gets open for the J or the opportunity to break down the defense. We need to take advantage of Brooks' ability to score the ball. Also, T-Mac's ability to make plays is underrated. This gives us our best chance. On the defensive side, we won't have any mismatches as Brooks can still guard the PG and T-Mac can take the SG/SF. We didn't see it this season, but the T-Mac before Knee-Gate Scandal is the best play maker on this team.
Can you? He's a closer in the sense that he can make a play with the ball at the end of the game to get his own shot, but it's usually not a good one. When he is using his playmaking skills to setup someone else it's great, but when he's using them to take a jumpshot it's terrible. That he has been the Rockets best "closer" and "playmaker" is more indicative of what's been wrong with the team than a praise for him.
if i remember correctly they started that streak without me mac. i believe they won 12 with Yao and 10 with mac. oh and you mean the mcgrady who never got us out of the first round too? i seem to recall being up 2-0 before and then royally choking. not a good feeling. i felt like the 1994-1995 phoenix suns. when considering tmac you cant just look at his abilities or what he maybe can give us. the guy makes his teammates worse (except for maybe Yao b/c fronting wouldnt be an issue with him on court). but any playmaker would make things easier for Yao. someone like a Ray Allen, Richard Hamilton, or anyone who can hit the open shot and create off the dribble.
With a relatively healthy Tmac, we will be better. I don't understand where some of yall don't understand this. If yall are talking about an injured Tmac, then I agree with yall 100%. However, when healthy, he is our guy that can get us good quality shots for others or for himself. Aaron Brooks is gonna be a good bench player in this league. He is a good scorer, but he is a turnover machine! He is a liability on defense with his size, and he is simply not a good decision maker. He can't be our "playmaker or even our starting point guard". Ron Artest, is a better vocal leader than Tmac, but he just isn't skilled enough to be the playmaker that Tmac is. He is also a turnover machine and he makes bad decisions with the ball as well. I'm guessing he was hurt the last 4 games of the series, because his shot was that bad. I don't think Artest shoots that badly when he's healthy. But simply put, he can be a scorer, but not a playmaker on a consistent basis. Wafer is a mentally weak one-dimensional scorer. He doesn't look to pass, and he turns the ball over a lot. I do like his aggressiveness and would like him off the bench, however he's not a playmaker. Lowery is a nice, solid back up point guard. He is a general type of point guard, who will run the offense and control the tempo of the game. He'll look to score and penetrate when he has to, but his job is to set up the offense. In all honesty, our best playmakers outside of Tmac is Yao and Scola, because they can consistently get a good shot off 1-on-1, they can finish around th basket, and they draw double teams. Obviously Yao is much better at this than Scola as he is a better scorer and a better passer out of double teams. However, with that said, our team is in trouble if Yao is our best playmaker from the post. In this day and age with the zone rules, Yao can be taken out of a game. If guys like Brooks, Scola, Artest and Battier step up, then great. But those guys are role players for a reason. JVG said yesterday, "the difference between role players and stars/superstars is that the stars/superstars will always show up on the road, where as role players you are never sure." We know Yao will get his #'s and good quality shots every game or draw double teams, but the role players won't always show up. That is another reason why we need a Tmac. Our role players need a guy who will get them easy baskets (lay ups, dunks). Yao needs somebody to take pressure off of him from fronting and double teams. Whether you like him or not, we need Tmac (if healthy). He makes it easier for everybody else, including Yao who is already great without him. If we are going to advance far in the playoffs, we need that playmaker, and if healthy, Tmac is that playmaker that will help us get to the next level as a team.
In 2007-2008, the Rockets started out 6-1 with Tmac, then he had an elbow injury. A month later he injured his knee and was out 3-4 weeks. When Tmac came back from his knee injury, the Rockets finished the season 33-8 with him. The Rockets did do better with him that year. Unfortunately, our team broke down with injuries, including Yao, Tmac, Battier, and Alston.
He won't make the team better if he returns. Not only is he a volume shooter but he is a rhythm-volume shooter which means he needs a lot of shots to find his rhythm. That's a very bad thing. He has great vision and decision making skills but look how one-dimensional he makes everyone else. Do you think guys like Brooks, Wafer and Lowry would be making the plays they make now if McGrady was around? Nope. They would be spot up three point shooters and we would all be wondering "why Brooks, Wafer and Lowry can't create their own shot with all that athleticism." Oh, and Carl Landry and Scola would still only score buckets on offensive rebounds. Defensively - well, we don't even need to go there. The team's mental toughness is light years ahead of where it was with McGrady on the court. This team shows up to play every night. I didn't see any Rockets yucking it up at half court with the opponent during tight games after Tracy was out. That was nice. I can imagine after the Kobe elbow to Ron's throat and Ron's reaction you would have seen Tmac over there talking to Kobe 5 minutes later asking him where the good clubs are in LA right now. Bottom line, is Tmac is a great individual talent but he limits everyone else on the court. People see him throw a great pass to someone for a 3 and think "man this guy has to create all the shots for his team mates" when in reality without Tmac that same guy would be attacking the rim, going to the line and building his own confidence to close out games with his team mates within the offense.
Ron Artest just came off his worst (tied) shooting season of his career (although good from the three) at 40%. I don't think there's anyway he'd shoot that poorly again. I'd expect him to be back up around 43% next year, and if he has a really good year he could be up around 45-46%. McGrady has peaked for the Rockets at 43%. There is no reason to think he'll ever shoot better than that for us. 43% isn't good for your best offensive wing player.
The 0-7 number or is he 1-7 now thanks to his team playing much better without him? I know you want to throw stats out there and earlier in his career he put up great numbers in the playoffs. In his last playoff series they were good yet inefficient. Of course, you don't want to talk about the fact he couldn't score at all in the 4th quarter in that series or that those stats are skewed by a monster game 6 that he had once the series was basically over.
As mentioned by a poster above, one of the things McGrady would bring is more stability on the road. I don't think its a coincidence that we became a worse road team this year with McGrady being less of a factor. Of course, we also became a better home team. Depth perception in the arena improved, I heard.
The reason the early shooting percentages were so low was because we had an injured T-Mac jacking up all sorts of bad shots! The defensive percentages improved because that same injured T-Mac wasn't on the floor to let everyone blow by him...
I would be happy to have T-Mac improve his FG% to compare with his peers. I am talking about peers starting in their team, not the all-star type.
So going by your logic...Michael Jordan made Steve Kerr, Ron Harper, and John Paxson one-dimensional, Lebron James makes Gibson, West and Mo Williams one dimensional, Kobe makes Fisher one-dimensional, Dwade makes Chalmers and Beasley one dimensional players?? Players are said to be stars for a reason. Players are said to be role players for a reason. Aaron Brooks is a role player. Honestly, with Tmac, you can put Brooks on the bench, because off the bench, he would be better served in an up tempo game and to break down a defense to get his own shot off without Yao occupying the middle. He would also have athletic guys who can run with him (Wafer, Landry). You don't want Von Wafer to be a playmaker, you want him to finish plays with a 3, a lay up or a dunk. That is his role. When he tries to create, more often than not he turns the ball over or takes an ill-advised shot. He is a great scorer, but he shouldn't be asked to create very often, its just not his strength. Artest, you can give the ball to, because he can create a shot for himself, and can score if he has a favorable matchup. However, out on 3 point line, his strength isn't breaking down a defense, thats why you see him jacking up 3's from out there. He is not comfortable dribbling the ball out there. Lowery would actually benefit Tmac more in my opinion because he can run the offense, similar to Rafer, but he takes smarter shots and he can slash and finish a lay up. He is also a better defender than Brooks. He can make plays when he has to, but he won't force the issue. He'll be smart enough to get Yao, Tmac, Artest, and Scola the ball or atleast look for them first. Battier can give you the occasional post up on a smaller player, but in general he shoots 3's when he's set up by somebody or when teams double Yao. Tmac can get his own shot off, but he is also more than willing to set up his teammates to score. Obviously this year, our team stepped up more than anybody thought they could. But, when we struggled, we struggled BAD on offense. All it took was for Yao to get in foul trouble or teams fronting Yao. Its a lot harder to win that way. I'm not saying we can't win that way, but it is just easier with a playmaker like Tmac. With him, our role players can go back to their "roles", which is finshing plays that the superstars of the team set up for you, or to set up the offense and take pressure off of them when teams over play them. Landry, Artest Scola, Wafer, and Battier are usually going to finish plays. Sometimes Brooks and Lowery can finish on 3's or layups, but they may also be asked to create when teams over play Yao and Tmac to take the pressure off. Same with Artest. His strength would be to shoot a set 3 point shot or to create on the low block, but only when Tmac and Yao are struggling or being pressured alot by the defense. Our role players should stick to their roles, just like our superstars should step into theirs, which they have. Thats how teams have won in the NBA and thats how the always will. Tmac and Yao are our superstars. Artest and Scola on some nights can be a star. Everybody else should stick to their roles, because their points will come to them from our superstars, either through open shots or room left to operate because of the attention they draw.
