You're right, James is a good role player, and Alston is a mediocre one. He might not lead us anywhere on his own - but he'd make us better than with Alston. Why do I keep saying we'd be better with him? Because it's true - read the post you quoted - James was strong in areas in which the team overall was sorely lacking this year. Alston is strong in - what exactly? I forget. PS, if you answer contains the phrase "true point" or "pass-first" I may, in fact, explode.
We would not have won Game 1 and 6 without Mike James's shooting. He completely demoralized Dallas in game 1 with his clutch shooting. Same in game 6.
You just paid a compliment to Alston by saying he is mediocre. His performance, especially in recent games, is atrocious.
and the ball hogging in the other games is what threw off TMAC from ever getting heated up enough to take over the game. Freaking TMAC had to grab the ball from him to start running the game and thats when we started coming back... in game 1, wesley and barry were shooting even better, and had less shots than M James, also they had more 3's than him. in game 2 sura and barry were lights out. again james was decent in game 3 all the other players performed average, and james blew it again in game 4 james had the most shots out of the gaurds and he only hit 30% of those shots in game 5 ill give him credit, he stepped up.. but he shouldnt have had the ball in the 4th quarter yes in game 6 he did good again, and im afraid that huge ego of his carried over to game 7 and he wanted to be the man, but that just didnt happen. overall, i think bob sura was a much better player than mike james last year, a much better fit, and if they were all healthy this year, sura and alston woulda been a much much better backcourt than we we have right now, or would have had we not traded for alston.
The only reason I'd take MJ over Sura is the injury problems, after this season, I can't handle another player that misses 30 games in the season. That's exactly what Sura is. James' ego is freakin huge though, but I have no doubt that if we had James we would have a little bit better record, just because of his scoring.
Mike James wasn't a good enough ball handler or passer to be the point guard for a team with a healthy McGrady and Yao. He would've been good as a back-up to Alston, or if we wanted to run a small backcourt for some reason. James would be better for this injury-riddled team, but that's hardly a compliment.
What a total joke of a post. Don't forget to add in that he waved him off and that T-mac threw a free weight at him in the locker room in a fight over Beyonce, purple monkey dishwasher. James 16 minutes in Game 7 destroyed the Rockets season last year.
Why the f*** are people so crazy about Mike James personality, WHO GIVES! As long as he can make a freaking jumper, Thats what we need. I dont care what he says i just want a good shooter. If kobe was the biggest a**hole in the world i would take him.
3 picks for Eddie Griffin is the worst ever. Mike James wouldn't have stayed with us after this season, he's getting more than the MLE.
Whatever people say about Rafer vs. James, there's one undeniable fact: CD/JVG made a mistake in when he made the trade and how much we gave up. We did that deal during training camp which is extremely rare. Usually at that point teams are ready to start the season and see how the team performs before making any moves. Probably the most regretful thing is that we weren't even able to see how James would have done as the starting PG. If things go south we could have always done that deal for Rafer, since it hardly seemed like teams were knocking down Toronto's door, which leads me to my next point. We gave up way too much for rafer. Even disregarding how they're performing this year. Rafer's trade value was in the toilet. He's locked up for years and had numerous run-ins with the coach the previous season. We didn't have to give up James to get him. Every article that came out of the Toronto newspapers were spinning that it was so good to get rid of Rafer's contract and allow Jose Calderon time to play. Give the Raptors a couple of weeks for their season to go down the tubes, and they'd be begging to trade Rafer for Moochie and a #1. Hell, they might have even gone for our 2nd rounder from NY once they saw how bad the Knicks were. I'm sure CD/JVG didn't want to bring in Rafer for Moochie because they were afraid of chemistry concerns with one more guard who's expecting playing time. But if only they waited on that trade, our backcourt chemistry concerns would have been an non-issue. And while JVG says that it's a bad idea to have too many guys competing for playing time, I think he's wrong that we shouldn't stockpile talent if it's possible. That way we can play whoever works best together, keep insurance in case something happens, and end up dumping guys who we don't need or can't get with the program.
So that's why we traded Mike James. Mike James - like he said - will not change. He's a shoot first point-gaurd; there will be teams that prefer that. Mike James speaks the truth. Is he a better scorer than Rafer Alston. Yes - from what I see. Is he better suited for the Rockets than Rafer Alston? I don't believe so. Even though at this time we could use another scorer like Mike James - in the long run, Rafer Alston is going to show us what he can do. Mike James - as he claim is a play maker. That's not what Houston wants. We want a point gaurd that can get TMAC and YAO the ball. And when they are double-team - expected to hit the open shots. Not a player who will wave off TMAC and ignore Yao in the post - and jack up his own shots when he feel like it. From the video - I can tell he wants to be a star. He wants and demand respect. He wants to be a high scoring superstar. He wants to be like Kobe Bryant - "a terror in the NBA for many years to come".
The passion, the huge chip on his shoulder (more like a mountain)...GOD we could've used that on this team Mike James is a f***ing warrior, he tore Rafer a new a-hole and humiliated the entire Rockets backcourt (and J-Hoe) on his own. Much love MJ, go get that money/respect you're after, my man. I ain't going to hate on you just because management made a mistake in sending you away when you've wanted to be here all along 'terrorizing' the league
Rockets would have had his Bird Rights. 25 of the remaining 29 teams are over the cap. They'd have easily kept him. All they had to do was show some respect. The guy wants to stay in Toronto for cryin' out loud.
Trading less for more is not Rockets' style. After all, we have about 15 Mil in salary this season for the guys who never played a game. Wonder why our role player sucks?
I would hold off on evaluating this trade until we get a good 30 game period of RA, T-Mac, and the new Yao playing together.
By all accounts I've read, we would not have had his Bird rights...and therefore could not have easily kept him. I'm not sure what the reasoning is there..maybe someone can help. But that would throw a serious flaw into your argument, wouldn't it?
