Clearly it is an opinion, and I thought it would be an interesting discussion. There is no "right" here.....just opinion. And "right" now, it is a very unpopular opinion judging by the results. I can live with that, just drop the insults please. DD
That sounds great, but Miller is making 10+ million/year. You'd need to throw in more players for that to work. I don't think Sacramento would have traded Salmons for Artest straight up.
Maybe not, but the point was there were teams shedding contracts for expiring deals. And I think the team wasted Ron's expiring deal. DD
You say it would have been better if we S&T him ... so if we had done an actual S&T with the Lakers for Ariza, rather than them signing separately, wouldn't that be the equivalent? There is no difference. Or do you really think we would've gotten something better than Ariza for him if we had dealt him? I don't think so. We know you were against the Artest acquisition, we heard you all season. Now stop complaining about it and be happy that we didn't sign him to a huge contract and used that money instead on Ariza.
If we did a S&T for Ariza we would still have the medical exception available to sign more players, that would have been a better deal IMO. Clearly it was a cost saving move to NOT do that...because the raises for Ariza are now smaller than they would have been in a S&T deal. The Rockets had enough of Artest, clearly they wanted no part of him going forward. I guess the better question would be, "When did they figure that out?" DD
I WOULD DO IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN IT WAS A GOOD MOVE...AND WE SAW HOW TOUGH AND RESILIENT THIS ROCKETS TEAM CAN BE..SURE ARTEST IS A BALL STOPPER AND HAS WAY TOO MANY IM GONNA BAIL THE TEAM OUT WITH A FADE-AWAY 24 FOOTER (WHICH SOMETIMES WENT IN BTW) BUT THEY GOT TO THE SECOND ROUND AND WOULD NOT HAVE WITHOUT RON NOW PICTURE THIS: YAO AND EVEN AN 85% HEALTHY T-MAC VS. THE FAKERS= ROCKETS IN 5
Huh indeed. What good are tradeable assets if they are unproven or even suck? I'd say they aren't tradeable, wouldn't you? We all know that if players aren't developed, you usually can't trade them unless their contract is up and/or you package picks, the latter of which is what we did to get Artest. We had no one to give them DaDa. Even so...why bring in Miller to be a backup or a chucker like Salmons? We don't get better with either of those deals.
Look at it this way. Suppose the Rockets pulled off a trade of Ron Artest for Trevor Ariza (with the current contract) at the trade deadline. Would you have been happy with that? Effectively, this is what happened. You might argue that we'd have our injury exception money to work with still if we could have gotten Ariza in a trade instead of via free agent signing, but considering the Rockets are trying to drop salary I'm not so sure we would have used it anyways.
I think DD is also just plain forgetting just how much of a burden that failure to get out of the first round was. We had to do it, and this board would have been a lot more dismal if we had gotten knocked out again. Trading for Artest was a great move. Period.
Getting Artest was the best thing we could've done. Rockets were RIGHT there at the top. It was just unfortunate it didn't work out with the injury bug striking us hard. It was still a great move though. Yao and Tmac's time window were limited and we needed to make that push for the championship when are team was already that good. Rafer/Brooks Tmac/Wafer/Barry Battier/Artest Scola/Landry/Hayes Yao/Mutumbo/Dorsey I mean, yes, if you look at it now after seeing everything that happened, it might've been better to just stay put but you can't tell me that Morey didn't put together a championship roster last season. Based on the time that Morey made the trade, it was a hell of a move and the RIGHT move on his part.
But during the Lakers series you wrote that the Rockets could win it and now you are saying that at that time you didn't think they would. Which is it?
I don't feel it was any burden once they got the right mix and matchup they would have advanced anyway. Actually once Tmac was out it made them harder to guard because the defense didn't know who would have the ball all the time. Hopefully Tmac was paying attention and noticed this fact. DD
I never thought they had a realistic chance of winning that series......I was hopeful...that is what fans are....but deep down....nah....figured the Lakers would win. I wanted the Rockets to win, desperatly........sometimes you type with your heart, sometimes your head. How does any of that have anything to do with this discussion? DD
So when you wrote that the "Rockets CAN beat the Lakers, they know it and the Lakers know it", what exactly were you saying? Why didn't you write "Oh well, they'll give it a good shot, but in the end they'll lose." It has a lot to do with this discussion because YOU wrote that the Rockets should have traded Artest because they were NOT contenders. I (and others) have argued that they WERE contenders because they had a good shot at beating the Lakers had Yao not been injured. During the Lakers series you wrote that the Rcokets CAN beat the Lakers. That being the case, you are arguing that they WERE contenders, in essence, arguing with yourself.
Shocker....big deal......sometimes you type with your heart.....that is what fans do. Can does not equal "will".....or even "probable".... Seriously, anyone CAN beat anyone else...injuries CAN happen etc......but that doesn't mean you BELIEVE it..... Hoping and believing are two different things.... Let me give you an example. I "hope" the Astros get back into it...they certainly "can" do it...... However, I believe they are completely DONE this season. DD
I WOULD DO IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN IT WAS A GOOD MOVE...AND WE SAW HOW TOUGH AND RESILIENT THIS ROCKETS TEAM CAN BE..SURE ARTEST IS A BALL STOPPER AND HAS WAY TOO MANY IM GONNA BAIL THE TEAM OUT WITH A FADE-AWAY 24 FOOTER (WHICH SOMETIMES WENT IN BTW) BUT THEY GOT TO THE SECOND ROUND AND WOULD NOT HAVE WITHOUT RON NOW PICTURE THIS: YAO AND EVEN AN 85% HEALTHY T-MAC VS. THE FAKERS= ROCKETS IN 5
DD, now my memory is a little fuzzy, but weren't the Rockets rumored to be shopping Ron very heavely around the time of the trade deadline. Now is it possible that the Rockets didn't find a suitable trade, so in the end were stuck with Ron.
