We all agree that Harden makes his teammates better and Westbrick makes his worse, right?

Do you complain about Ryan if he is on a minimum contract? If not, why Melo?

 

Am not the one living in cloud cuckoo land - dude.

 

need a running list of MELOOFS

 

I see the "You can't have Melo and Harden on the floor together" crowd a lot in these Melo threads.

Westbrook is a trash defender too, but OKC still had a top 10 defense with 3 plus defenders (Adams, Roberson, PG13) in the starting lineup with Melo.

 

is that pronounced like ALOOF?

 

Very quality posting from you son, 81 likes on 1061 posts... keep up the good work, ok?

 

Wow some excellent meaty content here in this thread. There's a few thread trolls here but not many. This is a great discussion with well thought out posts. Very mature discussion.

I for one have disliked Ariza as well. He's streaky, and is definitely slowing down every year. I still think if he had gained about 5-7 lbs of muscle then he wouldn't have gotten so tired & gone 0-12 from 3 vs gsw. Also I hated him shooting contested layups. His contested layups FG percentage was horrible. I think Ennis will be a great upgrade. And eventually when the emotional attachment to arzia dissipates. Some will realize Houston made an improvement.

 

Just like Melo...all about stats and his numbers....

 

Thru the ROOF.

 

lol

 

Solid Wakabayashi avy you are sporting there.

 

You are spot on dhardrocks . If you rest on what these talking-heads say about the Rockets, you will lose your sanity. I have come to the conclusion that we have more Rockets haters in the national media and no matter what we do, they will still hate even when you make them eat crows as in last season when they said the Beard and CP3 can't coexist or in years' past when the Beard couldn't play point. If Melo wants to change his narratives when he signs with us, all he needs to do is buy-in, which I'm sure he will, and we will all be fine. Yes, losing Triza and Luc is not good but let us not behave as if heaven is falling. Don't forget that Luc was never the same after the first shoulder injury and before then, he was trying to find himself with the Rockets. He missed a lot of games including the playoffs for the Rockets last season and the last time I check, your best ability is availability. As for Triza he had lost some steps. I'm not discounting is value because he did have some intangibles that will be missed - - stabilizing force in the locker room for one. In as much as we would miss Treza intangibles, if James Ennis III is what people think he is, he would hold his own in 3 and D department. And if we are lucky and able to add one of the names (Bazemore, Batum) in the rumor chatter before training camp, we will be fine. As it stands, our 2018/2019 roster is still in flux but I'm sure by training camp, our roster will be much better than what we had going into 2017/2018 season. Take that to the Bank and cash in.

 

Ok, "MELO"

MOF?

 

Yep. Which, given how really bad the 'sports people' are, is actually a really positive sign. I'd be a lot more concerned if they were talking about winning 67+ games and blowing through GS.

 

Most of them make it easy.

 

Melo is 34 years old. That's why I'm pessimistic or really not excited about the move.

His prime has passed and for the sake of the team I hope he can transition into a bench player like Vince Carter did. Is he better than Joe Johnson? He should be.

 

look ok to me

 

Joe Johnson looked ok a year ago when he was beating the Clippers by himself.

How he do on our team last season?

 

while this is somewhat fair it doesnt mean melo must regress the same way, thats why i am excited
btw is melo injured the same way joe was?

 

Does Harden statistically make his teammates better?? I think people overstate this.

What Harden, and CP3, do is run a well oiled offensive system to perfection. This creates a ratio of 3's:2's and FTsossessions that is top notch. Get role players who hit their %s (if you look across their role players, some seem to outperform in Houston, some seem to underperform, but on the whole they seem to be who they are), and recognize that Harden and CP3 are crazy good, efficient isolation players, and you have historically good offense.

That being said, I think absolutely Westbrook does not know how to run an offense or conform to an offense in a way that both highlights his crazy amazing abilities and skills while at a minimum letting the other players do what they can do. I know there are stats to show how Russ is a one man fast break, and him rebounding helps in that category, but I'm sorry, to me even there, its still super simple - the bigs are there to defender and rebound, and when you take part of that equation away it just subtly rubs off on team chemistry, and no matter what they might say publicly, its not a good thing.

Melo is a career 31% three point shooter in the playoffs. He has a career playoff TS% of 51%.

Its cool if you think Melo is going to be super important in the playoffs... but at this point I'd at least caveat it with, "assuming he accepts a role and can take advantage of what will be now lesser, bench players guarding him".

Of course... the goal is the same, beat GSW. Which means again you're basically only talking about taking advantage of potentially Steph guarding him. Which I guess is better than Steph on an island guarding Ariza.

But absolutely if Melo can become a much better spot up shooter... like it should be 99% of what he practices at this point, he'd became a valuable player again, and perhaps very valuable again because he could still at that point then pump fake and drive.