Right after we won the lottery Steve and Cat wanted to trade the pick for Odom and one of the Clips picks. If only we had pulled the trigger on that deal. Think about it, we had an up and coming exciting team to watch and the additions of Odom and Wilcox would have been huge. Rudy would probably still be around as we would have had much better season last year. Every thread on this board wouldn't say Steve sux or Yao has no balls. We would still be in the position to contend with two above average bigmen and Shaq on his way out. Imagine the Grizzlies with more talent but less depth. Man that would have been the ****. Steve/Moochie Posey/Cat Odom/Nachbar Wilcox/Taylor Cato/Collier
well, if the average big man is Drew Gooden, Jeff Foster, Michael Olowakandi, or Scott Pollard than I would argue that Cato, Taylor, and Wilcox are all above average. Granted most of the bigs I mentioned are eastern conference players I meant the league as a whole (actually aside from the Wallaces and O'Neall any big man back east is average)
also, Odom has been playin the 4 for miami quite well so he is another guy to add to the good bigman list. yao ming might end up being a franchise player, but drafting him when he had a team built for an uptempo game when we could have added pices to compliment the team playing that style was a gamble that is not looking so good now. my fantasy starting lineup are all over 6'8'' aside from franchise and athletic like a mothafocher. you got a bench with two good scorers in cat and mo. everybody has a backup that can play for more than 5 minutes, well maybe not collier, but you see what i mean. i was all about making this deal at the time, yao's streak brought me over to his side in the middle of this season but alas he just wilted at crunchtime. at this point all of our hopes are pinned on yao, but i just brought this up as a little reminder of what could have been. p.s.-who knows what would have happened with griffin if rudy had stuck around? another of my cocnerns last year was that in getting yao the coaches just kind of forgot about the other "franchise" big man that we had. i am by no means blaming yao for what happened to EG, just saying that had we gone another direction we would be at a completely different present.
I guess something can definitely be done to give up Yao to get Odom and Wilcox even now. In order to make it work capwise, I think the team which gets Yao would be glad to take one or two of our bad contracts. Would we do it?
I'm really not going to argue that Yao is not the best player out of Odom or Wilcox. When he is on, Yao is unstoppable. The problem is that he has only been on for about a month of the last two seasons and having made the decision to draft Yao we are, well I dont want to say stuck but, we're stuck with him as our guy. Its like the war in Iraq, nobody wants us to be there anymore but how can we leave once we've commited ourselves? Im afraid that the same is true with Yao. Now that we have him the only chance we have is to build around him even if that means getting rid of really good players. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether we can be an elite team with a guy that up until the point has really only shown glimpses of what most other first tier players bring night in and night out. KG was not nearly as developed as Yao and had less seasoning but was a much better player in year 2. Hakeem stepped on the floor and was 20/10. Ditto for Shaq, Ewing, and Drob. Bottom line: Yao will either be a hero or a goat, the jury is out but will be in at this time next year.
you know Sydmill has a point, that trade would have fit better with SF and Cat's game. I'm not saying it woulda been better for the Rox long term, but Sf and Cat woulda definetely flourished with that team
Absolutely, highlight reels galore. However, that team, would've gotten swept IF they had even made the playoffs. Steve and cat are already a duo, I'd like to not see again next season. It's like watching two dubbed college all-stars, wearing MJ jerseys, running around like kids trying to do their best to make exciting plays just like the flashy pros of the NBA. Cat has tried his best to fit in well to JVG's system, and has calmed down some, trying to not do more than he can. But, still he still has those moments, like Steve where he can't help but, just jack up a shot behind the arch. Or try to go one on one with his opponent, see who out highlights who. Or prematurely celebrates, or prematurely lets his emotion get the best of him. I'll admit, one without the other might be an improvement. I really feel that if seperated, they'd be a lot calmer and more focused. Together it's like, they're two kids who would pick eachother first if they were set as captains by their Highschool Gym coach, and just want to set eachother up and run n gun side by side. If you had added Odom to that, sure, we'd have one heck of an exciting team, running and gunning, highlights left and right. athleticism up the arse. But, it would've been more out of control hell, than what we're used to with just Cat and Steve. Rudy would've fired perhaps even quicker than he was. He was fired afterall, because his team wouldn't react much to him, he was a player's coach afterall. "Do what you want" philosophy with Odom on the team, would've provoked more "exciting" chaos, than the little clique Steve and Cat had going on, with Walt Williams, Moochie Norris, Terrence Morris and others etc. Trust me, they wouldn't have been like Sacramento, exciting and controlled. Not with Steve and Cat playing alongside Odom. This season was the most disciplined and controlled I've seen these Rocket's play, thanks to JVG. And still they're turnover prone and still make those whacky immature mistakes. And this is a team that includes such controlled players as Yao, JJ (despite his turnover spree in the playoffs, must've rubbed off) and Boki. And you're saying a Steve, Cat, Odom, Mo, Cato team would've been better? Under Rudy's carefree reign? You've got to be kidding.
Actually, we were very high on Amare so it would have been Stevie Cat Odom Amare Cato That would have been the most athletic lineup in the league.
First, the Rockets w/o Yao but with Odom is the WC equivalent of the post Ewing-Sprewell-Houston Knicks. All guards, no big men, no results. Secondly, to suggest that RT's biopsies would have changed due to adding Odom is a real stretch. Lastly, just as Jason Williams has made significant progress under Hubie, Odom has progressed because....dare I say it? He's in a disciplined environment of another Riley protege....Stan Van Gundy.
also, Odom has been playin the 4 for miami quite well so he is another guy to add to the good bigman list. Mario Elie also played the 4 spot for Don Nelson at GS, but that doesn't make him a big man. Odom can get away with playing the 4 in the East, but last time I checked, we were in the West. yao ming might end up being a franchise player, but drafting him when he had a team built for an uptempo game when we could have added pices to compliment the team playing that style was a gamble that is not looking so good now. What uptempo style? We havent' been able to run in years. We've were still a halfcourt team under Rudy. The Rudy team was built for half court iso ball, but the rules changes did away with that. my fantasy starting lineup are all over 6'8'' aside from franchise and athletic like a mothafocher. you got a bench with two good scorers in cat and mo. That's great in dreams. Now, what are you going to do when teams zone up and pack it in on you and take away all of your driving lanes? You'll have even more athletic guys that can't shoot consistently and who can't dribble through a zone. What's the point? You're acting like Yao had one good month the whole season. Everybody needs to separate their expectations from reality. Regardless of how good you think Yao should be, the fact is that he's really good already. He's already the 2nd best center in the entire league. Other than Shaq, he gives us a huge advantage in the middle almost every night. A Francis, Mobley, Wilcox, Odom, Cato team has zero chance at being a contender in the West. They'd be good enough though, that they'd be in competion for one of the last playoff spots each season. So, you'd be guarenteed a mediocre team with a mediocre draft pick. If you're just happy with making the playoffs and losing in the first round for the foreseeable future, then that would be an option. KG was not nearly as developed as Yao and had less seasoning but was a much better player in year 2 That's complete garbage. Yao had a much bigger adjustment coming from the CBA to the NBA than Garnett did coming from HS. Additionally, Garnett was not "much better" than Yao in his 2nd year. In their 2nd season, despite the fact that Garnett played 6 more minutes a game than Yao, Yao out scored (17.5 to 17), out rebounded (9 to 8), had a higher FG% (52% to 499%) than Garnett. well, if the average big man is Drew Gooden, Jeff Foster, Michael Olowakandi, or Scott Pollard than I would argue that Cato, Taylor, and Wilcox are all above average. Again, you do realize that we play in the west? And if that's the kind of guys we were playing against every night, then they would already be planning on enshrining Yao into Springfield. I think most Rocket fans aspire to something better than Gooden, Foster, Olowakandi or Pollard. Granted most of the bigs I mentioned are eastern conference players I meant the league as a whole (actually aside from the Wallaces and O'Neall any big man back east is average) [/i] Most? How about all of them? And now, we'll throw out the Wallaces and J.O? So, what is your point? That the East has crappy big men, so that Wilcox and Cato could compete with them? Ok, you can argue that , now what does that have to do with the Rockets? We're in the west and those guys would get killed on a nightly basis in the West. Additionally, the opposition wouldn't even play those two and then your perimeter players would have zero chance of getting to the hoop. I'll go as far as to say that given the chance to redo that entire draft and the days leading up to the draft, every GM in the league would now take Yao.
But we would still be without a Playmaker Point Guard and too many 'selfish players'we would have the Mobes and Franchise Show playing 'Dribble Mania' for 82 games a season.Its about time the Rockets get rid of these selfish players and get us some team Basketball players instead.
The rockets would have prob drafted amare, and a team of amare, odom, steve, cat, and cato would be more fun to watch. If any of you have the seen the real sports piece on amare you would realize he has overcome more than yao ming. That would be wore fun to watch than this team.
That's way too strong. Yao was used to being a professional such as traveling and practicing for hours a day. True Garnett was still in his country but from High School to the NBA is a very big jump. If not as big a jump that Yao had to make, then just slightly less.
You want us to be like the Grizzlies? The same Grizzlies that were just cleanly swept out of the playoffs, and then were rejoicing days later right in front of Jerry West? Yes. Let's be like them.
