Oh, but MOST minutes is a little misleading. Stro is our first backup center off the bench most nights. I REALLY like Stro there because he can matchup with todays centers who are simply PF's anyway. Hayes and Juwan definately can't play center. So Stro will collect a lot of minutes beyond Hayes and Juwan simply for that fact.
Otis Thorpe career FG% = 55% Last I check, Otis didnt care about $3000 sunglasses and he didnt party hop with Chris Webber, or celebrate his dunks or make wierd LSU frat hand gestures. We need someone that COMPLIMENTS YAO. Same way OT complimented Dream.
Hayes should be given the starting spot and locked up with a multi-year contract (it doesn't even have to be big, since he's extremely underrated and would likely be happy just to be playing in the NBA). In the 2005-2006 season, his PER was 18.2, which is WELL above average. Others have already gone over his efficiency, defense, rebounding abilities, and low turnovers. Hayes was an excellent player in his 535 minutes this season. Haters might say "per-minutes stats are garbage," but that's studies do not support it. According to this page at the OFFICIAL Seattle Sonics site: So no, per-minute stats aren't garbage, and Hayes just might be a star in the making, like Kirilenko and Redd were early in their careers. At the very least, Hayes deserves an experimental run as the starting PF. Swift should be the primary backup. Despite all the undeserved bashing he got from JVG and some fans this season, Swift did NOT play that bad. Swift was a decent scorer and shot blocker. His PER was 14.8, a little below the average of 15. In the past four seasons, his PER has been much higher. The argument that Swift has low basketball IQ and is likely to "screw things up" is complete, unsupported bunk. That's basically saying that you can't explain why he's a bad player, he just is because of the occasional mistake (which happens to everybody). When Swift haters do feel like justifying their claims, they always bring up very specific instances, acting like a couple of bad plays invalidates Swift's overall performance. Swift seems to have been put under a microscope, with his every mistake magnified and used to denounce him. However, Juwan gets a free pass to play like crap night in and night out. So what if Swift makes the occasional "boneheaded" play? ALL plays in all parts of the game count. That highlighted play where Swift airballed or failed to guard his man has the same negative effect as any of Juwan's more numerous mistakes throughout the ENTIRE game. Juwan should be the third PF, and ideally he wouldn't get much minutes off the bench. However, he's one of JVG's favored players (while Hayes and Swift aren't), so unfortunately the Rockets are stuck with him. It's sad, but the Rockets could very well already have a good PF rotation without needing to make any trades or FA acquisitions. They're just not using it.
