All you Steve fans need to get off of crash. Whether or not this one article and/or quote is how Francis really feels, I would never want a "superstar" that wore Houston on his gear to ever say anything like that. Has it been so long since we were winning championships that you guys have forgotten Barkley's comments about not coming back to Houston when his Phoenix Suns were up 3-1 on us? Sure, that was the playoffs and the Rockets were hardly a team to "walk over," but the principle remains. JVG isn't just mouthing off when he says there are no pushovers in this league, that you have to bring it every night. And the Rockets have mailed it in on enough nights against the likes of the Clip-joint and the pre-Carmelo Nuggies to prove that. So while crash may be perceived to be whining here, I think he might have a legitimate gripe. You play to win, and if that's Steve's attitude towards some teams and players in this league, he's not playing to win. Thank GOD we finally traded his losing attitude and poor basketball IQ. I just hope McGrady is the opposite... And by the way, IS IT FOOTBALL SEASON YET?!?!?
Pistons lost 14 times last year to sub .500 teams. Good teams lose to bad teams all the time. Steve's mindset against bad teams is not uncommon, even on better teams. Its about being able to beat the teams in front of you, not behind you.
HA! Getting on Francis for saying that while we have a guy who once said... "It feels good to be in the 2nd round." Too funny!
Good point. But at least McGrady's BEEN in a position to say that. How many playoff victories in five years with the Rox does Francis have again?
Shhh! You're not supposed to bring that up! They're busy bashing Francis! And yes I remember all the "eat crow McGrady" threads ...my how things change once someone comes to your team.
With the exception of a very, very few players through out the history of the NBA, most players think this way, BUT most won't say it in public or to a media source. They know that there are teams that they are supposed to beat everytime they play, and they know who they are.
Francis didn't have the pleasure of playing in the LEast like McGrady, anyway besides that what about the... "I'm the best player in this series" comment against the Hornets? Followed by Baron Davis' destruction of the Magic, proving who was the real best player in the series. Point is, who cares what Steve Francis said, plenty of NBA players say dumber things, like Tracy.
OK, well go on making excuses for Steve. I'm sure we would have 5 banners hanging had it not been for our unfortunate plight of being placed in the Western Conference. Is there any debate about who is a better player: Davis or McGrady? Point really is, Steve had his chance--five, actually--and didn't get anything that really mattered done here. Well, he DID make a Super Bowl appearance. That matters. But other than that, nothing. I'm not going to sit around and rehash everything Steve or Tracy has said or done in the past, because all that matters now is that Tracy is here, Steve is not, and all of you Stevie Jock Riders are going to have to get used to it. He's a superb athlete, and I'm sure a big part of him DOES want to win; problem is, he's not been a winner up until this point, and McGrady--for whatever shortcomings he may have had in the East--is a better player. Like I said before, I just hope he isn't a repeat of Steve...
Detroit played what? 44 games against sub .500 teams last season and Houston only played 24? Big difference.
SA lost 8 times, only 2 times less than we did. LA Lakers lost 9 times. Minny lost 10 times. Sac lost 11 times. Dallas lost 13 times. Memphis lost 11 times.
BTW........we were 6-19 against the teams that finished ahead of us in the conference. Therefore, I think its much more reasonable to say that our problem wasn't that we didn't take bad teams seriously, its that we weren't good enough to beat good team consistently.
Uhhh, no. For the last 2 or 3 years, our record against EC and non-playoff WC teams has been far, far better than our record vs. WC playoff teams. I'm not going to bother to look up the stats, I believe I have before and dont feel like doing it again, but they're there, if you think you can prove me wrong, go ahead and waste your time to discover for yourself what the rest of us already know. Do you even recall as recently as this season? Naysayers like ATrain were droning on and on about "oh, well we have a good record but we haven't played good teams yet, we've just feasted on bad teams" around midseason And finally, for the record, we swept the clippers this year. Wrong and wronger.
One of us is counting wrong because our numbers are different. I’m not saying that I didn’t make a mistake but here is what I got. For S.A. I only counted 7 I only counted 6 against the Lakers this past season. Dallas was a very inconsistent team this year and were knocked out of the play offs in the 1st round. Last year when they went to the WCF’s they only lost 6 times to sub .500 teams. I only count 7 for Sac I only count 7 for the T-Pups
BTW, the point of this thread is not to bash Franchise but to point at a problem with attitude. Even JVG says that no team should be taken lightly and yet Franchise all but admits that he considers some teams walkovers. I don’t know if T-Mac has this same mental approach to games but I sure as hell hope he does not.
