Would the Rockets already be in WC Finals if they had Gay instead of Battier?

How was they in win now mode frsh off a lotto season and 2 yrs prior was blown out of game 7 vs dallas. I guess you can say every team is in win now mode, but for the rockets to be in win now mode made no sense. Not only that, brewer for example was a good player by yr 2 and is getting better. Rudy has been a productive offensive player since coming into the league. Josh Childress was a good young, multi tool swing that could've been a win now piece also.

 

Battier was terrible for a good portion of the season. I and many others were just pointing that out. The criticism he received was absolutely well deserved. I've always praised him when he's played well, but unfortunately for the Rockets that hasn't happened often enough since he's been here.

Now what your selective memory isn't telling you is that I also said that for the Rockets to be successful, Battier had to contribute on the offensive end in a tangible way due to the mpg he gets. When he's done that, the Rockets have flourished. When he hasn't, the results have usually been negative for this team.

One day I hope to see you post something that actually has some substance.

Kobe Bryant himself has been relatively the same on the offensive end in the 3 years since Battier has gotten here and the 3 years before. He was actually much more of a scorer in the 3 years before Battier got here, which makes it even more interesting that the Rockets were able to contain him then.

Since the Lakers have gotten better players and have become better offensively, Kobe's average ppg production has gone down, but not against the Rockets. Again, across the board, all those stats that were cited earlier have gone up since Battier arrived. It's not as if he's even scoring within the flow of the offense either, he's just doing what he wants. The higher fg% means that he's hitting more of his shots. The more fta per game mean that he's beating his man and getting fouled. Over 8 more ppg in the past 3 years speaks for itself while his avg ppg overall has been declining. I know it's difficult to admit and you can try and come up with excuses and justifications, but the Rockets just haven't done a good job defending Kobe during the Battier era.

The logic you are using is circular. First you say that the Rockets have tried to make Kobe carry the scoring load inefficiently and that they've accomplished this strategy well in the Battier era. Then when you're presented with evidence that contradicts that, you then proceed to talk about how much better the Lakers are now even though in a previous post you essentially claim that the Rockets have handled Bryant effectively while Battier has been here. You have come full circle. It doesn't look like you have a good answer to that question.

 

You don't actually believe that "win now" pr/propaganda fed to the public by the Rockets front office do you? It was just their way of rationalizing the trade. Win now means that you're just missing some minor pieces here and there and all you need is a role player to make you elite and put you over the top. I'm sorry, but any objective observer knows that the Rockets were far from that after they acquired Battier.

 

Hey kwame,

Thanks for dropping that Battier stuff in your signature.

You are still a smart dude in my book.

 

Maybe early on, but i'm refering to the more recent years. When we first got Shane, Yao wasn't expected to be more than an 18 and 8 guy, so i agree they'd need more from shane then...but recently, Yao was expected to produce more and be first option no matter what, everyone taking a backseat so he'd put up a bigger piece of the pie, but that isn't working out..

 

the examples you just gave, OKC drafting Thabeet and houston getting scola/landry, those are immediate changes. the team knew what they needed at that time and wouldget it at that time as well, but you're saying we can use Gay now, but he was part of a transaction YEARS ago. Maybe if we had traded him for shane this summer it would make more sense, but you can't assume we'd be better off now because we plug in a player we could have had years ago now to give us more offense.

Like i explained in a post after my reply to you, things change. If we had kept Gay all these years it's likely a lot of other acquisitions wouldn't have happened, so we wouldn't have the complete team we have now. So it's not as simple as plug in gay and take out shane...it may have actually been, plug in gay and take out shane, brooks, ron, lowry and keep rafer. Would we be better off starting Rafer, Wafer, Gay, Scola and hayes??

I get what you were trying to say, we need offense and gay has offense, but i think it's much more complicated than trading places years later...and i haven't even mentioned how Gay's style may fit with the team, maybe it fits well maybe it doesnt..

 

Kobe would love Gay on him rather than Battier.

 

this is a quick and basic explanation on my part, but its the first thing that came to mind...Yao started getting injured more around the tie shane got here...therefore leaving us with less height, allowing Kobe to draw more fouls and penetrate more.....may not account for all the extra scoring, but i think it had something to do with it.

Also, i believe we have a winning record against LA after shane arrived and a losing one without him. It's also possible Kobe played less and shot less when sahen wasn't here since they beat us all the time, meaning they probably had secure leads and Kobe got more rest, especially in the 4th, so his scoring was lower. After shane, games were more competitive, Kobe had to do more, play more, therefore had more minutes to score.

 

Kwame, i hadn't read your next post , where you talked about the rockets record, prior to replying to you....i'm pretty sure someone posted the records in a battier thread and it pretty much shut down all the hating for a while because we had a winning record with shane. If your numbers are correct, then you may not have selected the games shane actually played in.........if anyone remembers what thread the records were posted in or what they were, please post..

 

is this a joke?

 

Who cares? It's like asking where we would be if we had B. Roy. Yes, that would be awesome, but we have who we have and they're a great group of guys.

 

Do you live in alternate reality where there is no salary cap? Dude, I can't think for you- getting rid of Stromile Swift was as big a part of the Battier-Gay trade as anything. The team had two max players and a ton of holes in the lineup. We would not have picked up Scola if we didn't have the cap flexibility that enabled the team to take on Jackie Butler so we could get Scola. Think, man. That's why I rag you about Tim Thomas. No smart NBA team is dropping 6 million dollars for Tim Thomas on their roster. There is a reason he bounces around from team to team. Even after his best stretch of play for the Suns, they couldn't wait to get rid of him. That should tell you something.

 

I can think of very few players who could play the kind of defense Shane has been playing on Kobe. Kobe has been scoring as usual, and I'm sure he will continue to, but Battier has stayed in front of him and has a hand in Kobe's face on almost every shot attemptl. He's Kobe-freakin-Bryant. Nobody is going to shut him down. Can't play much better D than Shane is playing. And let's not forget the clutch 3's.

 

I'm tired of debating it. Battier can't shut down Bryant 1:1 and Battier allows Bryant to totally relax on the defensive end. If the Rockets' management attributes playoff success to the same factors as this poll, the Rockets are closer to another Lottery pick than the WCFinals.

If the Laker$ had 15% of the Cavs' killer instinct, they'd have already won the series 4-1. The current success against a Lakers' team that turns its intensivity level on and off multiple times in a single game is Fools' Gold. It makes heroes out of opponents' role players.

We've got a mentally-weak, downward skill trending and micro-fracture recovering Grady, a lovable but perpetually oft-injured big man in Yao and an Artest who may value returning to NYC or $ more than returning to the Rockets. But some clowns feel the need to over-validate the likes of Battier in a series where the Laker$ turn the intensity up and down within each quarter of a playoff game.

Excuse me...if Grady never returns, Yao is closer to Rik Smits than Dream and Artest walks....Battier ain't taking the Rockets to the playoffs next season.

Tired of debating it. A 6-9 mobile and athletic wing player can learn defensive asignments. Battier will have a 20 point game once a season...maybe.

 

Agree with most of what are saying, but Shane hasn't been able to shoot well on the road. Big difference in overall impact because of that reason.

 

gay thread stfu fail

 

you still dont get it...you say Shane isnt taking this team to the playoffs next year...so you think that a starting lineup of Rafer, Wafer, Gay, landry, and Yao would do better than Brooks/lowry, ron, shane, scola/landry, and yao?

I'll say it for the millionth time. You can't look back at a trade that happened YEARS ago and assume had we not made it our team would look the same except for switching those 2 guys out. IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE. Period.

Is gay better offensively than Shane? DUH. But he's not lebron or Kobe, so he's not going to do it all himsself, he needs a solid supporting cast and it's unlikely we'd have these guys around him had we kept him. Maybe we could have acquired a decent cast, but these same players? Highly unlikely. If you want to revisit this trade fine, just revisit every single transaction that took place after and discuss how they would be affected and what would or wouldnt have happened..

 

^ Exactly. If we had Gay on the roster it would change all the moves we made, our position in the standings, draft picks, the team almost certainly would not have acquired Artest. I admit that I was disappointed on that draft night, but no more. Gay so far has been a defenseless chucker and has yet to make a mark on the win column.

 

Are we seriously having a "what if we had a more talented player, vs cap space and a glue guy" debate considering how we got to where we are? Gay is a great player, and is obviously better than Battier. But considering how we got to where we are now. Beating Portland with 4 guys averaging within 1 point per game of each other. Beating LA twice with 40 million dollars in suits on the bench. The question should be "Do we need Gay?"

I'll take being in good cap position over having talent any day of the week. Teams like New Orleans are finding themselves wanting to trade away Chandler and Peja after overpaying them when they were in prime condition to be contenders for the next 3-4 years. The Mavs have been a great talent for years, but they are backing themselves into a corner now with all the overpaid players they are putting out there to the point where they were basically forced to trade away their best young player to get Kidd.


On the other hand, you have teams like San Antonio that handled their cap situation perfectly and won 4 titles because of it.