Yao & T-mac vs. Harden & Howard

I totally forgot when tmac played so well against D

 

Harden and Dwight have the results.

 

Harden and Howard have RESULTS. At the end of the day, results are the only thing that matters. Anything else is simply if's, and's, or but's.

 

Its the off season and this is worthy of discussion. By your logic, Robert Horry is better player than Harden I suppose.

 

Any rational person knows that's not what he was implying. C'mon...

 

It's so easy to point to T-mac's lack of playoff success when mentioning his legacy, it's basically the go-to for people that don't like him, yet even if you are a box-score watcher you would know that T-mac was even better in the playoffs just by looking at his stats. He had 4 seasons of over 30 PPG in the playoffs, and at one point was 4th all-time in playoffs PPG. If it wasn't for Mark Cuban and Tim Donaghy in 2005, the Rockets would've beaten the Mavs and who knows how far they would've gone. In '08 it was basically T-mac against the Utah Jazz, and he still pushed it to 6 games. Overall I'd take a healthy Yao-Tmac over Howard-Harden, but it's close tho.

 

Holy ****! Tinman actually said something half-decent about T-Mac. I might just have to make this my sig! :grin::grin:

 

It's like the Westbrook effect. I couldn't give a damn how good T-Mac "did" if we didn't win and the fact is, we didn't won with T-Mac. It is not just the Rockets either, but EVERY TEAM T-Mac was supposed to be the franchise star for. Name a single star with as much talent that T-Mac had that never made it past the first round.

 

While I get what you are saying, IMO it is overall a moot point. 2004-2005 T-Mac was awesome. He gave us the 13 in 33 seconds against the Spurs and the "he just sucked the gravity right out of the building" dunk on Shawn Bradley. But after that he could never stay healthy. He had constant back spasms and other injuries and led many people to question his heart and his desire and whether or not all of the injuries were actually legitimate.

Yao Ming was one of my favorite Rockets players ever. At least in the top 10, maybe even higher. He was big, he was goofy. If you google photos of him standing next to regular people, they make me laugh every time. He could shoot free throws. He had an unstoppable turn around shot and baby hook. No one could question his heart or his competitiveness. But he, in the same way as T-Mac, just couldn't stay healthy. I can't remember how many times he had stress fractures in his feet. And then the surgery that was supposed to change the architecture of his foot and release some of the stress, followed by more stress fractures.

I get that it is offseason and we don't really have much else to talk about. But as unfortunate as it is, it is impossible to remove the injury history from the Yao/T-Mac era of the Rockets. Every year we would talk about how promising they would look 'if they could stay healthy' but then they never stayed healthy.

James Harden has been healthy. He missed one game last year and that was because he was suspended. Dwight Howard has struggled with injuries but he has at least been healthy when it counted the most. We have gone farther with them already than we ever did with Yao/T-Mac. And there is no reason why we can't have an even better year next year with Harden and Howard again.

 

how many rings?

 

I'm subtracting points for harden for drake and Khloe.

 

I agree with a lot of your criticism of T-Mac but Harden doesn't get a pass either, I'll let the series against OKC slide since it was his first year leading a team even though it was fair game after Westbrook went down. But he played poorly against Portland and even though we had a great run in the postseason this year, keep in mind that Harden set the NBA record for turnovers in an elimination game and in the game 6 comeback against LA, Harden had already given up even before he got benched.

 

I would have to go with Yao and TMac.

You pretty much stated those reasons. But I will have to say man the Orlando Tmac was a scoring machine and would have destroyed a smaller not so good defender Harden. Even though Harden would have gotten his points as well.

 

Results are the most important thing in basketball.

I'll take winning machine over scoring machine on a bad team in the worst conference any day of the week or any day on eternity

 

I would say Harden and Howard are more effective, but Tmac and Yao have a bigger wow factor

A 7'6 Chinese star and a athletic flashy scorer like Tmac is just really fun to watch

Watching Howard and Harden shoot a combined 30 FT'S can be a bit boring, but I love watching us win so no biggie

 

I would love to have seen DM build a team around a healthy Yao and a healthy and motivated TMac.

The current Rockets team have a much better supporting cast than Yao and TMac had (other than the Artest season which we realistically could've won if Yao and TMac both stayed healthy).

Yao and TMac over Harden and Howard. Although it wouldn't be by much. TMac is more talented and Harden, but Harden is much more efficient.

 

Yao/Tmac would beat Howard/Harden in a 2v2. That doesn't mean they are better though.

 

When people start talking about orlando tmac in a rockets thread, that means they think he didn't really do well as a rocket, which is untrue. He's the same guy, different coaching and teammates.

Nobody talks about okc harden.

That's because rockets harden is awesome and that tmac fans have to scramble to when tmac had inflated stats to compare.

He led the rockets to western conference finals and was 2nd in mvp voting.

Tmac never did that in orlando, houston or any other city on this planet.

 

You talk as if Harden and Howard are defending champs.

As of now they haven't accomplished all that much either.