We could really use our injured players in this series. Ahh but it's good dreaming right? Francis/Alston/Yao
I've said it over and over ...and often get blasted. But championship teams, with ONE exception in recent history, have a hall-of-famer playing at/near an MVP level. Add some solid role players around them. That's your champion. Look at the Spurs yesterday. Duncan puts up 40 and hits a 3 pointer to go to overtime and win. Case in point. TMac is no where close to playing at MVP levels. Boozer is their best player but he ain't no MVP caliber player. He's good enough to beat Houston, IMO, but he ain't good enough to beat the Lakers, Spurs or Phoenix. btw, the only recent exception is the Pistons. But they've basically had 5 all-star quality players in their starting lineup.
If Yao was playing, the game would be so much easier for everyone. Our three point shooters would have even more open looks. Tracy wouldn't get double as much, thus making him that much more dangerous. Even Laundry was playing well off Yao. He had alot more open cuts to the basket when Yao was playing cuz all the attention that Yao gets. Laundry just needs a little space to get off his shot, which was happening alot more frequently when Yao was there. Yes, Yao has been injury prone but this the first time he's missed the playoffs. I firmly believe if he was still playing, things would be drasitically different.
I think our bench would be pretty deep if they had 2-3 more years of experience. However we were supposed to have the players with Tmac and Yao and some pretty darn good role players at the starting lineup. This has been beat to a pulp, but the only thing that got in our way was injury. The players are there. Great thread topic btw! Altho I think it could go both ways.. you can have all the right players but get a crappy coach to implement the wrong system, you're toast.
Very true. We have solid backups and players but we don't have the overall talent of many teams out there. Plus you need players who can run the system. We can't run a full blown Princeton because we don't have the guys for it.
I agree with you but it is going to take Morey possibly another two offseasons to get all the talent together. The most important is that we need a floor general who can set up players so that they can contribute. The player does not exist on our team at this time, T Mac would be good at it but he needs to take so many low percentage shot attempts that he can't do two things at once.
I'm not even going to bring up gay. The celts gave up a lotto pick and got ray allen. The hornets gave up their lotto pick for divac instead of kobe. That's for another day. Every since the rox drafted yao and traded for tracy they have put subpar talent around them. A bunch of non atheletic standstill one dimensional short term guys. I'm not going tl say its easy, but yao and tracy will win u 50 games. He'll over the last 2 yrs, tracy has shown if yao goes down, he can get u 50, but that's not the goal. U have to have talented players than can win even if their not playing their A game. When u have a team that plays its A game to compete, then what's the expectations? Back to Gay for a minute. Once they traded him, we' re told to be in win now mode even though we hadn't won anything. During the trade deadline we were told that we're looking to next yr. If that's the case, how is having Jackson play in front Brooks looking forward? How is trading ur most valuable backup to ur most valuable player winning now? I'm back. I just think this team and cast has a small floor to ceiling potential. That's no disrespect, but if a guy like Brewer keeps progressing like he is with his atheleticism, he has the potential to be like josh howard at least. U have a josh howard type instead of battier, u have a guy that will make a couple of asg. We don't have guys with high ceilings. Brooks can be a tony parker type which would be great and I'm ready for that. Landry is or can be a haslem type maybe. I just look at the atheleticism combined with the height/length combined with the basketball skill and this team doesn't match up in the west. So whatg the rox get the 1st seed and play denver, but if they play their A game and we play our 7 games, they have more talent and probably win. Adelman can coach talent, the bean counter just has to give him the horses. I still think they can win some games, but if they don't win the next one, it will get ugly fast.
You can't win a championship when a guy making max money that you depend on to play like a max player goes down. It just can't happen. There is no contingency plan for it. Basically the only option is to get rid of one or both of them. I'm fine with that actually. Morey's spreadsheet may even say as much, but he would have to be able to convince Less.
I think its been discussed alot before already but Yao ain't goin' anywhere because of marketabiliy and other financial reasons and he's the best center in the league. Tmac has declined so much and his trade value has plummeted so much that you will never get anyone to give you anything close to equal value. The rockets org. is doing what they should now. They traded some talent away to build up expiring contracts to trade to get better. If you had said they should have traded one of them a year or two ago I would have been with you.
You have to understand that we can't have someone who will fill in for Yao. After the #1 post presence in the league (Yao) we have Scola, Landry, Hayes and Deke. T-Mac can occasionally post up too. That is EXCELLENT. Another excellent post threat would see no time on the floor with Yao because that would clog the lane excessively. We are well equipped wrt big man rotation. Few, if any, teams can boast a 4/5 rotation better than: Yao/Deke Scola/Landry/Hayes Don't forget that Scola is good for 15/10 on any given night now.
EXACTLY. You can't expect to structure the team such that if Yao and/or McGrady go down, we're good enough to progress past a 50 win team. It's simply unrealistic. This team has been equipped to add a significant amount of talent each year. Say for one minute that we add 3 rotation players this summer: 1) From Bobby Jackson's contract, packaged with a fringe player or pick. 2) From the full MLE. 3) From a draft pick or vet minimum, etc (someone looking for a ring) Then factor in the expected improvement from Brooks, Landry and Scola. You have yourself a much better team. In fact, if Brooks, Landry and Scola had one more year in the league, and Adelman one more year with this team, we would have a very good chance of beating the Jazz without Yao. I just can't see the argument. Everything that could be done, has been done. Except for trading one of our stars, which is not smart to begin with. Even if T-Mac has declined to almost role player status, in a trio (assuming we get lucky like the Celtics for example, his effectiveness would increase and his absence would have less of an impact. Right now, I'm NOT for any kind of major change. Give Adelman another season. Give Morey another summer. Give the rookies another regular season. This team will be a #1 seed.
I'm sure that someone has brought this up, but this thread seems kind of counterintuitive... if our players are really that much worse than Utah's, then why did we finish with a better record than them in spite of all our injury problems? If the players aren't good, and the "system" makes no difference, then what is it?
