Tmac appreciation?

[Nsync_Beckham]

Anyone else sad that Tmac is leaving the nba for china? He had a good run in Houston. Tmac and Yao should of won a couple championships by now if not for injury's. Looking back, how did you all lose to Dallas up 2 games with Tracy's dunk on Bradley that should of lowered the Mavericks confidence in beating them only to end up game 7 at home and lose by 40pts and up 3-1 on the Jazz and still lost what went wrong there?

[YoungMoney23]

We were never up 3-1 on the Jazz, We were up 2 then they won 2 straight at home... The Mavs series was fixed if you watch Game 5...

[rocketsballin]

one thing many tmac haters/yao fans never mention is that tmac always elevated his game in the playoffs (besides his year with atl). his numbers across the board were higher than his season averages

[zapatasblood]

Stuff things and what not

[rockmanslim]

In that Dallas series we didn't have Juwan Howard. Yes, Juwan, he was actually useful back then. Near the end of the regular season in a game against GSW, Mike James fell into Juwan's knee, ending his season.

So we had to start Ryan Freaking Bowen in the playoffs. Bowen actually did a pretty good job. He harassed Dirk and never let him get comfortable. But then Dallas slowly started to exploit the shift in the lineup caused by Juwan's absence. From what I remember the key matchup they exploited was Stackhouse on David Wesley. Stackhouse began to abuse Wesley in the mid to low post, as Wesley was just too short to do anything about it. Had we had Juwan, then everyone slides down one position. If we had Juwan, Juwan could guard Dirk, or at least attempt to, and would free up Bowen so maybe we could have put Bowen instead of Wesley on Stackhouse. Or something like that. Not that we would've won for sure, but it would've been a different dynamic. Or maybe Dallas still finds a way to win, even with Juwan.

Also there was a critical blown out of bounds non-call late in one game that could have shifted the momentum of the game and thus the series. Jon Barry secured a defensive rebound, but had the ball stripped by Finley, even though Finley was well out of bounds, but the refs missed it. That was a huge blown call that lives in Rockets infamy.

[rockmanslim]

Ah yes here was that blown call:
http://www.clutchfans.net/game.cfm?gameID=2766

[MaxRider]

Anyone else sad that Tmac is leaving the nba for china? He had a good run in Houston. Tmac and Yao should of won a couple championships by now if not for injury's. Looking back, how did you all lose to Dallas up 2 games with Tracy's dunk on Bradley that should of lowered the Mavericks confidence in beating them only to end up game 7 at home and lose by 40pts and up 3-1 on the Jazz and still lost what went wrong there?

IMHO even if both are healthy at best would be western conference finals (that's the year with Artest and Brooks at starting PG)
they don't have enough help
if your team 3rd best player is Rafer Alston you know how good this team is
T-Mac and Artest never play well with each other
they both need the ball in their hand and don't know how to play without the ball
so is Brooks

[kam_soluusar]

I appreciate that my hopes for Rockets basketball were ruined for a number of years by his constant injuries, although that is not really fair, as Yao was always injured as well.

He always seemed a bit of a head case to me, more so than even Ron Artest.