Lost ron artest, a perfect 3rd scoring option(on a healthy team), now has a 3 yr deal with the champs.
But we get ariza in return, who could be a future all star. if we dont trade shane, we'll have 2 good wing defenders again, and hopefully they play the season healthy. if not ariza gets better at defense faster by guarding the best perimeter players instead of shane. gonna have to do that more for houston than he did for the lakers.
The summer league team is 3-0 so far. Budinger, Taylor, Leunen, and Dorsey all are playing their roles above average. Good news for the future.
The team is working on a trade for a center to replace yao for this season. With mcgrady changing his jersey number to #3, it looks like he'll play more games than he misses, which is what he's done before last season. Im high on tmac so i say he'll play in november, if not december, but he wont start playing in january, in my homer ass opinon.
supporting cast is top 5 in the league. brooks, scolandry, battier, lowry, now we have ariza. Add to that a possible summer leaguer on the team next season? or rookie? or DORSEY!!!!!! also add the guy who's gonna replace yao, who will be good enough to play starting center, so thats a supporting cast member
.not only do we have a great role players, at least 3 of them....brooks/scolandry...will get better next season (all 3 of them will be entering their 3rd NBA season). They also are our best players aside tmac/yao (maybe ariza's better than landry).
to top it all off, tmac could play 60+ games, preferrably 65+ (70+ really), with him playing like he did before last season, the team could end up in the 4/5 matchup again.
in morey i trust, and w/ the news on tmac, i'll bet the rockets make the playoffs next season. just watch out for tmac. im tired of saying that, probably sick from it, but still, you have to say it, specially when he's in his contract year. unfortunately, we had to say it every single season. but at least he delivers (he secured us a playoff spot last season by busting his body in november, when he should've been healing it)
Things are looking good despite yao ming's chanagans.
<----------------------------- Past round 1
<----------------------- Beat LA in game 1
<------------------------- Losing Yao for the playoffs
<------------------------- Hou/LA game 7
<------------------ Losing Yao for season(career?)
<----------------------- Artest Bolts to teh Lakers and brags about it 
<------------------ Signing Ariza to MLE
<-------------------- Reading this thread
<------------------ Reading this post.
