"When healthy"

[luhbron]

I am so sick and tired of hearing the words "when healthy" in a sentence involving the Rockets.

"We own the Spurs when healthy!"
"Best duo in the league when healthy!"
"We are a championship contender when healthy!"

The fact of the matter is, we are built on the 2 most fragile superstars in the league and I'm tired of banking on them both to be healthy for a season. I remember once thinking "what if we played T-Mac one game, Yao the next game and have them alternate for a season so that they each play 41 games, get a low seed and then have them healthy for a full playoff run. Would that increase our chances of getting out of the first round?" The fact that I even thought of this bothers me. No other team has to deal with the threat of injuries as much as we do. We constantly start threads for people to compliment Tmac and Yao but fail to realize that this tandem rarely plays together on a consistent basis. If one goes down, the team is screwed in the playoffs regardless of those compliments. It has become the norm that McGrady and Yao will not likely play a full season together and if we aren't going to move one of them, we need to build the team accepting that fact. Miller, Artest and Turkoglu sound like nice additions but I don't know if they are good enough to replace Tmac or Yao if one goes down and still keep us contending. I think we need to strive for something bigger and if thats absolutely impossible, come back to these lesser options.I feel like we should focus on getting a player that can step in and hit the ground running if one star goes down. Someone who can step up to superstar status when needed. Someone like Arenas comes to mind.

I know it would be hard as hell to get a player like that, but I just want to know that front office is trying to pull off something big. I am all in favor of keeping Tmac and Yao together but 2 stars isn't enough to win it all anymore.(See Celtics, Spurs, Lakers)

We might have to sacrifice a lot of depth to get that 3rd star but so be it. I'm sure we can get some veterans looking to win to help us out for cheap just like Boston did. Maybe Finley?Mourning?

The bottom line is that our window is closing fast and we need to go all in right now. Right?