No big name?

[Vooch]

Lets say the Rockets are not going for a big name third scorer (mike miller, pietrus, artest, etc.), but they are looking to increase the depth of our team instead by signing more just good players not great. I have a feeling this is what Morey may do. If so, who do you see us going after?
If we can get brent barry that would be great and lets say we snatch landry for around 3 mil?
Who would fall into that small range that we can offer the rest of the MLE to? And would we offer it to particularly a 2 or a 3? or would we offer it to a PG or big man?

Examples of 2 and 3 guards:
mo evans
devin brown
jarvis hayes
kellena azubuike
boki
bonzi (doubt it)
giricek
james jones (i think he'll get more money)
michael finley
roger mason

Examples of big men:
kurt thomas
primoz brezec

pg :
jason williams
steph(when bought out)
tyronne lue
sam cassel
smush parker


now many of ya'll may not agree with this..but if we were in fact constrained to these circumstances, barring any trades that we make..who would you want to add to the team?

[McGrady2Head]

if we dont get a 3rd scorer we wont get out of round 1 in the west. simple as that. if we dont sign one, we better be looking to trade batttier, jackson, and a 1st round pick to get a 3rd scorer

[HTown_TMac]

We will need to make some trades.

[Amel]

half of those guys already played in Houston

no

[jove9]

if we dont get a 3rd scorer we wont get out of round 1 in the west. simple as that. if we dont sign one, we better be looking to trade batttier, jackson, and a 1st round pick to get a 3rd scorer

You mean, "if we don't stay healthy we won't get out of round 1 in the west." I think we had the personnel to beat Utah this year; the problem was that half our team was hurt.

Let's not revisit the trading battier thing again.

[jove9]

Vooch, to address your question:

Personally I'm not crazy about any of those players individually. In a team setting, though, the skill set of some of those guys may mesh well with what we already have.

Let's look at the wing players on your list.

mo evans
devin brown
jarvis hayes
kellena azubuike
boki
bonzi (doubt it)
giricek
james jones (i think he'll get more money)
michael finley
roger mason

If we're looking for shooting and competent defense, Devin Brown and Giricek would be good players to add.

If we want toughness, Mo Evans, Bonzi, and to a certain extent Azubuike (and Boki?) should be our targets.

If we want leadership and age, we should throw everything at Michael Finley (which we won't).

I don't know enough about Hayes to comment. Mason is trash.

In regards to your other lists:

- big men are the least of our worries (I never thought I'd be writing that as a Rockets fan).

- that list of available PGs is atrocious. I mentioned in another thread that Williams may be a capable backup, but you know you're in trouble if you need a PG and he's highlighting the list. Marbury may be done in the league, Smush may not be too far behind, Lue already narrowed his choices to a couple of teams, and Cassell is too old.

It would be great to have a capable player behind Rafer, but with a list like that I'd seriously consider sticking with Brooks and Francis (and Brent Barry).

[McGrady2Head]

if we dont get a 3rd scorer we wont get out of round 1 in the west. simple as that. if we dont sign one, we better be looking to trade batttier, jackson, and a 1st round pick to get a 3rd scorer

You mean, "if we don't stay healthy we won't get out of round 1 in the west." I think we had the personnel to beat Utah this year; the problem was that half our team was hurt.

Let's not revisit the trading battier thing again.

wait a minute. what is our goal this year? Are we trying to beat Utah? or are we trying to win a championship? Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that if we were healthy, we would have beaten utah. We took them to 7 games two years ago. then this last year added b-jax to back up rafer, as well as scola and landry. if healthy, we would have beaten them in 5 or 6 games. The problem with your theory is you are acting like utah is the team to beat. I dont know if you saw the playoffs, but the hornets, the lakers, the spurs, the pistons, and the cetlics would all crush the Jazz. so if our goal is to beat the jazz and thats it, sure, keep this same team together. if you want to beat those elite teams and win a title, then you better trade shane for a 3rd scorer

[jove9]

if we dont get a 3rd scorer we wont get out of round 1 in the west. simple as that. if we dont sign one, we better be looking to trade batttier, jackson, and a 1st round pick to get a 3rd scorer

You mean, "if we don't stay healthy we won't get out of round 1 in the west." I think we had the personnel to beat Utah this year; the problem was that half our team was hurt.

Let's not revisit the trading battier thing again.

wait a minute. what is our goal this year? Are we trying to beat Utah? or are we trying to win a championship? Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that if we were healthy, we would have beaten utah. We took them to 7 games two years ago. then this last year added b-jax to back up rafer, as well as scola and landry. if healthy, we would have beaten them in 5 or 6 games. The problem with your theory is you are acting like utah is the team to beat. I dont know if you saw the playoffs, but the hornets, the lakers, the spurs, the pistons, and the cetlics would all crush the Jazz. so if our goal is to beat the jazz and thats it, sure, keep this same team together. if you want to beat those elite teams and win a title, then you better trade shane for a 3rd scorer

Not so fast, big guy. You started off talking about getting "out of round 1 in the west," so I responded. Who ever said anything about winning a championship with our lineup?

Nonetheless, even talking about winning championships, my statement still holds true. We won't accomplish anything without:

1 - healthy stars
2 - capable roleplayers
3 - excellent wing defenders to stop the best scorers of those elite teams you mentioned.

Outside of Battier, who do you propose could guard Kobe, Pierce, Paul, Hamilton, Ginobili, etc. for 48 minutes? Should we wear out T-Mac's legs by having HIM do it? Or would you prefer to assign the task to our mutual hero, Luther Head?

[Vooch]

thanks jove
honestly we neeed a third scorer but i just find it hard to get our hands on one.
i feel that if we can get a couple players capable of BEING third scorers who fit our team well then we should be fine.
the only scorer i could think of that we could get without giving up battier for sure is ricky davis(and we all dont want him on our team obviously).
if we get brent barry and re-sign landry thats about all i can say we will do.
besides that i guess we should just try to get the best player we can out of jackson and head (which eh idk what team would want to give up a legit scorer for that)

if morey can pull it off without giving up battier..i'll hang a pictuer of him in my house haha
DO YA THING MOREY!

[McGrady2Head]

Outside of Battier, who do you propose could guard Kobe, Pierce, Paul, Hamilton, Ginobili, etc. for 48 minutes? Should we wear out T-Mac's legs by having HIM do it? Or would you prefer to assign the task to our mutual hero, Luther Head?[/quote]

well obviously our 3rd scorer is going to be a wing player, so couldnt they guard those elite players? Maggette, Artest, Posey, etc? no one can really guard Kobe, so put some tough defender on him who can also score his own points. Battier cant score. We wont get out of round 2 with battier on this team, mark my words

[Vooch]

"well obviously our 3rd scorer is going to be a wing player, so couldnt they guard those elite players? Maggette, Artest, Posey, etc? no one can really guard Kobe, so put some tough defender on him who can also score his own points. Battier cant score. We wont get out of round 2 with battier on this team, mark my words"

you have a good point there, but i mean who could we get? only person i could really see us getting is posey out of those three. Maggette is going elsewhere..artest i dont think we'll be able to re-sign the year after so we prolly wont go after him.
Posey makes a lot of sense. IF we can get posey then trading battier would make sense cuz they do the same thing except posey is more athletic.
then we could offer battier for a scorer like turkoglu or somethin idk

[jove9]

well obviously our 3rd scorer is going to be a wing player, so couldnt they guard those elite players? Maggette, Artest, Posey, etc? no one can really guard Kobe, so put some tough defender on him who can also score his own points. Battier cant score. We wont get out of round 2 with battier on this team, mark my words

You're reading the same list as I am, and you also know that we're not pursuing Maggette. Posey probably won't leave a championship team to come here to try to get out of the first round, unless we offer him CRAZY money (which we won't).

Artest? Well, there are other threads about him, so I won't go into that discussion here. The fact of the matter is that Battier is a solid team player, is rarely injured, seldom does dumb things on and off the court, and knows his role on this team.

So who out of the available players do you propose we turn into a "third scorer"? Vooch had a good answer to this:

i feel that if we can get a couple players capable of BEING third scorers who fit our team well then we should be fine.

Exactly. We just need to find guys who can step up on occasion to fill the role of third scorer every now and then. If we get good players, we'll be fine. There's no reason to try to mortgage the farm just to land someone who we can pin the "third scorer" label on.

Even before trades (and if we sign Barry and Landry), our team is looking a lot better. The key remains whether or not we can stay healthy.

1 - Alston / Brooks / Jackson / Francis
2 - T-Mac / Barry / Head
3 - Battier / Greene / Novak
4 - Scola / Landry
5 - Yao / Dorsey / Deke

* Francis, Head, Jackson, and Novak are all expiring. We probably won't trade all of them, but we have that flexibility.

** I understand that some players can play multiple positions, even though I listed them only at one.

[jove9]

Here's a list of the '08, '09, and '10 free agents, courtesy of ESPN.

2008: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/stor ... FreeAgents

2009 & 2010: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/stor ... ents-09-10

[ShaY]

well obviously our 3rd scorer is going to be a wing player, so couldnt they guard those elite players? Maggette, Artest, Posey, etc? no one can really guard Kobe, so put some tough defender on him who can also score his own points. Battier cant score. We wont get out of round 2 with battier on this team, mark my words

You're reading the same list as I am, and you also know that we're not pursuing Maggette. Posey probably won't leave a championship team to come here to try to get out of the first round, unless we offer him CRAZY money (which we won't).

Artest? Well, there are other threads about him, so I won't go into that discussion here. The fact of the matter is that Battier is a solid team player, is rarely injured, seldom does dumb things on and off the court, and knows his role on this team.

So who out of the available players do you propose we turn into a "third scorer"? Vooch had a good answer to this:

i feel that if we can get a couple players capable of BEING third scorers who fit our team well then we should be fine.

Exactly. We just need to find guys who can step up on occasion to fill the role of third scorer every now and then. If we get good players, we'll be fine. There's no reason to try to mortgage the farm just to land someone who we can pin the "third scorer" label on.

Even before trades (and if we sign Barry and Landry), our team is looking a lot better. The key remains whether or not we can stay healthy.

1 - Alston / Brooks / Jackson / Francis
2 - T-Mac / Barry / Head
3 - Battier / Greene / Novak
4 - Scola / Landry
5 - Yao / Dorsey / Deke

* Francis, Head, Jackson, and Novak are all expiring. We probably won't trade all of them, but we have that flexibility.

** I understand that some players can play multiple positions, even though I listed them only at one.

I agree that we don't need to martgage all of our depth but we DO need a consistent 3rd scorer.
We need a guy that everybody knows he is the 3rd scorer behind Yao and T-Mac imo.
What you suggested works , but only in the regular season.
So yes one time it's Rafer , one time it's Scola or even Luther Head.
But in the playoffs when they defense tightens up they can't provide that 3rd scoring punch enough for us to not get eliminated in the 1st round.

They just can't do it because they don't depend on themselves they depend on T-Mac and Yao.

Re-sign Landry and sign Barry does make us a better team , we will probably even have one of the top records in the west if healthy.
But if still after the deadline Barry is our only addition and we can't find a consistent 3rd scorer we might be lucky and win in the 1st round but no way we get past the 2nd round.

We need a player who doesn't rely on T-Mac or Yao at all to get his points , we don't have that player right now and in the playoffs that player is a must because T-Mac and Yao can't dominate a full series consistently enough.

And we need to get that player without hurting the core of Alston , T-Mac , Battier , Scola , Yao , Landry.
I hope Jackson+young guys and picks can get us that player , if not we are screwed.

[ShaY]

well obviously our 3rd scorer is going to be a wing player, so couldnt they guard those elite players? Maggette, Artest, Posey, etc? no one can really guard Kobe, so put some tough defender on him who can also score his own points. Battier cant score. We wont get out of round 2 with battier on this team, mark my words

You're reading the same list as I am, and you also know that we're not pursuing Maggette. Posey probably won't leave a championship team to come here to try to get out of the first round, unless we offer him CRAZY money (which we won't).

Artest? Well, there are other threads about him, so I won't go into that discussion here. The fact of the matter is that Battier is a solid team player, is rarely injured, seldom does dumb things on and off the court, and knows his role on this team.

So who out of the available players do you propose we turn into a "third scorer"? Vooch had a good answer to this:

i feel that if we can get a couple players capable of BEING third scorers who fit our team well then we should be fine.

Exactly. We just need to find guys who can step up on occasion to fill the role of third scorer every now and then. If we get good players, we'll be fine. There's no reason to try to mortgage the farm just to land someone who we can pin the "third scorer" label on.

Even before trades (and if we sign Barry and Landry), our team is looking a lot better. The key remains whether or not we can stay healthy.

1 - Alston / Brooks / Jackson / Francis
2 - T-Mac / Barry / Head
3 - Battier / Greene / Novak
4 - Scola / Landry
5 - Yao / Dorsey / Deke

* Francis, Head, Jackson, and Novak are all expiring. We probably won't trade all of them, but we have that flexibility.

** I understand that some players can play multiple positions, even though I listed them only at one.

I agree that we don't need to mortgage all of our depth but we DO need a consistent 3rd scorer.
We need a guy that everybody knows he is the 3rd scorer behind Yao and T-Mac imo.
What you suggested works , but only in the regular season.
So yes one time it's Rafer , one time it's Scola or even Luther Head.
But in the playoffs when they defense tightens up they can't provide that 3rd scoring punch enough for us to not get eliminated in the 1st round.

They just can't do it because they don't depend on themselves they depend on T-Mac and Yao.

Re-sign Landry and sign Barry does make us a better team , we will probably even have one of the top records in the west if healthy.
But if still after the deadline Barry is our only addition and we can't find a consistent 3rd scorer we might be lucky and win in the 1st round but no way we get past the 2nd round.

We need a player who doesn't rely on T-Mac or Yao at all to get his points , we don't have that player right now and in the playoffs that player is a must because T-Mac and Yao can't consistently dominate every game for a full series.

And we need to get that player without hurting the core of Alston , T-Mac , Battier , Scola , Yao , Landry.
I hope Jackson+young guys and picks can get us that player , if not we are screwed.

[zizouthegreat]

Just make this trade: T-Mac and Francis to Detroit for Billups and Hamilton(they offered us Prince instead of Hamilton but im sure we can get them to change that with a future pick). Then trade Battier, Hayes, Head to Sacramento for Artest. Then you could trade Alston and Novak and get a backup 2 or 3.
PG-Billups/Brooks/Jackson
SG-Hamilton/Greene/?
SF-Artest/Greene/Landry
PF-Scola/Landry/Dorsey
C-Yao/Dorsey/Deke

[jove9]

...or we could just get a backup 2 or 3 right now and not have to make bad trades.

[2fast4u]

trade t-mac for garnett
trade yao for pierce
trade b-jax+alston for ray allen

dorsey/deke
garnett/scola/landry
pierce/battier
allen/head
brooks/other pg

[moofs]

Fully agree with 2fast4u.

[JordansBulls]

if we dont get a 3rd scorer we wont get out of round 1 in the west. simple as that. if we dont sign one, we better be looking to trade batttier, jackson, and a 1st round pick to get a 3rd scorer

Scola and Rafer came alive at the end of the year. All you need is T-mac and Yao to get 25 ppg each and then the rest of the lineup to get 10 ppg a piece (Rafer, Battier and Scola). That's 80 ppg from your starters and then you can get around 20 ppg from your bench.