State of the Roster

[texasholdem]

You know, I'm aware I disagreed with it at the first of the year, but at this point I think our clearest upgrade possibilities are at PG.
After that, I'm not sure I don't want Asik to be a backup.
And please, Chandler/Harden/Jones, someone from the three of you please please please learn some midrange shooting to lessen our predictability. We don't need a ton of it, but we need someone who can be some degree of a threat there.

Scola and Dragic were/are great midrange shooters. Patrick Patterson is pretty decent at it too.

[zapatasblood]

I wish Scola was on this team. I think he would have amazing playing next to Asik but it needed to be done.

[moofs]

Scola and Dragic were/are great midrange shooters. Patrick Patterson is pretty decent at it too.

Yeah, but I'm not upset at the loss of Patterson, since that's all he could do.
Scola's defense and rebound were slipping and he's 32, so that's not bad.

I do still kinda wish we had Dragic, but thems the breaks.

Dunno if you can tell but I'm having a really hard time deciding if I like Lin or not. I feel like a presidential candidate with all the flip-flopping

[zapatasblood]

God no to SVG! I want JVG!!!!!!

[Viatical]

I wish Scola was on this team. I think he would have amazing playing next to Asik but it needed to be done.

Did it though? The whole point of amnestying Scola was to free up cap space--which yes, it does--but then to also allow any of the small army of power forwards and combo forwards on the Rockets' roster to develop into a player who is at least the equal of Scola, if not better.

And I'm not sure that's happened. It's given more minutes to Parsons at the 4 in small lineups, which is useful for his own development. And there are some lineups where Delfino even plays extended minutes as a stretch 4, which is weird but often works anyway, because it gives Harden spacing to drive.

But is it possible to point to any of the Rockets' younger big men and go "This guy...this guy is really benefiting from Scola's absence?" Donuts, Terrence Jones, Robinson...these players are all on a tight leash in an on again, off again timeshare.

Was what ultimately ended up as 12-15 minutes of Greg Smith and 12-15 minutes of Carlos Delfino better than 30 minutes of Scola?

I'm not so sure. When you take away the cap considerations, it's a step down in terms of the talent on the floor. Some may even argue a huge step down.

[spolgar]

Here's the thingy though. When we amnestied Scola, it was in July. We didn't net Harden until a few months latter.

At the time of the amnesty, clearing the cap, blowing the team up and garnering draft picks was the rational move. We wanted to go after max players (Dwight Howard) via sign and trades and we needed the cap space. It blew up the team completely, as that is what you do by way of a complete rebuild. Very few fans expected us to be in the striking distance of the playoffs in July. We weren't even the first team that Oklahoma talked to about trading for Harden.

Scola would be an upgrade over all our power forwards right now, but his contract averaged 8 and some million a year (http://www.sbnation.com/2010/7/16/15728 ... free-agent). I think Motie, Greg Smith, TWill, TRob and Royce White combined cost 8.6 million and change this year. It's not what we're trying to do right now, but given what we were trying to do in July, it was the right call.