Posts Tagged ‘Houston Rockets’

How to Fix the NBA

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

An interesting essay from Bill Simmons of ESPN about what’s wrong with the NBA and how it should be fixed. His point is that for the season ticket holders of essentially 2/3rds of the NBA are screwed (the Houston Rockets are listed as one of the non-heinous franchises), and offers up some suggestions on how to ease their pain, including graduated mandatory slashing of season ticket prices every year if the team continues to miss the playoffs. They’re interesting proposals, but should be taken with the caveat that the person who wrote them has actually been a Clippers season ticket holder for the last six years, which suggests of level of stupidity and/or masochism that might well be considered prima fascia evidence of insanity in a court of law.

Tracy McGrady to Part Ways With the Rockets

Monday, December 28th, 2009

So the inevitable parting that so many have predicted seems to have happened, and the Rockets are seeking to trade seven-time All-Star Tracy McGrady at his request. With his $23 million salary, that won’t be easy.

With his departure immanent, it’s a good time to sum up his Rockets career, and to clear away a few myths and misconceptions:

  1. The Rockets acquisition of McGrady was not a mistake. Remember, the Rockets traded Steve Francis to get McGrady. I don’t think anyone would argue that they got the short end of that deal.
  2. McGrady was, at least at the beginning of his Rockets career, a true superstar, and could still play like it upon occasion. Remember when he dropped 13 points on the Spurs in 35 seconds?
  3. McGrady was not team poison, ala Allen Iverson or Stephen Marbury. He didn’t, as far as I can remember, rip his teammates or coaches. He was not the classic NBA malcontent.
  4. However, he was a grumbler. His last few years as a Rocket, he was no longer playing like a superstar but still expected to play superstar minutes and get superstar touches.
  5. He was not a consistent defender. He could, upon occasion, play lock-down defense against some of the leagues greatest stars, and he would say the right things and make an effort to learn the defensive schemes, but he never internalized the need to make defense as big a priority as offense the way the league’s truly great players (Michael Jordan, anyone?) learned to.
  6. He unwisely came back before he was ready from injuries, hurting the Rockets as well as himself.
  7. He had trouble fitting himself into coach Rick Adelman’s schemes. Given the surprising success Adelman has had molding this no-star collection of role-players into a focused, blue-collar, no-ego, winning team, that made him not only a distraction, but expendable.

Like Ron Artest, McGrady is a solid player but a flawed individual who did the Rockets more good than harm over the tenure of his career, but ultimately had to be let go for the betterment of the team. Perhaps Rockets wunderkind GM Daryl Morey can trade McGrady for a collection of undervalued spare parts that can be used to push for a championship, but his $23 million cap number makes that a hard sell. Maybe he can sell him to a championship contender in need of another scorer. (I’m sure Morey has already offered McGrady up to the Cleveland Cavaliers as part of a straight-up swap for LeBron James. Oh how they laughed.)

So raise a glass to the departing shade of TMac. If you and Mao had ever both been healthy for an entire season together, Houston might have another championship banner or two…

(Don’t worry; I’ll be returning to my regular book geeking (with an incredibly long post) in a day or so.)

“Told ya I was hardcore”

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Having played lunch-break basketball at work a while back, I can assure you that, for a non-contact sport, basketball can have an awful lot of contact. But this is pretty extreme:

“The teams lost Dirk Nowitzki and Carl Landry early in the second quarter when Landry cut off Nowitzki on a drive, catching Nowitzki’s right elbow in the mouth, dislodging or breaking parts of five of Landry’s teeth.

“Landry was taken to the emergency room and will see an oral surgeon today to determine the extent of the damage. Nowitzki needed 30 minutes for pieces of Landry’s teeth to be removed from his elbow.”

Ouch! We know this year’s scrappy Rockets are a hard-nosed, blue collar team, but that’s taking things to a painful extreme…