I should probably not use “our” when this is a one-person blog, but anyway. Here’s a list of things I hold true, as a fan of the Houston Rockets.
1) Rafer Alston is a very mediocre player who does not deserve his playing time.
-This has been born out over the years. Rafer Alston consistently shoots the basketball and is about as good at it as Stephen A. Smith is at blogging. Perhaps he should be allowed 7-8 shots in a game, but he instead shoots around 11 or 12 times a game, the vast majority of which, in my experience as a Rockets fan, I can tell you are wide open shots after Yao Ming or Tracy McGrady are double teamed. Despite the fact that he has all the open real-estate in the world, he is a terrible shooter, the climax of which was his 37.6% field goal shooting in the 2006-2007 season, a figure that was the lowest among any qualifying player in the NBA last year. I briefly considered naming this blog “Skip To My Poo”. I am also 22 years old.
Rafer Alston does a few things well. He does not turn the ball over much. He is good for one or two arrests an offseason, which has injected some bail and fine money into the Houston community. He is very comfortable running down the floor on the fast break, which would be quite helpful if the Rockets had a team that was not based around a 7′6 center, Tracy McGrady, and a bunch of guys with no ability to drive to the basket, outside of perhaps Aaron Brooks.
2) Tracy McGrady is a wonderful player when he is healthy. This has even happened a few times in his career.
-I have a very big mancrush on Tracy McGrady. He is an amazing player who can completely take over a basketball game. Then he falls down on his ankle or gets the flu or his back hurts or wolves chase him through a burning ring of fire and he has to sit out. The Rockets are at a point where they need to get players that can help Yao Ming, so that his career is not as similarly wasted as Tracy McGrady’s was in Orlando. Unfortunately, McGrady is the epitome of the modern NBA dilemma: even when healthy, the Rockets have never surrounded him and Yao with enough talent to win anything. With him, the Rockets are a quality NBA team when he is healthy, but not really a championship contender. Without him, the Rockets are a .500 team that isn’t good enough for the postseason. Getting rid of McGrady won’t solve anything; he’s injury prone and his value is as low as it’s ever been, not to mention he’s become a Houston icon and has always been an extremely popular player. However, keeping McGrady at his salary makes every season a roll of the dice in two ways: 1) Can the Rockets get enough talent around him under the salary cap to win, and 2) Will he be healthy when it’s playoff time? Look for more on this one, with one comparison that I find extremely apt.
3) The Rockets’ third best player is Luis Scola.
- Yet, he only plays 20 minutes a game. Funny how that works out, eh Rick Adelman? Most coaches, losing their superstar, would try to bring more touches to their most effective shooters, like say, Luis Scola, who shoots 49% from the floor. Or perhaps Carl Landry, who has been otherworldly in limited minutes. Instead, it’s been decided that Rafer Alston should have over 10 shots a game, as he has in 16 of the previous 17 games. Rafer Alston is shooting 39.2% from the floor this year–and that’s a good year by the standards he has set the last few years. In conclusion, the Rocket offense the last few years, due to both Adelman and Van Gundy’s myopia with regards to letting Rafer Alston shoot the ball more than the better players on the team, can best be summed in this clip:
There are other, more basic, tenets about being a Rockets fan that I think are kind of obvious and therefore did not think warranted a special section. Such as Yao being one of the top ten players in the league, Matt Maloney being the anti-Christ, and Scott Padgett’s “two beers” commercial being the best thing to ever happen to television. The important thing to learn from our creed is that I hate watching Rafer Alston shoot the ball 10 times a game, and it’s about time someone complained about it on the internet. Asides from at ClutchFans.
I do not promise to post everyday, but I do promise to be as timely as I possibly can with this thing. I also promise that I own a Bostjan Nachbar Rockets jersey. I’m not even kidding about that one. So keep coming back here when you are bored and do not feel like working, and I will continue to provide you some content that will make you think “Wow, Rafer Alston sure does suck! I’m glad someone is on top of this so I don’t have to be.” And occasionally we might even have some good analysis; we do love those new and complex NBA stats. We know who Dean Oliver and John Hollinger are, and we like 82games.com.
We do try to be funny. Sometimes we fail at it miserably. Often, probably. So don’t take it personally. I promise we don’t really hate Rafer Alston as much as we seem to*, we are just passionate fans who want the Rockets that we grew up with back. The ones that won titles and got discredited because Michael Jordan wasn’t around or in good shape. We used to be bitter about this, but we don’t care anymore. We just want to win some more of those. Or at least a token playoff series.
*-May in fact, be a lie.
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