Of the starting 5, only Yao and Mcgrady are under 30. Sura, Jackson, Howard are all pretty old. Mutombo is definitely old. Ward is pretty old too. Will the age of the rockets and their lack of athleticism hurt them?
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting ZhuangCorp:</div><div class="quote_post">Of the starting 5, only Yao and Mcgrady are under 30. Sura, Jackson, Howard are all pretty old. Mutombo is definitely old. Ward is pretty old too. Will the age of the rockets and their lack of athleticism hurt them?</div> Yes. But their two best players are fairly young. It will be difficult for the Rockets to steadily improve after this coming season without taking in younger, more athletic players.
T-Mac and Yao are only 25 and 24 respectively, and those are your cornerstones. As long as you those 2 young guns together, you don't need much youth around them. They're here for the Rockets for now and the Future (hopefully for T-Mac). Howard and Sura are both 31 and can still ball, Taylor is 28, though he isn't worth his contract, he's still extremely effective. They also have Reece Gaines, who can hopefully live up to his expectations coming into the NBA.
The Rockets are a pretty old team, but their 2 best players are still young as Banks said. They may want to pick up a couple more younger guys for the future, but right now I think we can just surround a couple solid vets around Yao and Tmac and we will be pretty succesful.
The Detroit pistons last year were extremeley athletic, and tah'ts why they won. The rockets team seems to lack athleticism. Of the starting 5, only TMAC is athletic. All 5 of the Pistons were athletic. The Rockets have much more talent on their team however. Rockets look like a white collar team right now taht lacks athleticism and youthful energy.
We have a fair share of athleticism. McGrady and Nachbar can both throw it down, and Sura is still very athletic despite his age. Besides, we won't really need much athleticism in a half-court set focused around a sweet-shooting big man.
Like practically everyone else in this thread said, there 2 main go-to guys are T-Mac and Yao and there 24 & 25 so thats not bad and they have a few "young" guys. The Rockets have Gaines, Nachbar, and there draft pick from this year. Too much athleticism isnt good either just look at some teams like the Bulls and Clippers.
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The Detroit pistons last year were extremeley athletic, and tah'ts why they won.</div> I can't agree with that. Though they were athletic and played the break alot, they won because they played team-ball (just my opinion..). Once everybody got rolling, they made the Lakers play defense against everybody. They spread the floor evenly, too. I'm hoping that the Rockets offense is not just Yao and Tracy, but everybody else too. With age comes experience. With experience comes consistency. Consistency is what we need.
The thing about the Pistons last year, even though they lacked talent, all of their players were so athletic they could all drive to the lane and just get fouled. Billups can drive better than Sura. Mcgrady is better than Hamilton, but Prince is way better at driving than Jackson.
Well as long as they play fundamental ball the Rockets dont really need to have young athletic players.But dont forget what happened to the Lakers when they played Detroit,since most of the Detroit players are in their mid/late 20's they were able to run upcourt faster then the Laker in the 4th quarter,so it maybe become a problem for the rockets/eventually.
Yea we don't need many young guys in a Van Gundy system. Out main scorers shud be athletic, and they will be. someone mentioned howard being 31, well that is still a good age. they say a players peak is between the ages of 27 to 32. That being said, we still have yound guns to work on. Nachbar and Gaines, as mentioned already, and Lue not necessarilly athletic, but a quick player.
