Plan A has got to be to find another superstar play-maker; regardless of position. Fortunately for us, the two plausible candidates happen to be PF's; Love and LA. If we can't score one of those two, Morey could turn his attention to PG. Perhaps trading for a guy like Lawson, or maybe finally bringing Lull over. I think bringing Lull over will be a priority; it's time.
Dmo is still too inconsistent and too much of a terrible rebounder to be even in the same conversation as Love or LMA. If you can trade jones, papa, # 18 for Lowry or Lawson and bring the rest of the roster back then a front court of DMo, smith, Howard, Capela is perfectly fine. Good depth and plenty of remaining upside. Lawson/NJ Harden/terry Ariza/brewer DMo/Smith Howard/Capela You keep the bench brigade and add a second playmaker
Daryl Morey has never cared much for the kind of box-score stats cited in the OP. Otherwise, he wouldn't have chased Chris Bosh with a max contract last summer.
It doesn't matter how many games Jones missed during the regular season. When he came back, he put up a nice stretch of games in which he contributed quite a lot. His fanboys hailed him as better than all the rest of our pf's. But as usual they were empty stats. In reality Jones is the worst out of all our pf's. The game becomes a man's game in the playoffs. There's a reason the game of guys like Howard, Ariza, and some extent Beverley translate so well into the playoffs. Their game is more suited to playoff basketball. As is Motiejunas' game. Terrence Jones has proven his game is not.
Love is a worse defender than DMO is a rebounder Love being on this team makes them substantially worse defensively. Lamarcus Aldridge is the only guy worth replacing Dmo with. Otherwise, they have a good starting PF who fits this team perfectly at a very good price. PG is where the money needs to be spent
How has DMO proven that his game is suited for the playoffs as a PF and Dudeway I like the kids game a lot, he's not perfect but he's got a solid BBIQ and nice moves around the block ect?
Asking DMo to be a championship caliber starting PF is asking a bit too much IMO. I like him better as a cheap backup PF/C that can throw off opponents with his postup skills (a rare commodity these days). Imagine if we had that in the playoffs when Harden was on the bench.
Tristan Thompson is about to be a championship caliber starting PF. It's all about context. He will be fine playing next to Dwight.
Dmo has shown to be the only other player besides harden to carry the offense for stretches with real elite play. It has been inconsistent for sure but thats to be expected with a young big who really was only entering his 1st season in the rotation. His rebounding is some what of a concern but I just can't see him being much worse than tjones. His defense is the best on the team from the pf position and he is the best offensive player out of the 3. I think what goes over looked is his passing which is very important in becoming a dynamic offensive player in this league. He's a very good passer out of the high post something we were sorely missing this post season. He also has a knack of keeping the ball moving and not letting it stick in his hands. Out of all the players on our roster besides harden and Howard, dmo has shown and skill and has the most potential to be a big time player for us moving foward. I'm very comfortable going into next season with him the starting pf next to Dwight. I think if he can improve his mid range game he could up his 12ppg to 17-18 ppg his rebounding with focus should be atleast 8rpg. With a Ty Lawson type player on the roster while bringing back smith brew and terry I think we can challenge GSW for the top seed and of course the western conferences finals. I think defense is a team, thing sure having bev would help but he also doesn't help when he's bricking 3s and not able to capatailize on the doubles they send harden. While I agree that it would be great to have him but i would much rather go to war with Lawson/terry, harden/brewer back court than bev/terry harden/brewer. Offense can be defense and we had to many possessions were we just couldn't score which hurts our defense. It's easy to point to the 13/14 season and blame the bad defense on harden which he is partaially to blame but what is forgotten is that we also played Lin and more importantly parsons for extended minutes. Replacing harden bad defense to avg helped but adding Ariza who's great from parsons who's terrible was even better. Ty Lawson can't be any worse than Lin but the upgrade on offense would be 10 fold and is needed. Teams would seriously pay for doubling harden with Lawson ability to find open bigs for easy looks and also with his scoring ability. I really don't see the defensive drop off that many think with replacing bev with Ty In fact I think the defense might get better because it would force other teams to take bad shots in order to catch up.
Not really - more the opposite. Howard is past his prime and missing more games every year. If there's a "future PF", he should be able to be effective without Howard there, because that scenario is becoming more common by the year. I like DMo as a player, but for someone supposedly so skilled, he sure can't shoot free throws very well. If you're not going to rebound as a PF, I would expect you to hit FTs at a decent clip if you're being hyped up as someone who's super skilled up. Making jump hooks against single coverage in a 3s and layups offense can only get you so far. Chances are Green would have nullified him had he been available against GSW, especially considering DMo's playoff track record. No doubt he would have helped us, but I'm speaking in the context of the "future PF" designation.
This was an interesting post, so I thought I'd take it point by point Agreed, and it was DMo that really helped lock down things while Dwight Howard was injured last year. He's good without Dwight and better with. Well he's a 60% FT shooter....one of the best FT shooting big men on the roster.....seems an odd place to begin a criticism. He's the only player on the roster that can efficiently work in the post, and he's one of a very few that can efficiently create their own shot at all....that would have been incredibly valuable against the Warriors. While Green is a difficult player to back down, DMo can shoot over him all day long without any fear of being blocked and his post moves have made much better defenders than Green look absolutely foolish. On top of that, DMo is a stretch 4 which would open up the defense more....the reason Jones got benched for Smith only DMo's a much better 3 point shooter than Smith.
If Motijunas or Jones is the Rockets future at PF, then we are probably screwed. Power forward is a position in the Rockets system that can benefit opportunity wise a great deal from Harden and Howard; so raw numbers can be deceptive. Neither Jones nor Motijunas are starters on an elite team. Jones has already lost some of his athleticism and is consistently out of position defensively. He will block shots and is an acceptable rebounder but effort is lacking and he just isn't going to get it between his ears. Motijunas has good post moves and can defend the post adequately. He has worked on his lower body strength but still gets pushed out of position and is a very poor rebounder. He doesn't block shots and offensively can be pushed out of the block. I like Motijunas as a rotation big on an elite team, but nothing more. I wouldn't hesitate to include either in a package for an upgrade at PG or PF. Hell I could deal Jones for a draft pick and package that with DMO in a Lawson/Lowry deal and sign Brandon Bass and upgrade both PF and PG.
