My favorite basketball team got bounced in the first round of the playoffs. It's been a couple months since and now that free agency is in full swing, fans across the world are looking at what their teams are doing (or not doing, in some cases) to improve for next season.
The GM and head coach will remain the same in 2014-2015. No problem there; consistency is good. The only time you can have too much consistency is if your team is stuck in a rut and can't extricate themselves from it. That's not the problem the Rockets have currently.
While the world waited breathlessly for LeBron to decide what he was going to do, the Rockets were preparing to make moves to acquire one of their major targets: Carmelo Anthony or Chris Bosh. They even kicked the tires on LeBron, just in case the best player in the world wanted to play here in Houston.
Of course, he didn't. As it turns out, Anthony and Bosh weren't terribly receptive either.
In a way, I can understand Anthony's choice. Houston may be a very large city, but it's not as "large" as the others he was looking at. Plus there's that whole money thing. It's fine, though, as I wasn't particularly enthused about the idea of him being a Rocket anyway.
Chris Bosh, on the other hand, would have fit like a glove. At least, that's what some national basketball writers want us to believe. I'm inclined to believe that he would have fit in, but that an adjustment period would have been necessary.
But really, that's the case with any well-known player that comes in. Adjustments have to be made; the others guys have to learn his style/tendencies and vice versa.
At any rate, Bosh wasn't interested and stayed in Miami where he could be more well-rewarded financially. And that's fine. I don't begrudge the guy making a ton of money while the iron is hot. Who knows if that opportunity will come around again? Not me, certainly.
This leads us to another name Rockets fans are familiar with: Trevor Ariza. He played with the Wizards in 2013-2014 and was quite formidable. He brought shooting and defense to a team that needed it. Is he as great as Anthony or Bosh? Nah, but that's not the point. No GM can build a team entirely with stars, after all.
With Ariza coming aboard, that left the GM an important decision. He had turned down an option to retain SF Chandler Parsons for the 2014-2015 season which would have had him coming back for peanuts. Parsons was then signed to an offer sheet (being that he was a "restricted" free agent) and the Rockets were given three days to match it or turn it down.
The GM had already signed (or traded for, as we're now hearing) Ariza, and the perception is that Parsons had become expendable.
Is he? Personally, I think not. I know there are salary cap considerations at play, even with the moves the GM made to free up space (namely, dumping Omer Asik on New Orleans and Jeremy Lin on the Lakers), so keeping Parsons while bringing in Ariza was likely not feasible. But consider the depth of the team for a moment: right now, there's hardly any. Yes, the stars are still in place, but what's around them? Other than Ariza, who slots in at SF, you've got Beverley starting at PG and Terrence Jones starting at PF, with Motiejunas to back him up. Canaan and Troy Daniels are still around, I think...but Omri Casspi is reportedly on his way out too.
There's also the fact that Dallas is a natural rival. The Rockets let one of their better players (after Howard/Harden, obviously) go, got nothing in return, and they get to play against him four times a year for the foreseeable future.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry, really.
But the whole point of this post is this: the Rockets traded away Chase Budinger to get Parsons into the starting lineup, and now they've given him away, for nothing.
Savvy observers would call this a "business decision". And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the Budinger trade brought the Rockets an important draft pick: the one that they used to pick Terrence Jones.
Oh, and the last time Trevor Ariza was a Rocket, he was traded for Courtney Lee. Lee wasn't long for the Rockets, through no fault of his own, and was later traded for what one might disparagingly call "spare parts".
Perhaps in time I'll understand why the Rockets let Parsons go. Right now I'm skeptical that I'll ever get it and I'm intensely skeptical that basically trading Parsons for Ariza will work out favorably.
Still, I can't help but wonder...the team traded away a guy for the express purpose of putting Parsons in the starting lineup. He was with the team for three seasons and was showing evident improvement. Parsons isn't the most consistent player and his defense could use some work, but these are matters that could be fixed, either through experience or coaching. They're certainly not anything that would make you consider dumping the guy, especially when he's yet to hit his prime.
He'll be hitting his prime in Dallas, most likely. And he'll be torching the Rockets at every opportunity I'm sure, in an effort to prove the team wrong.
This off-season was about making the team better after a first-round exit. Have they done so? Not in my eyes. They traded one SF for another while getting rid of solid bench players and struck out horrifically on every major free agent they chased after.
Hardly the successful off-season one might have expected.
