Posted by Pharzeone:
Posted by Solace:
Interesting move. Certainly a move that could help Houston... but as was said, they just got Mike James? I think this is a move that would've helped last year's Rockets team. This year? I don't know. Maybe if they trade Alston. Even that, there's still only 48 mpg between both James and Francis at PG, so unless you're playing them on the court together (e.g.: failed Marbury-Francis experiment), at least one of them will be unhappy with the amount of minutes.
How does it help Houston? I thought Francis was a cancer. It seems that the Rockets are doing as much as possible to reverse JVG influence on that team. Very interesting.
It makes someone expendable, so they could try to trade Mike James or Rafer Alston and get back a player that they can use. On paper, Francis should be as good or better than both of those guys. That's on paper, though. I think they will have a conflict if they go into camp with all three PGs, though.
As for Francis being a cancer, I've never claimed that. In fact, I'm one of the people who thought he'd be a better fit than Marbury (but also felt it was a bad trade for Francis, since it was clear we weren't trading Marbury). Marbury and Francis could not work together. I'm not sure I can be too hard on either player for that particular thing, because they were put into a retarded situation. I also thought Francis became a distraction last year.
The chance of it working in Houston is that Alston and Mike James are better team players than Marbury, Nate and Crawbury, so there is a chance that you might be able to have some stint with Francis playing next to one of them or perhaps James and Alston playing together. I also think Francis is considerably better than Alston.
7/20/2007 8:30 AM