Houston Rockets 07-08 Season Wrapup and Other Equally Depressing News

So T-Mac and the Rockets’ first round woes continue into 2008. Luck wasn’t on our side, as almost all of the Rockets starters (four out of five) were injured to the point of needing surgery:

Battier had a procedure to remove bone spurs from his left ankle, while Alston had ligament and tendon damage repaired in his right ankle. Dr. Tom Clanton, the team physician, told the Houston Chronicle that no structural damage was found in the ligament or cartilage of McGrady’s knee. Loose particles were removed from both the knee and the shoulder. And of course, Yao continued to be plagued by foot injuries for the last three seasons (after an initial 3 full injury-free seasons). He was out for the last two months of the season with a stress fracture in his foot, fixed by putting a screw in the broken bone.

Anyways this year the Rockets saw significant improvement in the PF position, switching from a super-old Juwan Howard and Chuck Hayes to a prime-age, Euro-superstar flopper-machine Luis Scola and a young gap-toothed spring-stepped Carl Landry, with Chuck Hayes backing up Mutumbo at center after Yao went out. Aaron Brooks showed some flashes of promise, hopefully next season he can be a reliable backup point guard who burns people on the offensive end. Its going to be really hard to improve his defense though, since he can’t really work on his height or size. Novak went through some significant development, ending up with really solid shooting numbers while still remaining trashy on defense. I’d really hate to see him get traded to a team that doesn’t play defense because I can really see him dropping 20 ppg on a trash team.

Midseason and midstreak we saw Mike James and Bonzi traded for Bobby Jackson. I really liked the trade salary wise, since MJ’s contract was huge and he is hugely washed up now. I really hated to see Bonzi leave even though he has lots of haters who say he’s a locker room cancer. Bonzi was a far superior backup 2guard for TMac because he altered the look of the offense by providing offensive rebounding (which we sorely missed against the Jazz) and mismatches by posting up smaller guards. BJax also shouldn’t be getting major minutes. One of the reasons we got badly burned the first two playoff games: BJax is too old to play consistently or to run the offense.

Anyways off season and next season to do list for the Houston Rockets:
1. Add a third scorer, even if it means trading Battier or going over the salary cap.
2. Get a reliable backup two-guard instead of Luther Head
3. Stay healthy.
4. Stay healthy.
5. Stay healthy.
6. Keep Yao’s minutes low, so he can stay healthy.
7. Get a backup PG if BJax and AB aren’t cutting it.
8. Increase size in lineup.
9. Convince Deke to stay another year.
10. Stay healthy.

In other news, top prospect out of China (the best since Yao), Xu Yong, a 6-8 200 lb athletic (actually athletic, not like Yi or Yao) swingman was recently diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening form of bone cancer, so he is likely not going to make the jump to the NBA anymore. He’s also probably going to stop playing basketball. That really sucks.

Some Youtube videos: