Red94 year one in the books

Chiming in a bit late, but I'd also like to congratulate you on the site's first anniversary.

I didn't discover it until December of last year, when a friend referred it to me as a place that was "very stats heavy." It's become a routine stop since.

Rahat,

You, along with the rest of the folks posting on this blog site, are indeed a great bunch. The discussions here are engaging and often thought provoking. Ever since I discovered your blogs in April, I've been checking it twice a day. I went back to read every one of previous entries and comments as well. Great stuff. Please keep it up.

Echoing the others, I'll also say thanks so much for creating such a hive of intelligent discussion and analysis.

Living in the UK, I don't really get much NBA coverage, but thanks to your blog my enthusiasm for the game and the team I support has remained high. The fact that this has been sustained into the off-season is a testament to the excellent work you've been doing.

Rahat, I started reading your blog at the trade deadline and I haven't stopped since. I find that between you and your readers, this site offers the most engaging analysis of the Rockets and the NBA. I can go to plenty of other sites for a blow-by-blow if that's what I'm looking for. When I'm starved for some insight, the options are limited. Thanks for leavening the basketball conversation.

Keep it up man, doing great so far. Consistently intelligent stuff, I hope you can get your readership up as well hopefully inspiring even better debate in the comments.

Out of curiosity, how much of your time does maintaining a site like this consume regularly? I'm assuming you also work/are in school?

"and by extension, life"

Cue the contemplative look into the sunset with The Wallflowers playing in the background.

Jokes aside, congrats on the year and moving back to the City of Dreams.

Fantastic blog with erudite, eloquent commentary, both from you and your commenters. Much better than what I was expecting from anything associated with ESPN. Like the other commenters, your blog is one of the first places I look for interesting, thoughtful basketball analysis.

Thank you very much for your hard work.

Rahat

Once again, thank you for the site. It has helped me pass time at work and get through last season, even though last season was good for Brooks, Chase, Martin, Scola and Ariza. With Yao out all of our role players were able to step up and get lots of minutes. Anyway, I was wondering what your thoughts are on David Anderson and Chuck Hays? Our other back up centers. Hays is spectacular on D, I love Hays, but we have Brad Miller. Brad plays good "D" and has a decent offensive game. David is soft on D but shoots a nice jumper, unfortunately that is not what we need from our back up center. Anyway I love the articles and keep up the good work.

Go Rockets.

Rahat, I've said it enough times but thank you so much for stepping out and creating this site. It strikes the perfect balance for those of us who love our Rockets but perhaps have a different perspective and means of expressing our opinions, hopes & analysis on all things Rockets. Keep up the great work and its great to see a growing community of commenters and contributions!

Thanks to all of you for the kind words and making running this blog so enjoyable. There's a reason I quote readers directly in my columns - your insight is invaluable and necessary; there's no way for me alone to comprehensively cover the expanse of knowledge pertaining to this team. To analogize, as I've said before, I see myself as more the host of a dinner party rather than just the writer. I just happen to be the guy writing down the story we're watching and the emotions we're all feeling. The variety in perspectives is what I've come to cherish most.

This year was odd, most primarily because we knew we had no chance. I'm really looking forward to next year and the emotions which accompany actual hopes of winning. I also have some more plans for the blog which I'll slowly be unveiling as we get closer.

I'll be on the road for the next day, so I apologize in advance if I'm slow to respond to your comments and emails. I also apologize if we somehow trade for Chris Paul in the next 24-48 hours and there's no post (though I suppose the overall elation will allow you to overlook my tardiness.)

Thanks again.

Great site man, Reading Red94, I've been entertained and I learned a lot of stuff, so keep up the good work.

congrats rahat! love the site. =)

on a completely unrelated and random note ... what do you think of this idea?

if you were a terrible basketball team and couldn't sell any tickets and were going into full on "rebuilding" mode ... why not put together an "all washed up" team of former stars and create some (possibly negative) buzz around that? you could do it at the same time as you were rebuilding.

for instance, maybe a team like cleveland could go out and get tracy mcgrady, allen iverson, stephon marbury, and keep shaq. ideally, sign them all for at or close to the minimum amounts. and start all of them and have the other guys come off the bench. since they are all worse physically than they were at their prime, they probably wouldn't be able to do more than 20 minutes per night. so there'd still be plenty of time left for the bench players (which means the younger players on the team would still get significant minutes to get better).

yes, this team would probably be horrible. but, because your "starters" would all be playing for at or near the minimum, your team payroll would be very low. and, there might be a strong curiosity factor where people might want to buy tickets just to see these guys play (or fail). so potentially this idea could be pretty profitable for an otherwise terrible team that would have lost a lot money.

and i think this idea only really works if you get lots of them on one team and have them start. if you just got one of them and sat them on the bench the whole time, no one would care. but put them all on one team as starters, ... that would be interesting enough that i think people would pay to see how (badly) they'd do.

and who knows? from pride alone, i bet these guys would work pretty hard to show that they weren't washed up. they probably wouldn't be boston celtics level, but they also might not be the worst team in the league either.

finally, assuming this team ends up losing a ton of games, they'd have a good draft pick the following year. so, if my idea works, they'd end up being a lot more profitable than they would otherwise, their young players would still get a lot of minutes to get better, and they'd be bad enough to get a good draft pick the following year.

if you're a rebuilding team, why wouldn't you do this? (the biggest problem i see with this, assuming a team wanted to do it, is that the stars themselves might not join such a situation since they know they'd basically be a "freakshow"). still, it'd be cool if it could happen.

Thanks for your blog! As a bartender I definitely use your essays as an equalizer in countless debates over this past season. Especially with your stats and explanations on the Rox salary cap situation and crazy rumors. You definitely get mad props...thanks again.

Twitter, ESPN.com, and Red94 are the three sites I'm guaranteed to visit everyday. I bleed red(?), and your blog has made me feel like a truly informed fan. I love how you respond to comments and really make the blog about the readers. Every time something happens that may affect the Rockets at all I check the site ASAP, because I know reading your latest post will give me great insight.

It's been a good start.
One suggestion I have going into the next season, more video analysis along with your regular analysis. Even if it's more like a 1 to 2 minute recap, it has to be more than what ESPN shows, sometimes their recaps are just horrible 15 second jolts that don't really show anything of substance.

agreed.

Thanks to you, I now enter into sports conversations with something real to contribute. I am not just another guy quoting what I just heard on the news. Your unconventional approach to covering a sports team has widened my observations and beliefs of all Houston sports teams. I now look at more than the players but the staff (still in awe over our GM DM). Thank you for your insights. Keep it up!

p.s. I look forward to the Royce Chang's contributions. I'm sure he we do very well.

Congrats man, thanks for running the best blog in the Truehoop network and turning me into a Rockets fan this past year

P.S. the facebook link when posting a comment doesn't work. I got the following message...

Invalid API key specified
The application you are trying to access does not exist or has been disabled.

Just thought you'd like to know.

"What I came to learn was that my greatest challenge was in striking that balance between my own curiosity and your needs and wants."

Whatever the ba;ance you have at the moment is perfect. Keep doing exactly what you're doing. This is definitely my favourite basketball related site. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for all you do... on here daily. keep up the work

rahat, just keep up the great work. your site is great.