First Edition of ‘Rockets Daily’; Welcome, Royce Chang

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Since the inception of Red94 into the ESPN TrueHoop Network, the central dilemma I’ve grappled with pertains to the nature of the blog.  Is Red94 strictly editorial or do I deliver the news as well?  If assuming the latter role, in what manner do I provide it?

To date, I’ve made mention of items on the basis of my arbitrary discretion.  I want to be more comprehensive than that.

At the same time, I don’t have the capacity to post every news item instantaneously as it breaks.  I don’t want to do it for any item if I can’t do it for all of them – that breaches the covenant of expectations between readers and the writer.

You see, if even just posting some items as I have been, I’m giving off the impression that I’ll bring you the news.  The result is that you might come on any particular day and assume that what is posted was all that occurred or all that was important, when in reality, it’s just only what I myself cared to discuss.  Since I can’t keep expressing that distinction to new readers, and it probably isn’t intuitively clear, I don’t even want to risk the assumption.

So what’s the solution?  My newest feature, Rockets Daily.

Rockets Daily will be managed by our newest contributor, Royce Chang, a senior at the University of Texas.  Get to know him: he’ll be bringing you your news from this point forward.

Royce describes his most memorable experience on a basketball court as “throwing a monstrous alley-oop to Dexter Pittman,” (of Texas Longhorns fame.)  He also lives five minutes from Yao Ming, a circumstance of which I will surely make use.  (Don’t worry Royce, I’m joking.)

Royce will deliver to you a newsletter each morning just as you are reaching for that cup of coffee at work or settling in at your first class of the day.  In each of these posts, you will find links to every news item from the previous day pertaining to the Houston Rockets, links to the major NBA stories from the previous day, and anything else he found informative or of interest.

That’s not all.  Royce is also a stat geek, so he’ll also be providing a Daily Factoid within each edition of Rockets Daily. Today’s pertains to a certain point guard whose been the topic of much discussion the past few days.

However, we can only cover the expanse of basketball news and information with your help.  If you come across any NBA or Rockets-related news, article, or factoid, or even have a personal story or photo with a player that you’d like to see published in Rockets Daily, send it along to Royce at [email protected]  Seriously, I can’t stress this enough.  We want Rockets Daily to serve as a compilation of all of the best Rockets-related content and we can’t come close to meeting that goal without your help.

Last note: for now, in these dog days of summer, we’ll be providing an abridged version of Rockets Daily as there just isn’t very much going on.  Upon the season’s commencement, you can expect links to all of the stories and recaps from each game as well as all other game-related content.

So without further ado, I present to you, the first ever edition of Rockets Daily….

Sincerely,

Rahat Huq

Daily Factoid: During the 2009-2010 regular season, Chris Paul had the highest  efficiency rating among all point guards against playoff teams  with a 31.3. Kyle Lowry was 18^th with a 21.7, and Aaron Brooks was 27^th with a 20.7.

• Channel 2 sat down with Brad Miller, the newest Houston Rocket.
• Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle: “If New Orleans point guard Chris Paul becomes available, Morey has to be first in line.”
• ESPN – ‘Bulls prepared to add McGrady‘: “The Bulls are prepared to sign Tracy McGrady if he proves to be sufficiently healthy in a workout Monday and can convince the team he is willing to accept a bench role, one source familiar with Chicago’s thinking said Sunday.”
• On McGrady, Fanhouse’s Tom Ziller: “But it remains to be seen whether he can defend well enough to convince Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau to keep him on the floor. Thibodeau knows McGrady well, having been a top Rockets assistant under Jeff Van Gundy during T-Mac’s first three seasons in Houston. Since then, McGrady has gotten slower and less likely to make a solid defensive play. And I’d be remiss to note the following line from Chris Ballard’s The Art of a Beautiful Game, in which Battier, contrasting the defensive enthusiasm of McGrady and Artest, sells T-Mac out: “I’d be on one side of the court and [McGrady] would be pointing, ‘Pick him up! Pick him up!’ So I’d have to run all the way across the court to guard a guy like Kobe.”"
• FanHouse – ‘Okafor’s Contract Makes Chris Paul to Orlando Unlikely’: “The Orlando Magic might be atop the wish list of disgruntled point guard Chris Paul — which is expected with center Dwight Howard on their roster — but they don’t sound very confident of landing him anytime soon.  They are not convinced that New Orleans will be bullied into trading their franchise player, not with two years remaining on his contract.  And they still are not interested in taking the bloated contract of teammate Emeka Okafor to make it happen because it would sentence them to long-term payroll disaster.”
• Who should make the final 12-player roster for the FIBA World Championships? Based on the scrimmage on Saturday night,  Chris Sheridan of ESPN thinks Tyreke Evans, Danny Granger, Gerald Wallace, OJ Mayo, and JaVale McGee will not make the second cut.
• Last year, his nickname was the Cleveland Steamer. After this summer, he might have to start calling himself the Big Vagabond. LZ Granderson explains why it’s possible that Shaq will have to hang up his boots after this offseason.