In addition, assuming that Brooks has already peaked as a player is not a universal opinion. I see the Rockets as a team to watch carefully as they impose their will on the court. We have enough youth to possibly see improvement on the order of Oklahoma last year. Don't be meh-sayers!

It's reasonable to have a hard time to become attached to any players if they might be part of a big trade. Full disclosure: my favorite Rockets in the Morey era: Landry, Artest, and Scola. Two are gone, though I don't really mind; Artest was for non-basketball related reasons anyway, and he's still up to the same antics in LA.

I think we are primed for a big trade, and I think Morey is looking for that deal, but I am not convinced the target would be Carmelo Anthony. But since James, Wade, and Bosh are locked into Miami with no short-term likelihood of leaving, who is left that would be considered an elite talent?

This summer's FA pool was the stuff of legend for good reason. The next crop of lottery talent hasn't fully matured yet. Orlando's not letting go of Dwight Howard. That really only leaves Chris Paul, who wanted out, and might be the most likely target. But would Paul be enough? Maybe yes, maybe no. I think there's still a fair degree of uncertainty, and I feel like this is Morey's test.

So far nearly every player has been tradeable if the resulting deal nets an overall positive to improve the team. Morey has incrementally improved the team at a fairly good pace, and with continually strong moves. To me, that suggests a few things:

- The team is in a permanent state of flux, because we do not possess any true superstars to build around, as Morey has said he is pursuing. Yao Ming once qualified, but until he proves he can keep his health, Schroedinger's superstar is not a reliable talent. A significant portion of the team's murky shot at “contention” revolves around Yao's health.

- Rumored deals — rumblings about Andre Iguodala, specifically, suggests that we are still making incremental improvements. Iguodala is good, but he's also pricey, and a small improvement at our 3. While it would probably be a good trade, how many more of those trades would we need to make at other positions before the sum of our parts trump other championship squads?

- No major (major!) talent to pursue — Morey has stockpiled assets. We have expiring contracts. We have young talent on rookie-scale contracts. We have draft picks. Les Alexander is willing to go into the luxury tax. Everything is in place. But what if there's just not a good target? We can be ready to deal, but there may not be a superstar on the market. There's not much we can do in that position, which I think reinforces the cycle of the first two points.

I'm ready for the season to start. Let whatever players come, come.

Deng isn't coveted because he's only a solid role player who is going to be paid like a quasi-all-star. He belongs in the pay scale of Josh Childress, making around 6-7 million a year, not 11-14 million.

I'm sort of that way w/the Rockets roster this summer. I know I've got a bad case of the-glass-is-half-empty,and have expressed it way too often in “yes,but…”. It's just I really don't like the Brooks/Martin combo as starting guards. I feel they're too perimeter oriented and have bad match-ups against too many possible Play-Off teams.(And I'm worried that the Rockets were just a .500 team w/Martin and question whether he's a good stats for bad teams player.)
I find it hard to talk myself into fully embracing the players as I feel Morey is going to make a major trade. There are only 5 players left from the team that started the 08/09 season and just 8 from roster that began last season.
I don't see a young player on the team that could explode into a star other than Taylor,and he is such a long shot.
On the other hand I can't get enthused about trading away any of the Rockets for a modest-if that-upgrade. The team just seems to fit and is stuffed w/quality role players and in my mule-headed opinion just lacks a playmaker. And I don't see teams lining up to trade away theirs.
The Rockets look to be a good team,not a contending team and I'm kinda meh about them right now. I want the season to start now so their play can wash away my misgivings.
Thanks for letting me vent.

Deng's efficiency is not great. He is only slightly more efficient offiensively than Melo. At the same time, he makes 7 Million less and rebounds/defend better. So I can see the argument against the trade. Just like some would be against us trading Martin for Melo.

At the same time, Teams always covet a big time scorer, someone who can get you a basket at end of game when defense zone in. Of course, the ideal is to have both an elite scorer + efficient player (Lebron) . But short of that, I'd still take the elite scorer and hope the team culture, careful game plan will help mask that elite score's shortcomings. You can't teach a player to become clutch.

Furthermore, while Wade and LeBron have similar usage rates to Anthony, their efficiency is much higher, and they do things besides score. They are examples of actual top-tier players. Melo is just a usage-inflated scorer.

That said, accounting for usage rate and efficiency isn't totally meaningless either. High usage paired with low efficiency may indicate poor decision making, selfishness, etc. Allen Iverson used to have the excuse, when he was in Philly, that he had to jack up shots because nobody else on the team could score. Then when he got to Denver and later Detroit, he was exposed.

Anthony, being on a fairly talented team, similarly has no excuse for taking inefficient shots. High usage low efficiency means that he might have taken away scoring opportunities from his otherwise competent teammates. That's what is worrisome to some Rockets fans of the possibility of getting him, including myself.

The efficiency and usage veins of argumentation aren't irrelevant; of course there are good statistical measures and bad statistical measures. Bad statistical measures include Per 36, and, like you noted, simply increasing Usage to assume that a player would have the same linear growth — the key flaw is assumption. But good statistics simply use recorded, measurable facts to assess a situation. Using yourself as an example is a straw man and not at all analogous to replacing an NBA SF with another NBA SF who would be playing the same position, in the same system, and with the same players against the same teams.

While Carmelo Anthony is a prolific scorer, should we not care *how* he achieves his totals? Isn't high-volume, middle (lower than average by some measures)-efficiency alarming?

There are only a finite number of possessions in a given game. With a limited number of attempts to get the ball through the hoop, Carmelo Anthony just is not a vastly superior option to his alternatives. Giving the ball to Carmelo means less touches for Yao Ming and Kevin Martin, both vastly more efficient scorers. Giving the ball to Carmelo also generally terminates ball movement (this is where Usage is significant), because he ends up using the possession 1/3 of the time.

LeBron James and Dwayne Wade get away with higher Usage because they are each more efficient than Anthony. He provokes such a mixed reaction specifically because his boxscores are so good, but his advanced stats are not — they're nowhere near the same tier as James or Wade. We might hate Tracy McGrady for what he became, but he at least *was* in that tier while he was good.

I'm an out-of-shape white guy who couldn't dribble or shoot, and thus I'd rarely do either. Yet, I would make 1 open shot out of 2 in any given game. All bow before my superiority to Carmelo Anthony.

And aren't usage stats just as useless in determining effectiveness? What that stat seems to argue is that if you upped Deng's usage to Carmelo's level, his efficiency numbers would stay the same, thus making him the better player. But that's ridiculous – there's a reason Melo, Wade and LeBron had the highest usage numbers in the league… right?

Am I totally wrong here?