So it’s All-Star weekend. I usually don’t watch the dunk contest but will probably check it out due to Blake Griffin’s existence on this planet. I will most likely watch it while cooking. I thawed some chicken and plan on grilling enough for the upcoming week, in addition to lentils and rice. I like to put a lot of vegetables in the lentils. I like to talk about food a lot on this blog. I hope you all don’t mind but my dietary experiments are a topic of great personal interest.
Anyways, so the All-Star game is tomorrow, and I was thinking, ‘man, remember when we at least had some pride as cause to check in?’ What will Stevie Franchise do? What will McGrady do? Will Yao embarrass himself with awkwardness? Now there’s just this emptiness which sort of accompanies being a fan of this current team. I don’t know that too many people right now really feel proud of being Rockets fans. At least in the past, when the team was bad, that element was there – there was a guy you could hang your hat on as representative of future hope. I don’t really know; I’ve always just felt that basketball fit into the “Great Man Theory” of sports; you could have a great team, but it’s always more fun when you had a great team and a great player. We watch sports for escapism and there’s something about having a hero that augments that…
The trade deadline cannot come soon enough. Is a lineup of Scola-Williams-Nene-Martin-Lowry a playoff team? With Williams as the x-factor, I think so. Take a full-potential Williams out and replace with Battier, and I doubt it. Williams really is the wild card for this team.
The realization that Shane Battier’s days with this team could be numbered really saddens me. He’s consistently been the best interview and there’s just so much more I want to ask him. For my personal sake, I hope he remains a Rocket.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Adelman will be back next year, from his own choice. A Hall-of-famer likely does not want to spend his last years on a team struggling to make the playoffs. Would you take Larry Brown if available, even taking his mercenary persona into consideration? With Nene, he’d put this team back into the top-3 in defensive prowess and probably push them into the playoffs. He’d also probably trade all of our youth for this generation’s versions of Tyrone Hill and Aaron Mckey. (On that note, I don’t see how Larry Brown and Daryl Morey could ever co-exist; Morey has an eye to the future with regard to personnel management while Brown would have traded an 18-year old Kobe Bryant if it meant scraping out an extra win.)
‘Huq’s Pen’ is a column of thoughts and reflections from Red94 editor and founder, Rahat Huq.
