No doubt, I am quite surprised the Rockets picked Aaron Brooks with the 26th pick of the NBA draft Thursday night. Not that Brooks is a bad player. I watched him play a couple of games this season. He’s very quick, can fill it up, and has a bit of “street” in him — kind of reminds me of a younger Gary Payton. If he turns into another GP, that would be awesome.
But the problem is that Brooks is probably 5’11” tops, and the Rockets already have a guard like that on their roster that impressed them enough last season to sign that player to a 3-year deal. His name is John Lucas III — and then after signing him, they never really played him.
You might say that Brooks took his Oregon team to the Elite 8 last season, and therefore is the better player. If you say that, then I must point out that Lucas was co-Big 12 Player of the Year after his junior season, and helped take his Oklahoma State team to the Final Four in 2004!
Now with Brooks soon to be a Rocket, there’s no way the Rockets will have two point guards on their roster under 6-feet. I’m not saying that Lucas is the answer as the Rockets’ backup point guard. I know many of the talking heads in Houston will just say that Lucas is a joke because, yeah, he maybe quick and can score, but he’s short. Well, that’s exactly what the Rockets got in Brooks. My argument is that I want to at least see what Lucas can do in a system where apparently a quick point guard shorter than 6-feet can be effective, as evidenced by the Rockets selecting Brooks.
My other problem with the Rockets is that they are flushing money down the toilet by having signed Lucas to a 3-year deal and never finding out if he could really play (he showed flashes of brilliance a couple of seasons ago when they signed him to multiple 10-day contracts, and last year the very few times JVG played him). If they didn’t think JL3 was good enough last year, why did they sign him to that kind of deal?
And don’t forget that new Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey was already in place as the Rockets’ assistant GM last summer evaluating the talent at last year’s Vegas Summer League where Lucas impressed everyone (I know Morey was evaluating talent in Vegas because I was there and saw him in the stands watching every game Lucas played). After getting First-Team all-VSL honors, finishing second in scoring (24.3 ppg), and first in assists (7.6), there was a mini-bidding war for his services by many teams impressed with Lucas’ performance there, and the Rockets did the right thing by ponying up with the cash. I don’t see how they could think any less of Lucas since last summer because he never really got the chance to play last season.
So here we go with the Rockets wasting money on a player they never even tried to play to see how he could do. I thought there was a reason why Morey and owner Les Alexander wanted Jeff Van Gundy out as coach — because he didn’t develop the players they had on their bench. Instead of doing that and drafting another player who could have helped them at power forward — like Glen Davis from LSU — they now have a logjam at point guard.
Read the rest of this entry »
