Povtak: Can Brand be Moses II?
You don't acquire a Ron Artest if you're in rebuilding mode.
And you don't go get him just so he can help you make the playoffs, either.
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| Ron Artest will test the patience of his Rockets bosses, including GM Daryl Morey. (Getty Images) |
The Houston Rockets are on the clock.
Houston acquired the talented but troubled Artest in a trade with Sacramento this summer.
What it means is that the Rockets have made a conscious decision to take that wild organizational Tilt-a-Wheel ride that is Artest. After all, he has been a player who has affected not only basketball operations departments but various public relations and marketing departments, too.
The tradeoff, of course, is that the championship trophy will be the main attraction when they hold that parade on a muggy late June afternoon.
That's a risky deal, but it's a risk Rockets general manager Daryl Morey was willing to take.
He hasn't been around Houston for all of the past four years, in which the Yao Ming-Tracy McGrady combo has failed to deliver as much as a first-round series win.
Morey came over to the Rockets from Boston in April 2006, and apparently it took him two years to realize he didn't like the writing on the wall.
Yao and T-Mac are stars, obviously. Shane Battier is the team's defender -- maybe not a stopper, but well above average. Luis Scola is the dirty-work guy. Morey also knew he would have restricted free agent and live frontcourt body Carl Landry in the mix; the Rockets kept Landry by matching Charlotte's offer sheet for him last week.
Of course, Morey still was looking to upgrade the point guard position, where Rafer Alston continues to endure, but he knew the Celtics got it done last season with Rajon Rondo at the point.
Wasn't enough, Morey decided.
So in came Artest, with the clear hope that he could produce under coach Rick Adelman, whom he played for in Sacramento.
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Still, it's a bold move.
Artest will dramatically alter the Rockets' offense, beginning with shot distribution. He'll surely take touches away from Yao and McGrady.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, just one that is going to take some getting used to.
The worst-kept secret in the league is that Artest tends to dominate a team's offense and that his hands are sometimes where basketballs go to die.
Defenses might encourage Artest to try to dominate an offense again given some of his tendencies.
Artest is a very mediocre 42.5-percenter from the field and under 33 percent beyond the arc. He's not a huge rebounder and is just a so-so passer.
Yes, there is that matter of his defense, which at its best can be rugged and stifling. He is impressively strong, has terrific hands and can move his feet well enough to stay in front of most players.
Artest can be defensively dominant, but there is no doubt those stretches come more infrequently than they used to. It has coincided with Artest growing fonder of offense in general.
No less important than establishing a pecking order and style is the fact that Artest is also a chemistry changer in the locker room -- even if he doesn't mean to be.
Yes, Yao and McGrady are professional enough to deal with it, but the point is that they'd be dealing with something.
It wasn't long after the Rockets announced they had traded for Artest that Yao weighed in from China expressing concern over the move. Yao talked specifically of chemistry and referred to the incident at the Palace.
Artest responded to Yao's comments, and the back-and-forth played out on the Internet. Eventually, Yao reached out to Artest and cleared the air. Problem solved. Problem nonetheless.
When Morey looks down his roster, he has checks in the boxes of all the pertinent categories:
Dominant big man ... check.
Perimeter star ... check.
Perimeter defender ... check.
Bruiser and live body off the bench ... check, check.
But there's an intangible, "The Big Intangible," if you will. He can be great and awful and everything in between. Sometimes all in the same game.
The message is clear: The Rockets are playing for an NBA championship.
Good luck to them. It's going to be a wild trip.
Matt Steinmetz is an NBA columnist for examiner.com.
