Sorry LA...

Now I read that LA won't give up Shaq unless they get Dirk. No. No Dirk for them. Bad deal. Let's say, yea, the trade goes down. Two years from now, Shaq will probably be able to play 25 - 30 minutes a game. At that same moment, Dirk will be playing 40 a game, dropping 25 - 28 points, and getting 10 boards. 4 years from now, what will that be like?

Yea yea, it's a whole "win now" mentality. Well, I don't like it. Winning now means rebuilding in a year or two. Why not continue to improve now? Instead of one or two years of great play, why not 5 or 6 years of consistent improvement. Sure, there wasn't much improvement last year, but the higher you get, the harder it is to keep going up. It's tough to beat 60 wins. And the great point that some people bring up, is that had we kept Raef and Nick, we would have one center on the bench all season and a point guard with shaky knees. So it could have been much worse.

I initiated the Houston - Orlando deal on NBA Live 2004 and played a game using Houston. I ran the offense through T-Mac, and had a first quarter score of 38 to 16. T-Mac went 11 of 13. Perfection. It was too good to be true.

T-Mac is criticized for taking too many shots. But look at his past situation. If there's 80 shots for the taking, and you're two guys are T-Mac and Juwan Howard, well, you want T-Mac to take 30 - 35 shots a game. It makes sense. You really want Lue shooting 15 shots a game?

With Yao, T-Mac will take less shots and hit more. He can dump it in, find an empty spot, and it there. Or he can take his man one on one. Does it matter? Points and assists for Yao and T-Mac.

I might actually attend a Rockets game.