Better late than never: Rockets trade Pip!

(sorry for not having a post up on Friday... or Saturday... or earlier today. I was not anywhere in town - and even further away from an Internet connection, e-mail or newspapers. It happens.)

From what I've read and been told upon my return earlier today -- the Rockets wised up and traded Nicholas Batum aka Frenchy aka Pip. I feel so relieved. And I really like what we got in return... according to Lee it breaks down like this:

Rockets get - Joey Dorsey and Darrel Arthur from Portland
Portland gets - Batum
Memphis gets Arthur and the Rockets late pick
Rockets get Donte Greene and Memphis's 2009 2nd rounder

Rockets ultimately get Donte Greene, Joey Dorsey and Memphis' 2nd rounder in '09.

This is excellent news!

Greene was one of "those guys" that I was hoping we would have an opportunity to pick. I'm quite happy with that. Now, while we didn't get CDR (who Morey apparently knows something about that I don't) - we did end up with his teammate Dorsey. Even if Dorsey is probably better being loaned to the Texans for a while (see what I did there? He's built like a football player!!!).

The interesting thing about Dorsey is my cousin used to be the Memphis trainer... which is probably why I was biased towards us drafting CDR to begin with. This is close enough I guess. Though it does create quite the backlog of power forwards for us:

Scola
Landry
Hayes
Greene/Dorsey

??

I guess this allows us to use some leverage against Carl Landry if he's truly seeking more than $4-5M a year -- we heard rumors he might ask for upwards of $10M a year... if so, I like you Carl, but you're not worth that. Sorry. It also might provide us insight on what the Rockets plan to do with Chuck Hayes (since he is no longer starting and presumably still can't shoot free throws. Of course, we all know that Dorsey is just as bad at the stripe... it is just not as ugly as Chuck's shot.)

So, in conclusion, I am happy with the result of the draft for the most part.

Alas, Rafer and Luther are still technically on the roster. Which is a problem. But the Rockets maximized their draft picks again and have added to the team's depth. That's about all we could do considering we could not draft Rose or Beasley.