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My thoughts on the offseason thus far... (it's not as bad as it feels)

Ok, I think that now that we've had some time to move past the Parsons' defection and the Chris Bosh fiasco, we can really start to properly talk about the offseason. For myself, the biggest issue is that we didn't make the move from hopeful to true contender. The jump would have required one of two things to happen, either we needed to hit a homerun in the coaching dept (adding Hollins (or another defensive minded associate coach) or replacing McHale outright with some ace coach that came to us great), or we got another superstar. I don't think anything less than that would have skyrocketed us into the next tier. What ended up happening was something quite... different. I don't just mean different from what I expected though. What we did was something that you don't typically see from teams with an outside chance at the title. We didn't overpay for middling talent when we missed on Bosh. The Bulls did the typical thing when they missed on Melo for example, filled a few voids, added a big name veteran who may be over the hill, spent up their cap space, and moved on. Houston blazed a very different trail after missing out on Bosh. They let Parsons walk and signed Ariza (which is basically a roster wash) and filled their gaps with unproven young players. I think, if you look at it objectively, it's not a terrible gamble, and with that I'll go into the pros and cons of our offseason.

PROS

Word from Team USA is that Harden has dedicated himself to becoming a "lockdown defender."

http://www.slamonline.com/nba/report-james-harden-focused-becoming-lockdown-defender/

Speaks for itself, but if he's focused on shoring up his biggest weakness speaks well for the team and it's future.

Youth isn't always bad. Parsons and Beverley are outright proof that players can come in and contribute right away on this squad. Houston has proven time and time again that we can find serviceable (and sometimes more than serviceable) players right off the bat, whether it be in the draft, d league, or overseas. With this many young unproven guys on the roster, I'd be shocked if one or two of them don't outright impress us and another one or two don't become so serviceable that the overall negative that is lack of experience isn't offset by the overall talent level.

Kevin McHale is back in his wheelhouse. One thing that McHale is praised by generally all of us is his development of young talent. Our bench is made up of almost entirely young talent. As long as he's willing to trust the young guys I think the team will end up better for it.

We stayed flexible. If we have a few "breakout" rookies and a player becomes available, then we should have the ammo needed to snag him. We're also still positioned to make a run at the Durant and/or LBJ in a couple years

Cons

The team didn't improve. I think there's an argument to be made that the team didn't get much worse but it certainly didn't get better. Ariza/Parsons is essentially a wash, bench is basically an unknown now; last year it was plain bad (no Asik for most of the year, revolving door at the backup 3 spot, Lin being hugely inconsistent), still no replacement for Sampson (which was a huge deal that kinda got looked over)... If the goal is to win a championship THIS year, then you're banking on a lot of question marks. Will Harden remain committed to defense when he's playing 40+ minutes a game during the regular season? How will Dwight's health be? Is Beverley going to be the same Beverley after that meniscus injury last year?

Will McHale consistently trust anyone on our bench? This kinda speaks for itself but as good a job as he does developing talent, it takes forever for young players to earn time under McHale and they have relatively short leashes. If Harden/Howard are asked to play in excess of 40 mpg we're in trouble. Beverley's durability is also kinda a question mark, so we have to monitor his minutes as well. We have to expand the rotation if we hope to be successful in the playoffs and I'm not sure McHale will let the rookies play through their mistakes.

In retrospect I think Morey did the right thing in his free agent maneuverings (except I would have let the coach walk). This time last year though, I was hoping to make a trip to Houston for a championship parade when the season was over (in looking back, that may have been a tad optimistic, lol). Now I'm more excited to see the young guys develop and hope that Morey can pull a rabbit out of his hat. Oh what a difference a year makes.

No cursing in title. No pirated material, such as links to online game streams. Do not cut/paste entire sections of content from other websites. Thanks.

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