Are the Rockets tanking the season without T-Mac? Trading Rafer Alston seems like a wholly defensible move, considering they got Kyle Lowry back, and Brian Cook is the kind of guy Sean May wishes he could be, a power forward who spreads the floor with some outside touch. However, with McGrady's now yearly injury issues, and concerns about Yao's health year to year, the Rockets' window may be closed before most people realized it was open.
At the start of this year, I thought they were right with the Lakers as favorites to come out of the Western Conference, but now they're somewhere in Phoenix's range as clear playoff teams with no realistic title chance.
Even after their fal from elite levels, Houston still throws Yao out there, Ron Artest, Shane Battier, and a host of bench players who each do at least one specific thing well. In many ways, they're the anti-Bobcats. The Rockets are built around two uber superstars and a bunch of guys who are appreciated to widely varying degrees around the league, whereas the Bobcats are built almost entirely of guys with broad skill sets, jacks of several trades, and with no such superstar pillars.