Not sure what u people are talking about re: Rafer, JVG and Adelman. Do you even looked at the data before you make your claim? http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/alstora01.html Rafer's shot distribution from various ranges, FG% from various ranges, FTA rate, TS%, TO rate, Usage rate, assist rate and pretty much every publicly available stat were pretty much the same between the JVG years and his 1.5 season under Adelman. There is nothing to suggest that Adelman used Rafer any differently or made him any more efficient than JVG did.
I always liked Rafer Alston. He was what was once considered a "classic" point guard. That's probably the biggest reason Jeff Van Gundy traded for him and kept him around. Rafer could handle the ball. He could make good decisions with it. He competed, and was always a better defender than he got credit for. Rafer excelled in transition, streetball legend or not. The one thing offensively that he struggled with, unfortunately, was the one thing that the Rockets couldn't afford at that time. Jeff Van Gundy was notoriously unoriginal in his offensive approach, but when you have Yao Ming, you have to play offensively through him as much as you can. Especially when most of the rest of the roster was woefully inadequate on offense. That meant that there were going to be a lot of open perimeter shots that people were going to have to hit, and hit at a fairly high rate. And if that's something you weren't good at, you were going to look pretty bad. Looking back, it's hard to say what could have been with most of those teams, because Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady were often injured. You can't begin to build anything like consistency when your two best players are in and out as much as they were. Playing together takes care of a lot of those things that we might think are obvious to correct, because teammates can anticipate each other's moves. You find ways to compensate for each other's weaknesses. I never really jumped into the "...bash Rafer..." pool very often, myself, because of that. Rafer was a serviceable guard, but he struggled on a team and in an offense that didn't often give him an opportunity to do what he did best. And wasn't ever whole or healthy, either. Rafer could have gotten a lot of easy buckets for the Rockets in transition if the team had the personnel. He could have helped diversify the offense a bit if he got to play more pick-and-roll basketball in the half court, I believe. Anything more than just giving the ball to Tracy McGrady at the top of the key, or dumping the ball in to Yao down low, would have been a massive improvement. Incidentally, Rafer and the Rockets looked a lot different as a team after Yao got hurt that season, in 2008. Because Yao wasn't there, Rick Adelman had to use more of his conventional Princeton offensive sets to involve more people in the Rockets offense. I don't think there was an appreciable difference in the way Rafer played from a statistical standpoint under JVG or Adelman, either. But perception is everything, and for about a month and a half that season, Rafer looked liked something we hadn't seen for a very long time. A point guard.
To be fair, the Lakers did lose even when Jordan Hill was shooting like 80% in the first few games. Just goes to show the impact of having a point guard running things.
lol I guess all the haters looked at the boxscore and went back to their caves. No wonder it's so dead. But actually, he was only good in the first half. Second half he pretty much got abused by Teague.
His biggest problem with Teague was Boozer; he was pretty key in the second half, just not so much with the box score.
That's not true. After the Hawks started the 3rd on a run, he started making plays to stop the bleeding. The one thing you can knock him on was that dumb clear path foul at the end. But otherwise he did his job and kept them in the game.
agreed.. that highlight video tinman posted of rafer was a snoozer.. thats when you know he was a bad player .. even his highlight video looked like crap.. Lin wasnt that great when he was here but his fans can certainly put together a highlight video and make him look like a all-star. Anyways not sure why this thread turned to be about rafer.. as a rockets fan i'm glad both PG's are gone since they both were inconsistent and were just pure frustrating to watch. Beverly isn't great by any stretch but at least he's consistently mediocre and brings the heat on D every game.
you are completely blinded about how bad Rafer's shooting was, not by his point guard play. At least he was a legit starter. I'm not arguing that Rafer is some badass, but come on man, he's nothing like Lin as a player at all.
who are the haters? I was commenting WHILE THE GAME was on, so check the time stamp of the post next time you accuse random people on the internet of not watching. They kept showing it on NBATV and some stupid joke between Isiah Thomas and Steve Smith about Kyle korver.
Legit starter??? Rafer was horrible!!! He played far more minutes than Lin did here. He averaged around 36MPG and scored 13PPG but his FG% hovered around 38% (that is just HORRIBLE and anyone that shoots that poorly should not be starting or playing heavy minutes in the NBA) Rafer even sucked at Free throws! As a starting PG he only averaged 5 assists per game. So statistically he's worse than Lin in amost every category other than turnovers. (arghh cant believe you have me defending Lin) but aside from stats i simply couldnt stand Rafer. I seriously remember him just having some awful games and made some stupid mistakes to lose for us in the playoffs. Ill have to go back and look it up if I feel like pulling my hair out again..
I just happened to tune in while he fouled Korver? on a clear path foul and thought to myself.. there goes Lin making dumb players in crunch time again. For someone that went to Harvard he sure makes some silly and dumb plays. I then went back and saw that he had a great game according to the box score.
Who do you think was the point guard of our 22 game winning streak? - See more at: http://hoopshype.com/interviews/bar...ball-kept-the-city-alive#sthash.0Q8BMRBS.dpuf
Yep, Lin doesn't have the same handles as skip and Skip had attitude <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zylBl6Upzkc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
