just for the records: this is not a knee-jerk, a play SF3,a Fire Adelman, a "this team sucks, let's trade for an inknown commodity" thread.. Looking closely at our performance tonight against the Mavs, I think the Rockets were very close to playing the best basketball they are capable of.. that's not saying that they played great, but they were very close to playing to their full potential.. here's the breakdown: 1. very good FG% against a great defensive Dallas team: we shot 44% from the field, which is very good.. 2. unbelievably great 3-point shooting: everyone was hitting his shots.. we shot 44% from the line, and 50% if you exclude Tmac (who was 1-5 from 3).. 3. Rafer had his best performance of the season (and arguably of his career with the Rockets, since I don't recall that many great performances by him).. the guy shot lights out 7-13 from the field and 3-7 from the three point line.. one of the few losses that you can't blame on him 4. we rebounded the ball pretty well, we only got outrebounded by 1, which isn't significant at all. 5. Yao had a huge game with 30 points, 15 rebounds, 6 blocks, and only 3 TOs.. even though his poor defensive play and his missed freethrow in the end were costly, you have to give him credit for having a monster game 6. Tmac had a below-average game in terms of shooting % & scoring, but he was absolutely great overall, chipping in with 12 assists and 7 rebounds.. he did have 6 TOs, but you can't say that he actually had a bad game.. the only thing that wasn't perfect tonight was the bench performance which wasn't that bad considering it produced 17 points with James, Bonzi, and Scola stinking it up, but it's still not a totally "poor" game by the bench, just slightly below average.. taking into account all these things and the fact that we still lost means one thing: we aren't as good as we thought we were. There's no way in hell we get the production that we got tonight from Rafer, Head, Yao, and Mac (with the 12 assists) every game. and even if we did (like tonight), we still lost.. will we get to the playoffs? probably.. will we have a winning record? most likely. but are we gonna be serious contenders come playoffs time? I doubt it. in fact, I don't think a 1st round exit prediction is out of line here.. where I am getting at is since this team almost had a perfect night with Alston shooting 54% from the field and Mac banking in 3's and still LOST the game, we needs a major move to improve our chances because right now, it doesn't look good for us.. I think we hit our ceiling tonight, we couldn't have had a more perfect game.. and it's not like the Mavs were going off, they all had average games (especially Terry and Jirk, who usually kill us majorly) .. now, by "major move", I don't mean a trade involving one of the superstars, I am talking about a relatively small but significant move similar to the ones that got us Barry, Wesley, and James in 04-05 and turned around a horrible start of 6-11 to a very successful 51-win-season.. a move doesn't necessarily have to be a trade, it could be a rotation adjustment, a starting lineup change, minute redistribution, or players playing at certain positions reconsideration.. I am almost 100% confident that a move is coming, but I don't quite know what it's gonna be.. any predictions?
We got zilch from Bonzi and Scola, two guys who were supposed to be big time bench contributors for us. The second unit was just terrible overall. This loss isn't the end of the world, but its extremely discouraging. It's like the Rockets learned nothing from last year.
When Brandon Bass (17pts, 6 Reb, 3Ast, 1 Blk) SINGLE HANDEDLY out-shot, out-rebound, out-Assist, and Out-block your ENTIRE bench, u know u will lose the game, period.
To be fair, Scola was getting a lot of "lets screw with the rookie" calls from the refs. With Tmac there its like he keeps second guessing whether he should take the shot or not. Hopefully he will get over that soon.
Why a team with 2 "supposedly" can't beat good but not great Dallas team? The Rockets blew a 17-point lead!!! Poor executions in the 4th quarter. The 2 so-called superstars played disappeared when it was their time to shine/bury their opponents, instead they passed the ball to the frigging Alston for 3's. Yao's 30 points didn't come when the Rockets need them most. During the time when the Mavs beginning their comeback, Yao was being dominated by Bass, a bench warmer. Perhaps, we overestimated the Rockets. This team is a pretender not contender.
changes and minutes and way adelman substitues MUST change. 1) head/alston CANNOT play much in the 4th 2) francis has to play RIGHT NOW (if we know he sucks too, we then must make trades for the PG position but we have to know how he does) 3) stop resting tmac for too damn long 4) PLEASE JUST LET SCOLA PLAY THROUGH HIS MISTAKES. chuck hayes right now is not very valuable in adelman's system.
I really don't care how many assists and rebounds T-mac had, when his go-to move at the end of the game is the 'long contested jumper' it's not hard to figure out why we lose more games than we win against good teams when the game is close. If he can't man up and take it to the rack in crunchtime we'll be 1st round...maybe second round (if we're lucky) and out. It's so easy to see now...yeah, he was hurting a bit...so what...he always plays this way even when he's not hurt and it was no different today. The guy plays well in the first half of games and folds at the end as he settles for long jumper after long jumper...and we do well when he's on, which is what? The low 40% of the time? That's not good enough. He's a great talent that is mentally soft and definitely physically fragile for the NBA grind. I've seen enough of the guy to know he'll never win us an NBA title unless we have 2-3 other hall of famers on the team. People can keep closing their eyes and denying it, but when he's 35 and we're saying "Next year is our year" maybe we'll wake up. I've had enough of this crap.
i think u need to watch the 4th of the bobcats and grizz game. this is the first time where he completely made himself into a perimeter player (and coincidentally it's the first game back). i wouldn't worry about tmac.
That contested 3 thing has to go. We need to take it to the rack consistently so we dont end up having to take that every freaking game. At this point i just assume we are gonna lose if the game is gonna be decided that way.
It just seems to me that we have one thing off every night that kills us during this stretch. I don't care that we are having problems when we are with a new coach and a new system, and its early in the season. If we are doing this nearer the All-Star Break, then I think we can say that we are justified in our feelings of discouragement. I am going to try to stay positive and just wait this out.
You mean the game where we held off the 'mighty bobcats' and lost to the grizz? Sorry I'm not going back to look at those crap games.
see, that's something I've been calling for for as long as I could remember.. however, I don't think we have anyone currently in the rotation who can do this on a consistent basis.. Tmac is capable of doing it, but he thinks it's too "risky" to do it considering potential injuries he could get..and I don't really blame him, he isn't the smoothest player out there on his drive; he is possibly one of the most awkward players (from a physical standpoint) I've ever seen.. he jumps off of the wrong foot, and he lands on his heels, he moves funny in midair, and he isn't the type of player that would intelligently avoid the contact and go the rim in a smooth way (a la Wade & Tony Parker), instead, he prefers to power his way through and he gets hammered/fould & no call very often.. that's why we can't rely on him driving consistently.. James has shown some good signs with his little consistent floater in the lane, but he is still not your typical driver/dasher to the basket... I think a guy who would be absolutely perfect for this is Snyder, IF, and that's a big IF, he uses his brain correctly and doesn't pull up for 30 footers everytime he touches the ball.. and speaking of driving to the basket, do you guys remember this 6-3 player who wears #3 and whose nickname is the "franchise"? I remember he played this one preseason game against memphis this year, and he took it fearlessly to the basket.. he drew the contact on several occasions while still getting the basket (and1 opportunities), and he single handedly kept us in the game with his heart/tough style of playing.. whatever happened to that guy Rick?
When you critique both our stars, you should do it fairly. You mentioned Yao missing one costly FT at like the 2 min mark (overall 8/9 FTs for the night), maybe you should also mention Mike James missing one key ft with 12 secs left. I admit that Yao should have fouled Harris hard to prevent a 3 point play, but really, is it Yaos' fault whoever guarding Harris couldn't play defense? For Tmac, his overall stat line is ok, but PART of the reason we lost was because he wasn't aggressive enough. Near the end of the game, when he and Yao ran the high PnR, instead of jacking up a long jumper (especially on cold shooting night), he should have drove hard to the rack. Also, Tmac turned the ball over twice in the last 2 mins. Before his last turnover, we were up 91-89. After he turned the ball over, that led to the play where Harris had a layup and Yao fouled him for a 3 pt play (Dal takes lead 92-91). Again, if Tmac drove all the way on that play instead trying to throw it back out, chances are, he either would have gotten a basket or 2fts. All I wanted to say is that, when you criticize either of our stars, look at both equally. Don't magnify the mistakes of one, and ignore the mistakes of the other. Tonight, both Yao and Tmac made mistakes near the end of the game. I only responded to this after seeing your other post in another thread, where you are obviously bias towards Yao. You bashed Yao unfairly and saying how Boozer dominated him. You mentioned Howard, Okafor, Tim Duncan, the 2 Wallaces are able to guard Boozer. Have you checked Boozer's stats against those guys? If not, you should do some research. Actually, someone else in the other thread already found those stats for you. Please go take a look before you pull garbage out of your rear, and save yourself some embarrassment.
Um, in this case yes, because Yao was guarding Harris. The Rockets were switching on all high pick and rolls with Harris and Dirk, because they didn't wan't Dirk getting an open look at a 3. That resulted in Yao matched up with Harris. With Yao matched up against Dirk, there's basically no good way to defend that. Either you give up a clean look at a 3 for Dirk, or you get stuck with Yao trying to stop Harris's penetration. And if there's help, that would leave another open 3. Contrast that to what the Rockets were trying to do on the other end. Yao couldn't get deep post position on Dirk, and the T-mac/Yao PnR was executed sloppily each time down the stretch.
fixed it and paraphrased it for you, you could've summed it up just like this... if you actually possessed the reading comprehension of a 5th grader or higher, you could've easily found out that my post in this thread was meant to show that Yao had a nearly perfect game and we still lost.. I, by no means, blamed it on him at all.. actually, if you read the entire post (which I am firmly confident you didn't because it's too long for your limited attention span), you would understand how saying that Yao had a great game contributes to my notion that the team has reached its potential and we still lost.. please tell me, how did you come to the conclusion that I DIDN'T "critique both stars fairly" when I described Yao's performance as a "monster game" while acknowledging that Mac had 6 TOs and described his performance as a "below-average" game? did you even think before you posted? talk about getting owned ...
Perhaps bashing Yao because he's the team best player and the other star isn't 100% healthy. When T-mac was on the bench in the early 4th quarter, Yao did nothing. Adelman left t-mac out for too long. I agree t-mac didn't play well but he gave the Rockets something when came back in the 4th quarter. the dumbest thing t-mac did tonight was passing the ball to Alston for 3's in the 4th quarter.
We played perfect game? I stopped reading right there. I cant even count how many things we can improve upon. For one, the offense is still a mess. Down the strech, we didnt know where the shots are. Dallas took it to the rim, got layups or wide open treys or mismatch. We took long range J, contested trey and predictable offense. Hardly a perfect match in my book. Some people just need to take some chill pills. We lost 6 games and as if it's the end of world. We are still a work in progress. When we were 6-1 and everybody upset about us not getting ESPN #1 ranking, I said we were not as good as our record and going to hit losing streak. And now we are 6-6, I am telling you and you can mark it, we are better than our record is. I also said it would take 5 stragith losses to get Francis off bench. I am telling you Francis is coming off bench right now, next game.
I hope you guys know that Mcgrady lost feeling in his fingers during the 3rd quater If i was Adelman i would have sat him too for longer
If Francis starts the next game I will have to officially revise my estimates over the next 5 games to 4-1 instead of my original estimate of 1-4 Phoenix and Denver we would lose to one of them Clippers, Heat, Golden State we should win
