[CHRON] Rockets stress positive

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bk/bkn/5198410.html

In the new, upbeat, bright-side outlook of the Rockets, they will not begin their preseason schedule tonight against a New Orleans Hornets team that has given them fits in recent seasons.

Instead, Yao Ming said, they will play a team against which they carry a one-game winning streak.

"Hopefully, we can make it two," he said. "We have struggled against New Orleans. This year, we will have a brand-new start."

For the Rockets, with so much new, from coaches, to the system, to a chunk of the rotation, tonight in Oklahoma City will offer a first look at whether it will also be improved.

"You wait so long," guard Mike James said. "You have such a long summer. You anticipate so many things and get ready for training camp. It's good to be going up and down against your teammates, but it's better to be playing against an opponent. That's why you have training camp, to put the things you learned on the practice court together."

For the Rockets, tonight offers a first test of the new system and whether it is ready to work.

Rockets coach Rick Adelman has put in few set plays, with that scheduled for next week. James said he and the other point guards will not need to turn to see him call in a play. The team spent less than five minutes on an inbounds play Monday. But they did enough to tune up the basics of the offense to take it out for a test drive.

"Let's see how it will work," Tracy McGrady said. "Obviously, I'm not counting on everybody having very good chemistry in the new system. The new system will cause some problems for us. We just need some games and some practice to fix it and get used to it.


Building chemistry
"With the new additions to our team, the new coaching staff, the new system, it's a way of seeing what we have to work on, getting our timing and our rhythm down. Everything that will make us a great basketball team will definitely start in the preseason. It will be good to have all of our guys out there playing: myself, Yao, the real core of our group playing together. That's how we're going to get a rhythm. That's how we're going to build chemistry."

Adelman said Yao and McGrady would not get their usual playing time, but both would play, and that the 10 players who play in preseason games would get 15 or 16 minutes in each half.

"The first thing I told them is I don't care who you're playing with; I care how you're playing, what effect you're having on the game with whatever group you're playing with," Adelman said. "That's going to be true in the preseason. You're not always going to be playing with Yao and with Tracy."

But as much as he continued to rave about the work done, he was ready to measure the progress against another team and even start evaluating combinations and rotations.

"It's always good to play against somebody else to see how they respond and how they play when somebody else is guarding you and you're guarding somebody else," Adelman said. "You have to find out who will play well together. When we're playing in practice, it's a lot different than when we start putting it in the games.


Time to focus
"I just want to see them respond. How do we run our offense against another team? Are we going to be in a hurry to do things? Probably the biggest thing is, we can be really good defensively like they were last year, but the way we're trying to play a lot of times, sometimes they lose focus down there. Exhibition games are a good way to get their attention. Playing against another team is going to help us in that regard."

It will also help the mood. As cheery as players were through a week of practices, they said they were ready to take on someone else.

"When you play against these guys (teammates), it's like the same old song, over and over," McGrady said. "It gets kind of old and boring. It's good to kind of break the ice."