ESPN: Inside Rockets Camp

I know the Ric Bucher article is in the same article of this post, but they are going more in depth on the team...

From Insider....no link:

No pension pays better than Jeff Van Gundy's loyalty: Assistant coach Patrick Ewing and point guard Charlie Ward are proof that buying into the JVG program can and will pay dividends down the line. While the Rockets hope Bobby Sura is going to be ready to play big minutes at both guard positions once he recovers from back surgery, they still loaded Ward up with a two-year, $3.6 million deal. Ewing, meanwhile, doesn't do much more than work with Yao, a job scaled back by the addition of Dikembe Mutombo, but he still has a highly coveted job.

All bets are off if Mutombo makes his first shot: Mutombo has the most ungainly offensive repertoire of any eight-time All-Star, but don't tell him that. He made a rolling hook shot against the Kings and suddenly thought he was Bob MacAdoo, attempting a turnaround baseline jumper and missing badly. If Deke were content to come in and clog the paint, block shots and rebound, he wouldn't be with his fifth team in the last five years. But pride – as in trying to prove to a coach your role is too limited – has made nomads of quite a few players through the years. Mutombo, for all his intelligence and charm, is simply the latest.

It's Yao's team: The proof is in the priorities – improving at power forward will help Yao the same way a better point guard would help Tracy McGrady. The Rockets' multiple roster changes have created a half-court team that will have a hard time fastbreaking against anyone. And if there's one thing Ward can do, it's make an entry pass, which, with T-Mac and Jim Jackson, gives the Rockets three potential starters who can and will get the ball to Yao on the block and then space the court to knock down three-pointers. T-Mac doesn't seem to mind the order of priority, as least not as of right now.

Ryan Bowen is a lock to make the eight-man rotation: Houston is short on players who can impact the game without touching the ball and that describes Bowen to a T. His hustle plays for loose balls and putbacks had the Rockets' bench repeatedly up and cheering. With the shortage of backcourt depth, Jim Jackson and McGrady are going to see a lot of guard play, which should open up minutes at small forward. With Howard, Taylor and Scott Padgett not having the quickness or nose for offensive rebounds – Bowen tied Howard with a team-high six in China while playing half as many minutes – there could be time available at power forward as well. Not bad for a guy the Rockets lured from Denver only after they lost their prime energy guy, Sura, to back surgery.

Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming looked good together in China.

This much was apparent: While McGrady and Yao form one of the best inside-outside combinations in the league, the deal to get T-Mac has left Houston with myriad major holes. Free-agent rookie David Hawkins is the closest thing to a true two-guard in camp and free-agent refugee Charlie Ward is the starting point guard. This is the same Ward who the San Antonio Spurs were ecstatic to land as a free agent last January, only to watch him get outplayed by Devin Brown and Jason Hart. The same Ward who also went 0 for 4 on set-your-feet, eye-the-rim 3s in China.

Howard is the leading candidate to start at power forward, even though he's not a good fit next to Yao and Van Gundy took long looks at both Maurice Taylor and Scott Padgett.

Jim Jackson, a great find last season when he averaged a career-high 6.1 rebounds, is now being counted on heavily to have another standout season. He looks up to the task but at 33 that's hardly a lock, especially shifting assignments to accommodate McGrady.

The bench, meanwhile, is a treasure trove of one-dimensional players. Tyronn Lue can stay in front of most point guards and is an underrated three-point shooter, but he's not going to make a difference on offense. Taylor can score and make clutch shots but not defend or rebound. Dikembe Mutombo is a good practice matchup for Yao but his defense isn't much more intimidating than his offense, a long fall for a four-time Defensive Player of the Year winner. Ryan Bowen already is a team favorite with his hustle plays, but opponents will funnel jump shots to him all day long. Bobby Sura is not expected to return from back surgery until mid-December. Bostjan Nachbar still looks all too often as if he missed the hotel wake-up call.

This, in short, is a team that won't give Van Gundy any trouble with how it behaves and still give him plenty of problems in how it actually plays. While the Rockets' braintrust believes Ward and Lue are enough at point guard, they're already looking around for ways to combine their $5.9 million salary-cap exception and existing personnel to improve at power forward.

For now, though, the focus is on Yao and T-Mac. Sure, they're great. The question seems to be, just how great? Yao has added noticeable upper-body muscle and posted deep easily and consistently against both Brad Miller and Chris Webber. He is still susceptible to double teams, though, as his five turnovers in 27 minutes losing in Beijing demonstrated.

McGrady, the newest Rockets superstar, was a much more difficult read. He is so smooth and has such great vision that the offense already flows considerably better than it ever did last year. His chemistry with Yao is obvious. On one possession in Shanghai he drove the baseline and then lobbed the ball to the rim for Yao, a play negated because of a foul on the drive. The next possession he made the same move, threw the same pass and Yao deftly laid it in with his back to the basket.

No team will have a better go-to play than the Rockets' high pick-and-roll with T-Mac and Yao. The worst they'll get is McGrady raising up for an 18-footer. But the overall defense raises doubts about how many games they'll be close enough to win on a final possession. Ward, by the Rockets' admission, can't defend the league's starting point guards without help. The addition of McGrady means Jackson, whose strength allowed him to compensate for the speed he's lost and compete at small forward, is going to be matched up with a lot of shooting guards this season. So far, Van Gundy's impact on McGrady's oft-critiqued D hasn't been noticeable. Porous perimeter defense puts a premium on having agile shotblockers, which doesn't describe either Howard or Yao.

"My concern is not how Yao and T-Mac play together," Van Gundy said. "It's how the rest of our team fits together around them."

Getting the Rockets to play together shouldn't be a problem. Last year's Houston squad had cliques and a certain level of immaturity that drove the button-downed Van Gundy crazy, even though he said, "They competed and did everything I hoped for." The problem is that this year's team, while much more likely to stick to the game plan and not short-circuit itself with mental lapses, just doesn't have overwhelming talent beyond The Big Two.

If Van Gundy is nervous, though, he sure isn't showing it. Legendary for his pessimism, he has the pompons out, at least as of now.

"I like our guys very much," he said. "I like their character. They have an idea of who they are."

Which is -- they're Van Gundy guys. That means they'll be better than the sum of their parts, just as last year's Rockets were ultimately less than the sum of theirs.

Which sum ultimately proves to be bigger is what we're about to find out.