Thanks for starting this thread! Many people just look at the score box and don't realize it. I wish him the best.
Incorrect. Boozer/Okuer were a bad matchup for him. Utah was not. If anything, The Houston defense and Utah offense played to more or less a draw, at least in 2007 when Yao played the whole series. Utah's regular season offense rating:110 Houston's regular season defense rating: 100 Utah's playoff offense rating vs Rockets: 106 Basically split down the middle. That year, the Rockets were 3rd in defense. Utah was 3rd in offense. In the end, Utah played offense at a pace about what you'd expect from a middle-of-the-road offense. We neither impose our will on defense, nor did they impose their will on offense. OTOH, the Rockets offense... Utah's regular season defense rating: 107 Houston's regular season offense rating: 106 Houston's playoff offense rating vs Jazz: 100 No one cared about the Rockets offense much at the time, both due to JVG's philosophy and our great defense. But it was an average offense due to the presence of Yao and T-mac. But as Mightydog pointed out earlier in this thread, we sucked horribly on offense in the series. We turned a mediocre Utah defense into... well, our regular season defense. So please, enough of this Utah crap. By far the biggest reasons why we couldn't beat Utah was that our offense failed us. Because our mediocre offense couldn't perform at mediocrity against the Jazz mediocre defense. We had to suck against them. That's on our role players failing. That's on our coach getting out-schemed. That's not Yao defense vs Boozer offense.
I think that game 3 stinker might distort the playoff statistics a bit. There were big issues offensively, true, but in game 7 in the final 5 minutes -- the most pivotal stretch of the series -- it was our inability to get stops that did us in.
We're still a 103.7 without it. Basically the Rockets played below average offense even without that abomination of a performance. 7 game series. 336 minutes played. 1680 minutes played total by various 5-man combinations on the court. And you use the final 5 minutes as the benchmark. Well, if that's your point, I guess I can't argue.
Up until game 7, the home team won every game. Yeah, we had our offensive struggles, but we still held serve, and it came down to a final 7th game between the 4th and 5th seed. We were up, if I recall correctly, 10 points in the final 5 minutes. Game 7, at home. That's a pretty good place to be. And yet we blew it, and the reason was an inability to get stops. Now, if you examine why were unable to get those stops, its actually related to the matchup challenges that Utah posed to us, defensively. Okur and Boozer pulled our rebounders out of good defensive rebounding position, and Yao was never adept at chasing after rebounds outside his immediate area. So, not only did we yield a high shooting%, we also gave up entirely too many offensive rebounds. Ultimately, that's what killed us.
I guess you and I just think differently. I've always thought that it's best if you played your best every game. That if you can perform on offense in road games and steal one from your opponent, then that's a good thing. I don't personally believe that NBA playoff series doesn't matter until game 7, although that seems to be where you and I differ. See, I feel that if our role players was at least competent in one road game, there would be no game 7. But our role players played like crap in all of them, and I feel that's not excusable. Much more so than Yao's defensive deficiencies in the last minutes of game 7. Basically, my logic is this: 3 full road games of historically bad performances by multiple role players > Yao's personal lack of contribution on defense to last 5 minutes of one home game. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this point.
I don't really understand the argument here. Yao had a tough time guarding the Jazz front-line, and in game 7 it hurt us. That's really all I said. I'm not arguing that the problem against the Jazz was defense and not offense. I'm saying defense was a problem, in addition to offense. As to which was the bigger problem, I can't say one way or the other. In the 3 road games, the poor offense from the role players hurt us. In game 7, at home, our defense failed us.
I think what you both are trying to agree on is that we simply choked during that and the Dallas series. Do I blame Yao for that? Definitely not, I blame the organization's philosophy in thinking the Yao-T Mac duo would suffice and not being overly aggressive in getting them substantial help (It looks to me our owner was less willing to pay the tax during those years), hence we ending up with a bunch of scrubs expecting our Stars to incarnate or be better than the Shaq-Kobe duo in route to a championship.
But he didn't have a hard time guarding the Utah. That was my entire point, which you glossed over because you had no counter-argument. It's odd that Battier can get praised for letting Kobe shoot gazillion jumpers while keeping other Lakers in check, yet Yao will never live over the fact that the Rockets defense basically kept every Jazz player in check not named Boozer. And in the end held the Jazz offense to the level of that of an average NBA team.
And Yao was the one who got torched by Boozer most of the time...how does this help your argument exactly?
Boozer shot 56% in the regular season. Boozer shot 50% vs Yao And if you want to look at combined numbers Boozer/Okur combined Reg. season: 14.8-28.9(51%FG) 38.5ppg Against us: 14.3-29.9(47.8%FG) 35.6ppg I'm still looking for the part where Yao got owned on defense. If anything, I feel there's a much bigger argument for Yao getting owned on offense against Okur. But this thread isn't about that.
Particularly in the last two games of that series, Boozer was dunking on Yao like he was a nerf hoop... left hand, right hand, two hands, eyes closed. When he wasn't guarding Boozer, Okur lit him up from the outside. Yao had trouble guarding the pick and roll with Williams and Boozer/Okur. By the end of that series, the Jazz had figured out the best way to attack Yao on defense. If that series had been best of 15 we might not have won another game.
Probably the part where whenever the Jazz needed a basket, they tossed it to Boozer who shot his 10 foot jumper over Yao and it went in. I don't need stats to tell me that Boozer raped us that year. But anyway, if stats are your gig, Boozer's Usage rating was WAY up in the playoffs....in fact it was around 33% for the Rockets series. Compare that with about 24% during the regular season, and it's a very acceptable tradeoff. In Game 7, it was ridiculous 40% - Why? Because Sloan idientifed the matchup and kept exploiting it. And it worked. Same story in game 2...in fact, an abysmal game 1 (a horrific 28 TS%) is the only thing that really keeps his stats in that series from being otherworldly rather than just very good.
So basically Boozer was shooting 100% when the Jazz needed a basket. And 0% when they didn't need him to score. Hence he shot 50% for the series. Got it. That's why the series went 7 games. You are a basketball genius.
Game 7, loss at home, inability to get stops in most critical moment of the season, was the counter argument. For a defensive-minded team with a 7'6 anchor in the middle, that was a bad time to have a defensive meltdown don't you think? You said bad offense was by far the biggest reason we lost the series. If you like, but I'm not going to minimize the defensive breakdowns in game 7. Lots of playoff series go to 7 games between a 4 and 5 seed. Its much more rare for the home team to lose that game 7, and still more rare for them to lose the game 7 when they are holding a lead in the final 5 minutes. So when I'm asked why we lost that series, the first thing that comes to mind is our inability to close them out at home. I guess we do see things differently. BTW: This is a Yao appreciation thread, and so I don't want to derail by getting into an argument about Yao's defensive deficiencies. You're right, even if Yao had some issues individually guarding Boozer, his presence still appears to have had a positive defensive impact on the series as shown by the series-long defensive numbers you cited. We certainly wouldn't have defended them any better with Scola or Miller or Hill in there instead.
Yao was a great defensive presence due to his size. It is simply not easy to shoot over someone towering above you. Unfortunately, teams with jump shooting bigs tend to kill us, especially off the pick and roll where Yao is not fast enough to rotate and defend.
No, it was more like 70% if you want to get technical about it...either way, statistically or anectdotally, he murdered us that series.
