Because of the general atmosphere of the board there are a great number of people who will be happy one of our own players is injured. Rafer gets blamed for everything in this place and when he plays well for several games is labelled as "not doing too bad". It's pathetic. The other night he has 7 assists and 1 turnover and the game thread is a constant morass of "bench Rafer" and "effin' Reefer". Maybe we need three threads for every game. One for game talk, one for mms and audio, and one for Rafer bashing. If being injured is the only way some of you see his value to the team, in relation to the guards we have, I'm fairly astonished.
his abscence isn't the reason the rockets pfs have struggled against their raptor counterparts or for shane disappearing after making a couple of 3s in the first qtr.
Life Without Rafer? I believe this game proves that Rafer is indeed the best PG and most deserving to start...we needed him out there today...i love SF3 but he just can't control the game as Rafer does...happy guys?
Hell no it doesn't. It proved tmac was trigger happy with the 3s tonight and yao not being aggressive. Francis was NOT the one he played bad tonight. He missed some FT yeah but it was already sealed by then.
Shane dissappeared because the offense is so messed up they can't even give him a single look, how many times has he touched the ball? Do you think Bowen could of done better in this kind of situations. Chris Bosh started dominating when our defense fell apart as a consequence of our offense flattening up. Every time we are playing wild basketball or starting a play with 13 seconds left on the shot clock from the half court, the team is clearly missing its floor general in the second half. _ Blues
The Raptors played lock down defense the whole 2nd half. They pressured everything and made it hard for our players to make their move. The Rockets are too good of a team to be this bad without Skip. Seriously, if we can win games without Yao, we can win games without Skip. It's not like he's Magic Johnson or anything. And if we are this bad because Skip does not play, then we are not Championship material like we all thought.
This game doesn't prove anything....Steve played like Rafer does most of the time.......... <br> The entire team just sucked tonight....plain and simple
I hope Rafer not too seriously hurt and does this mean that a trade maybe in the works after the 15th?
The reason T-Mac was trigger happy was the ball was in his hands to start every possession. When Rafer is in there, he brings the ball up the court the majority of the time and he calls the play. Francis was playing off the ball for the most part.
I'm not worried about steve's FT. he's a carrerr 80% FT shooter. He shut down tj Ford tonight. I thought he played well. He just needs to get in game shape more. Tmac and yao though, they need to play better than this.
Exactly, AW. What we saw in the second half -- only part of the problem (albeit a big one) was getting the offense in it's spots. Francis was slow bringing the ball up and would pick up his dribble far too early. Rafer would never do that. Francis also hesitated taking the open three when it was kicked to him. I thought T-Mac kind of gave up as a result of this. Toronto stepped up their defensive intensity and the Rockets own intensity on defense went south. The offensive glass was dominated by the Raptors... take out Carl Landry's 4-5 that he got on one possession and it was 14-3. What you saw though was the value of Rafer in situations... not as a 35-40 minute starter. Admittedly, the Rockets would have been wise to turn to Rafer in a situation like that ... but by no means do I think it would have solved all of what we saw there. Still, this will be the new cling-to game for Rafer backers, as the Hornets game was last year. They won't say much about the 16-2 start or 11-point halftime lead. Their hope is Rafer is never out again and this will be the only chance anyone else will get to play with him out. It's like a fear of letting go of a floatie in order to swim to a boat.
I get as frustrated with Rafer as the next guy, but we saw why he's our starter tonight. He's the only true PG on this team. No one else can get the offense started like he does. Hell, Francis had a lot of trouble just bringing the ball up. Keep Rafer around.
rockets offense sucked bad, Rafer is the only guy that fits in with the starters Yao and t-mac, he can get them the ball.
