Personal fouls Jazz 131, Rockets 127. They only had 4 more. Regular season they fouled 24 x per game, we fouled 19.5 per game, if this had gone down this way in the series they would have had 27 more fouls, not just 4. Free throw attempts Jazz 152, Rockets 157 We only had 5 more. more eek! Free throws made We had 5 more again - so I guess we shot them as well as they did. Field goal attempts 472 to 454 advantage Rockets. Field goals made 203 to 193 advantage Jazz. Either they just naturally shot better or they hacked more with fewer calls. 3ptrs: 35 of 120 us, 32 of 89 Jazz. This means 2 ptrs are 158 of 352 Rockets vs 171 of 365. 43% vs 46%. Our assists sucked and were lower than the Jazz. They edged us in rebounding - the shoves under the basket helped. They had 4 more blocks, we had 8 more steals, 9 less turnovers. Total points 528 us, 543 them. 15 stinking points over the 6 games. 2.5 pts per game. Poor shooting by the Rockets or were we continually bumped and hacked and slapped without the calls? Always working physically to disrupt our offense without getting nearly everything called against them worked totally in the Jazz's favor. My opinion is the hard fouling and hacking the Jazz continually committed that went uncalled by the stupid refs probably was the difference. Rafer's injury contributed to the losses in games 1,2 and 6. LES and RA have to have a team that can adjust and play this way in the playoffs. And find out why Tmac cannot buy a call on the perimeter.
I think Rafer's absence was the single most important factor. With Rafer healthy this would have at least gone 7. Amazing to think that when Yao went down everybody assumed the Rox wouldnt even make the playoffs. Instead, they not only made the playoffs but gave the Jazz a good scare even though we were missing Rafer also who is really our ONLY point guard. Hats off to the Rockets. I dont think they could have possibly done better given all the injuries.
27 ppg 8.2 rpg 6.8 apg while shooting at 42% that's pretty damn impressive. The man did everything he possibly could.
That's right. And what's important his last 2 games were on 50% shooting. Tracy really stepped up. He was a scorer the whole series, he was rebounder and playmaker when he had to. Just not enough help...
I could just as easily construct a counter argument focusing on fouls drawn instead of fouls committed. The Jazz drew 23.1 fouls per game in the regular season, and the Rockets drew 19.7 fouls per game in the regular season. If that's how it went down in this series, then we would have 20 more fouls than them, instead of 4 less fouls. First, why would you expect the Jazz to foul us as much as they foul the rest of the league, and why would we foul them as infrequently as we fouled the rest of the league? Second, fouls will naturally go down if you are playing in a slower-paced, half-court style game. Here's their rankings in the regular season for fouls committed and drawn, on a per possession basis. Code: Fouls Committed (rnk) Fouls Drawn (rnk) Rockets 21.7 (21st) 21.7 (24st) Jazz 25.7 (1st) 24.7 (1st) What we should expect when these two teams face eachother is that the Jazz will commit fouls less frequently against us than they averaged (because we're below average in drawing fouls), and we'll commit fouls more frequently against them than we averaged (because they're best in the league at drawing fouls).
This is because they got better shots then us. more lay-ups and such. This is because of Luther Head.
I thought the series was very fairly officiated outside of some blatant flops by kirelinko especially the one at the end of game 2. The bottom line is every team thinks they are getting screwed over by officiating, but for the most part they do a good job. The top three reasons we lost the series are 1. Injuries to yao and skip. If either is healthy I say we have a greater than 50% chance of winning the series. 2. Tmacs inconsistency, and not showing up in the fourth in some games, which is related to reason number 1, if he had more support, maybe he wouldn't be so tired. 3. Roles players not stepping up, scolas missed layups, battiers lack of rebounding, and head giving us NOTHING once again.
Look at the combined shooting percentage of Rafer/Shane/BJax/Luther/Aaron and compare that to Brewer/AK47/Harpring/Price/Korver. This is a comparison of Utah's complimentary perimeter players surrounding DWill and our complimentary perimeter players surrounding McGrady. Let me do it for you. Our 5 perimeter complements to McGrady shot a combined 70 for 202 from the field for a total of 202 points. That is 34.65% from the field and less than 1 Point Per Shot. Now, their 5 perimeter complements to DWill shot a combined 79 for 177 from the field for a total of 221 points. That is 44.63% from the field and 1.25 Points Per Shot. Now, look at the size difference in these two groups. We've got one 6'8" guy and 4 midgets. Utah has one midget and 4 guys that are 6'4" to 6'9". That's a huge difference. Utah basically has a solid point guard rotation of DWill and Price, both not tall but decent size and they have taller, rangier guys at their 2/3 spots. They have 4 guys at the swing positions that are 6'4" to 6'9". When we go to the bench, we are playing midget ball. They go to the bench, they are bringing out size and keeping size balance on the floor. Not to mention the skill sets of the shooters in these two groups. We lost because of our lack of depth at the wing position and inability to score efficiently from the perimeter. Granted, if Yao is playing, you can chalk up a chunk of those shots that went to BJax/Luther/Brooks/Rafer to Yao and we probably beat them. I'm down with that. However, we are still lacking depth at the wing and our perimeter players have to be upgraded. That's all there is to it. If we had another 6'6" to 6'8" wing player that can shoot it deep and get to the rim and finish that would be a complement to McGrady, eat up 30 mpg and allow us to always have two tall rangy players at the 2/3 that can score and defend a little bit, it would go a long ways toward balancing our lineup and increasing our efficiency. In hindsight, the Bonzi trade may have indeed cost us this series. I have no qualms saying it. However, when we made it, we weren't counting on Yao going down either. We simply have to upgrade BJax and Luther for a very good wing player and we've got to get, at the very least, a decent backup to Rafer that can give us over 42% from the field and over 36% from 3.
We are basically a jump shooting without Yao Ming, so you cant really complained about less fouls drawn or free throws attempted even Jazz played physical Basketball! The most eyes' popping stats of the series are: 40+ total minutes played, 1 made field goal 14 total field attempted less than 8% FG% entire series and 4 total points scored!
of course, if you're a rockets fan, the fouls drawn just proves that the refs were biased for utah all year and against the rockets or that, as usual, after the refs call a ton of fouls against the utah opponents they scramble to even it up after the game is out of control....therefore explaining why they led in both fouls committed and drawn.
The sickest part about the help problem was that the help was all lined up perfectly, but EVERYONE was hurt. Battier, Rafer playing on 1 foot each and Yao unable to play. This team was truely built with a VERY GOOD CHANCE at winning it all and we got the injury bug at the wrong time .
I also think we would have won the series if we had been healthly (even without Yao) Battier last 3 games was non-factor. He couldn't move. He couldn't shot. He couldn't defend. Rafer played great basketball and damn you saw what happen when he didn't play in the 2nd half... But help from Bobby and Luther was just pathetic. Bobby is a veteran, he knows what to do and he shots 3/15, 2/12....give me a break
RAfer was the key I feel we would have entered Utah at 1-1 if he wasn't injured and taken this to at least game 7 and had a 50% chance of winning the entire series. With Yao it would have been a non contest. Honestly guys we got burnt by Utah last year on a tight series that went down to the wire WITH Boozer destroying us all series. Guess who didn't show up this series.
