I have been watching him play all year, and have seen probably the worst attempt at playing defense by a SG in Rocket's history. He trails his man, rarely tries to get his hands up and is always ready to get on the move to the offensive side of the court. Then when he is faced with a more athletic player at SG playing defense on him, he seriously struggles. I think he may be one of those, get a lot of easy points when not pressured guys, but folds up under pressure when challenged. We keep talking about our culture of playing hard, and scraping for every inch on the basketball court. Then we get Kevin Martin and his inflated shooting percentage, and slowly but surely that scrappiness dissappears. Every other player on that team has been part of the group that played hard every single night..... Is it possible that one guy, can change the dynamic of the team that much? I am not sure, but so far Kevin Martin is looking like Fools Gold to me. DD
yup...full defense mode on, maybe if he posts enough it won't happen. hey at least Brooks has defense for once....
Not at all, I have been thinking about it for a while, how this team has lost it's identity of being a fighter. Even when we struggled all of last year they fought, even when anyone went down they still fought on the court. This year there is a severe lack of fight.....and the only guy that is new to all of this for the most part is Kevin Martin, and well, I guess Brad Miller.... The rest of the Rockets are used to playing hard, yes they have deficiencies in their games but they scrapped. But if you have 1 or 2 guys that don't scrap, or don't commit, it will screw the entire team's attitude up. I think their attitude has killed the mojo. Watch Martin tonight when he is on defense, he won't even foul a guy if he gets by, he just gives up and heads the other way. Martin plays 33 minutes a game and only averages 2 fouls, all while guarding the other team's SG.....and some of his fouls are offensive ones.....he is just not trying out there on D. DD
I don't think so, but if he is one of your top two players and the rest of the team is not know to play defense then you are in big trouble.
Martin is just like AB, they need defensive players around them to hide their defensive limitations or unwillingness. On offense, it simple, they need to score because they don't do anything else particularly well.
That's more the point - you can't hide a bad defender with a roster of poor defenders. The roster's unbalanced and flawed, I'm certain Morey had no intention of going into the season with this crew, but he couldn't connect on the home run trade that he had banked on. No Bosh No Paul No Anthony He's an aggressive guy, but we went past critical mass. Time to flush and start over.
Kevin played 24 game for us last year and there was no mention of "Fools gold" then. The difference is you have a declining battier who as of now is not better or equal to Trevor, Aaron is injured, Lowry hasn't been 100% since the begining of the season and our bench is struggling. It's not like we're getting blown out. We've been in every game except OKC if that's not playing hard then we have different definitions of the word. Funny how even with Tracy (Slacker supreme!) no one questioned this teams identity but with kevin he is the reason we're not scrappy.
DD, what you're seeing is what I've seen the last few years watching martin. Someone made a thread about him cherry picking and thats really true. Guards are responsible for free throw line extended and he's already up the court before the rebound is secured. Also, he does have a problem with athletes defending him. Sure he's effecient early in the game and if you go back and watch him in sacramento, there were alot of one sided games when the opponets would give him hoops and foul him. Also, when you bring a caddy to rally race,what do you expect. I could point out the ariza effect,but i bring that up later.:grin:
Ironically only CP3 is a decent defender from those that you listed. I don't think you start over yet, and flush everyone. I think you wait to see how they play throuhg December, and that you tell the guys...if you are not going to play hard on defense you are simply not going to play. Even though some of our players have struggled on D this year, Lowry, Battier, Brooks etc...they are all at least TRYING to defend. Right now, I have seen almost zero effort from Martin and in some cases Miller, who doesn't try to block a shot, he just grabs a guy....it is flat out lazy. You know, Morey listened to Adelman in acquiring those 2, so he is just as culpable as Morey....but their effort or lack of it has killed this team's identity of being scrappy and working hard. DD
Yeah, but last year he was injured a lot, and the team was only 12-12 with him, IIRC. Now you add in Miller and the effort is just not there. Trevor was certainly a better defender, but Shane covers his role well enough.....it may be time for the coach to bench guys that are only playing one side of the ball, or give significantly more time to players like Lee.....who will play hard on both ends. DD
I don't really like him as the Rockets starting shooting guard. He can definitely shoot and score but he is soft in his game and plays no defense. He also seems to be soft in his mental aspect of the game as far as competitiveness is concerned. In addition to that, he really seems like a classic example of a stat padder to me and it seems like he does not show up in the crunch time. I think he would be better as a 6th man off the bench. As a starting shooting guard I believe he is indeed fool's gold.
Group, let's table the lies and distortions in the rest of this post, and focus on the fact that DD's hard-on for Aaron Brooks is so ridiculously throbbing that at this point, he puts Aaron Brooks in the same defensive cohort as Shane Battier and Kyle Lowry - rather than with Martin & Miller. Hahahhaha
It doesnt matter what we think. Rick Adleman had a meeting with HILL, Budinger, AND lee, they will play more minutes. Doesnt this look like a tank job in the making. Looks like they are going to blow up the team. BATTIER, jEFFERIES, mILLER. Looks like Morey is fixing to clean house. Starting with AB.
Remember the stretch last season when he and Brooks are scoring 30 a piece? In the past when I have seen him play I was impressed with his ability to pile up points, BUT like every player he needs the RIGHT complement of players around him. Since you have played the game, you know how some combos of players bring out the best in your game and how others don't. Winning is not just about talent on the floor (cue the Heat) but chemistry between players.
Wow I dont usually agree with DD but this one is spot ON. People say McGrady played like he didnt care? I think Martin is 10x worse. I feel the exact way you do. It seems like he doesnt give a damn on defense and whenever we need things to happen in the 4th he folds like an oragami chicken. On offense he looks to draw fouls too much. When he drives to the rim he should just look to finish and not worry about drawing contact sometimes. This team has no fight in them. But you can definitely blame Morey for trade and heart and soul of this team away. If there was was a chance to trade Martin, I would do it in a heartbeat. BUT I think Martin would actaully be a better player if he had a play maker like Iggy at the 3 spot instead of Battier. Still though, his defense is horrendous.
I agree with that and Kevin certainly needs AB to help alleviate some of the pressures on the offensive side of the ball. But I am talking about defense here, and you are also right about chemistry.... But to me, it seems that our intensity on defense is just gone.....and it doesn't matter who was starting at the other guard position, be it Lowry or Brooks.....the only consistent is at SG..... One would have thought that with Kyle replacing Aaron we would have better defense, but that has not been the case.....why? We know Kyle is a better defender than Aaron, why can't he make a big defensive impact? Could it be that his running mate is still leaving the barn door open and because of that it screws everyone on the court because they are trying to rotate to cover it up? Has a team with Kevin Martin in a lead or near lead role ever done anything? Let's watch tonight to see how he plays, pay particular attention to the defensive side of the ball... DD
Maybe but both are still overall horrible defenders. I don't buy the AB plays well against elite PGuards argument, the numbers say something different.
