We have every reason to enjoy this win, and I don't intend to spoil it at all. However, we can't expect easy wins to happen ahead of us. And one of my major concerns is still the problem of feeding Yao. With a 9/9 24 points Yao, he doesn't get any shooting chance for the first 4-5 minutes of 3rd quarter. Familiar? Think about last game against Maverics. There is no fronting, no double team, and the team (I put the majority of blames on our pg) just has the tendency to forget to feed the inside when they lead 10+. Fortunately we have a really hot outside shooting tonight to afford that. Actually the feeding to Yao is not good at Quarter 2. He got like once for the ball? And several points get from offense rebounding. I am not saying we should go through Yao everytime. But if the team doesn't change the habit of forgetting to feed inside when they lead, potentially there is big trouble.
when we start winning, our player tend to try and score for themselves (ron/ab) and look away from yao.
The palyers are not properly disciplined by the coach. At some time it will cost us games, like our last regular season game.
This team becomes complacent when they get a huge lead. They don't have killer instinct. (Although, Brooks had killer instinct today...) No matter what the score is the team should play at their best and stay true to their gameplan. And their gameplan, the plan that gets them the lead in the first place, is feed Yao often.
it was a blessing in disguise when Yao picked up his 4th foul. he was being useless on offense because of Portland's fronting. Dikembe gives us much better defense and rebounding. We can't rely on Yao every single time down otherwise we'll have only 4 players score in a game (sound familiar?)
I don't think that's what he really means. We're not going to benefit from awesome shooting every game. It was ridiculous to see Yao have post position and we go completely towards the other side. I don't care who scores either, but this is playoff basketball -- and if a guy is 100% from the field and has 16 or whatever in the first, you BETTER be looking to feed him the ball.
The important thing is the offense did not stagnate, and the we built on the lead. Portland put more focus on denying Yao, and the Rockets were able to exploit that by attacking on the other side. That's how the offense is to supposed to work.
That is too naive. I don't care about Yao's individual stats if Rockets can win. But the reality is you must have a system and you must have discipline to play the game. When your shooting is hot for one night, you can afford lack-of-discipline, but in the long term it will cost you the victory. Just refer to Mav loss that happened of late.
you know, since defenses switch up and make yao non existent in the second half, our game plan should be this: play Yao the entire first half while defenses are still single covering him. Build up a big lead (15+ pts) Bench Yao the entire second half since he will be unable to receive the ball. instead of having a useless big man on offense, put Dikembe in with his shot blocking and rebounding.
It is important that how well the team execute the game plan. You can't rely on high percentage shooting every night.
i dont recall many good shots when Yao was being fronted. luckily for us he was benched for mutombo and we built upon the lead.
Thank you Captain Obvious! In other similarly shocking news, water has been found to be wet, puppies are cute, and it is more comfortable to lie on a bed of pillows rather than a bed of rocks. Sorry for the sarcasm, but this only the 50th time this has been mentioned in the past week.
Yep. I thought it was odd we didn't try to go to Yao early in the 3rd, but we were still scoring. So who cares? I do wonder if that was kind of a weird Adelman wrinkle though, because you know the Blazers came out in the 3rd quarter with laser-focus on Yao and we just hit them from everywhere else.
------------------------------------------------- exactly, Yao doesnt hv to be that guy who scores, but if he is on the court we need to get the ball to him and hv our offense go through him, otherwise, why should we put him there?
Neither did I. Nor did I see Yao being denied by Portland on many occasions where we swung the ball. We're all happy with this win, and we definitely executed at the times when Yao was sucking in defenders (like that pass from Battier on the wing to Scola on the baseline), but we will NEVER shoot this well again. Our lead today was a great shooting night (and a lot of that is execution) + great defense. Our defense will be there, but at the times we cannot shoot well, we still have to execute.
But you do care about who shoots, don't you? because personally I'd rather take 12 Yao turnaround jumpers rather than 6 Artest/Brooks contested three pointers (I mean purely by shot selection, not making the basket).
Gotta keep on making the right play. If you need to go to Yao,do it,if you need to go away from him do it. Don't hesitate and start making and/or repeating mistakes or you will lose.
