Don't shoot the messenger... http://butthegameison.com/blog/19202/are-the-rockets-now-an-offense-only-team/ 1. Carl wasn't the reason the Lakers struggled with us... Aaron was. 2. I think that they can overcome Martin's defensive short-comings through an increase in familiarity with the defensive system, plus if he doesn't play defense Coach Turner will get on him about it... I have no doubt. 3. You can't just choose to be an all offensive team - what happens when one of your two shooters has an off night... just not a wise way to play basketball. see Warriors, Golden State.
This sounds like an option. In this league you must play to your strengths. If we don't have the personnel to be a great defensive team anymore we need to find ways to make this offense elite. A Brooks/Martin backcourt will never be good defensively and I'm fine with that (not really) but they must be great offensively every night to overcome their porous defense.
Yeah, makes no sense, when does becoming "Golden State light" help you become a playoff team. You're right Hayes, lakers had a tough time with Brooks. What I saw was, when they put pressure on AB and trapped him as soon as He crossed halfcourt, they took the ball out of his hands. AB seemed to have a hard time adjusting to this. We were much more physical last year with Ron, Yao, Shane having a good year defensively and our full compliment of players. So health permitting next year, I believe our defense will be much improved. I like the way this team is being constructed and still contend it's being built for next year. Playoffs would be a bonus, but not a must when looking at the big picture.
I Agreee every team should play to their strengths. Ours is Speed and fast break and ball movement e.g cutting princeton offence. However you do need to be able to play some defence otherwise you are like the suns who never advance... to finals. Thats why ariza, battier and hayes are important in balancing with some defence, but they must be able to fit into the fast pace offence which they can. I think Jordan Hill is a big athletic power foward we can develope who can defend and finish at the rim.
I've never liked the idea of defense being an after thought. The game plan of just trying to pour points onto the board seems dumb considering we are not that talented. A lot of good role players and KevMart, who I certainly like, he's good.....but he ain't that good.
we gave up 133 to the jazz with neither of our top 3 defenders, battier, ariza, lowry... yet still scored 110, if we had those three, maybe even one or two of them that game would have been different.
The writer fails to mention that Ariza, Battier, and Lowry have all missed games since the arrival of Martin and others. Kevin Martin is certainly not a great defender by any indication, but the Rockets aren't playing with a full deck right now, and I'm not even referring to Yao. When they eventually are at full strength, weaker defenders like Aaron and Kevin will have their deficiencies masked (to some extent) by others. And I understand that Carl was a huge part of the attitude that the Rockets have built over the past couple of years, but to think that bulldogs like Aaron Brooks, Shane Battier, Kyle Lowry, Luis Scola, and Chuck Hayes are suddenly going to shrivel up and play like pansies because Landry moved on is ridiculous.
Very good writing, but both Martin and Brooks can get improvement at their defensive part. Both are young, just need learn to be better defensive players every day, they will get there.
we have Battier and Ariza to defend the major thing to have after getting back a healthy Yao is to bring a strong PF who can play both defense and offense so let's say Bosh! Brooks/Lowry Martin/Battier Ariza/Bud Bosh/Hayes Yao
If the whole point of the article is that we need to play faster, then it's kind of pointless. Because Adelman has obviously been doing it already. Pace factor is a stat which basically estimates how many possessions a team gets per game. Last year: 90.2(19th in the NBA) This year: 93.7(8th in the NBA) This year post-trade: 97(Which would be #3 in the NBA behind Indy and GSW if we extrapolated it to a whole season). No one likes to pick up the pace more than Adelman. His great Sacramento teams were always among the top at pace. He is one of the few coaches to be able to field a top offensive team AND a top defensive team while playing at a high pace. When Yao comes back, I fully expect the Yao+4 greyhound strategy that the Lakers used with Kareem.
In addition to not mentioning the absence of Lowry, Ariza and Battier against the Jazz, he also failed to mention that we essentially used a 6-man rotation the night before with Brooks playing nearly all 48 minutes and at least a couple other players logging 40+ minutes. And both teams played horrible defense, one team was just worse than the other. I understand that these guys are young, no excuses, etc... but they are also human. I played competitive sports my entire life. You feel it when you play back-to-backs in any athletically-demanding sport. Sure, the Jazz also played back-to-back games. But... they went much deeper into their bench the previous game and nobody played close to 40 minutes. They also played at home, one of the best homecourt advantages in basketball. Yea, Brooks and Martin suck, defensively. Maybe Lowry will be starting next season and Brooks will be gone. The bottom line is that as bad as those two players are on the defensive end, they looked worse than even their normally bad selves in that game. The whole team was awful, defensively. Every point that Deron or Matthews scored wasn't entirely on Brooks and Martin. Not only were they not in the game for all of their points, some of the baskets were the results of missed rotations and bad frontcourt defense. Remember, even great individual defenders look bad on a lot of nights. Remember Stephen Jackson on Battier a month or so ago? There are plenty of examples of players putting up monster games on Battier this season. Hayes gets schooled on occasion as do Lowry and Ariza. Just like it's not all on Brooks and Martin for that Jazz meltdown, it wasn't all on Battier against the Bobcats or against any other team where he looked bad. Team defense is a big factor and we haven't been a very good defensive team pretty much all season long with all kinds of combinations of players. Apparently, protecting the rim is more important than having 3 elite perimeter defenders and an all-around but undersized defensive stud like Chuck Hayes.
