What you described is how we beat Boston. We through a zone at them in the 4th Quarter. For some reason, we have not run a zone much since the trade. btw: man-to-man does not mean help defense doesn't exist.
Posey is our best man-to-man defender. That says a lot about our man-to-man defense. Personally, I think Cuttino's the best defender on the team. He doesn't challenge shots/drives very well, but he's efficient. He denies his opponent the ball as much as possible, he makes sure his opponent doesn't rest on defense, and he's also always alert. Posey is just NOT the defender he was made out to be. He's not as good as Bruce Bowen, Ron Artest, or anyone in that mold. I'd say even Shandon Anderson was a slightly better defender. Of course, he makes up for it by powering our fast break, grabbing rebounds, and constanly working hard.
I'll admit it. EG should not be a starter and should not be in there in crunch time. His defense is soft and his offense is inconsistent. It's is good that he is getting experience playing against top-notch competition, but he isn't mature enough physically or mentally to match up. I think, at this point in his NBA career he would learn better and perform better against the 2nd/3rd tier players in the league. I would much rather see Mo-T start and finish games alongside Yao.
Pimp....me too. However, Rudy is thinking who is going to be his scorer on the 2nd unit. No one ever told Rudy that you don't have to substitute the ENTIRE first unit at once....guess he still has some learning to do too. DD
Me & 4 of my college buddies will be in attendance (we went to Trinity in San Anton). I'll be sure to bring my heckling voice. ??? The 2nd unit always has either Mobley or Francis included. He doesn't substitute the ENTIRE first unit. And frankly, I don't mind seeing guys like Cato & MoT coming in for Yao & EG. Those guys could start on several NBA teams. Moochie too, for that matter.
I put in the Lakers 2000 championship DVD last night, and one of the first things I heard on it was Kobe saying that Phil said "It's not just how hard you play, but how smart you play." I think the Rockets play hard a lot of the time, but they are not smart at all as evidenced by Francis's turnover problems and Mobley horrible shot selection. Francis is a decent passer, but my problem with him is the amount of times he loses the ball when he dribbles. That should never happen, but he loses the ball frequently. Phil Jackson was able to straighten Kobe shot taking out, I bet he could do the same to Mobley. Too bad Rudy can't do it himself.
Exactly how did they quit playing smart? They moved the ball around and when the game was on the line they went to the player with the hot hand and also had the highest percentage shot with Yao Ming. It was obvious that Yao Ming was fighting exhaustion from the second quarter on and in the end he gave up two game changing turnovers. What lost this game for us was defense and the fact that NYC had guys like Shandon Anderson hitting three’s at the end of the game. Shandon was hitting three’s? How bazaar is that. Of course you are not mentioning that the Spurs also have the most dominant big man and league MVP in the game playing for their team. You fail to mention that they are a play-off harden team with an NBA championship that many of those players were apart of. I agree with most of what you say. Maybe they are not good enough to be consistent yet. But I think this team is developing a new identity from just a couple of months ago and I think it is obvious. You don’t see all of the isolation plays by the guards anymore. With the exception of the Boston game Francis has typically started trying to get the low post involved early and often, and I think overall we have seen a better offense over the last few weeks. If anything I think our defense has slipped a bit. I would have agreed with you a couple of months ago but it I don’t see the panic and confusion as much anymore and I did not see it last night. The Rockets new what they wanted to do and they did it until Yao Ming (who was looking unstoppable at the time) turned the ball over twice.
