I agree. On top of all that, he doesn't have anyone helping him either. When the other team crashes the boards, you can only do so much by yourself. We need to box out as a team to get the rebounds. You cannot expect everything from one person.
He's just not consistent. Same with Morris, Patterson, greg smith and most of the roster... Someone needs to tell him it's ok to dunk on people. Seven foot human being aren't meant to do reverse lay ups.
Not only his rebounding has slipped a bit. His free throws has just been terrible in the last six games, making only 4 of 18. Something has been bothering him.
And costing us games when the opposing teams outrebounded us and we lost control of the paint when he was benched.
Jeremy's knee got hurt to the extent of needing a surgery to continue his NBA career. It didn't happen in just one game. It was the culmination of countless bounding and twisting that aggravated it. This is why I have been calling for better minute management by McHale, not for Jeremy who already had a injury and surgery record but for the other seemingly still healthy players. Asik's may be one case just surfacing. I think it's probably more mental than physical since I have yet to see a report about his fatigue, let alone sourness or anything on his legs and arms. But with one of the toughest schedule of the league, especially 12 road games on the road in January, I hope I can see our four starters playing less than 35 minutes per game if McHale can manage it with more new players like Anderson and Beverly in the rotations. You will never know if you can use them if you don't put them on the floor.
That's the thing about Asik and even Parsons. People on this board are brain-washed on thinking pigmentation means not as good or something to that affect but Parson's IQ and execution for what he is paid is better than anything availableiof you judge solely on skill and same goes for Asik. Full 84+ inches tall barefoot and has showed timing and poise to go along with monster stat games. He's worn out a bit because he's never played full starter minutes then on a back to back basis, so what. If you can get D-Mo playing like that versatile quick while being 7ft, I think the Rockets truly have something special with some good length advantage.
Currently our team stands at 4th in the league defensive rebounding. Harden, Lin, and Parsons are above average in their respective positions. Asik has been the #2 defensive rebounds leader in the league. Patterson and Morris as the power forwards need to improve. Smith's rebounding production will increase when he gets more minutes. But overall we have a quite balanced rebounding squad that fits in with our fast-paced game strategy. So we already have our rebounding talents, and the problem that we got out-rebounded from time to time was not our players but how they were used. I often saw mismatches under the glass when McHale wanted to play small but our opponents had slowed us down and got set in half-court. In transition, size matters less, speed matters more. But when the game got slowed down, size matters a lot. Somehow McHale has not been able to adjust fast enough like in the last two games.
Asik will get killed if he's there all the time. The real solution is McHale needs to bring some one up from the bench to sub Asik quick. DMo? Or just let Smith play more minutes?
The only thing about Asik lately that troubles me is his FT shooting... As I'm sure has been brought up by now, he used to be at least a passable FT shooter. Not lately. He's been epically, dangerously bad. Probably would have cost us more games had we not just had overwhelming amounts of offense from other places to blow teams out.
