First off, thanks to everyone who helped post the Yao dunks in the game thread. I feel one particular video deserves a thread of it's own. If you haven't seen it, go to the game thread and get the 2nd Yao dunk. It was a good dunk, but the way we got Yao the ball brought tears to my eye. I'm not even kidding. Let's break it down. 1st attempt: JJ has the ball at far corner, couldn't get it in cuz yao's fronted. Swings the ball to Howard at top of the key. 2nd attempt: Howard couldn't get it to Yao cuz of the garnett double. Howard passes to Lue beyond the 3pt line. 3rd attempt: The KG double is still there, Lue quickly swings to Bowen in the near corner. 4th attempt: KG double is still there, can't get it to Yao. I love this part, Bowen fakes a drive to right, KG backs off of Yao leaving yao single covered. 5th attempt: Bowen calmly turns around and drops a perfect pass to Yao, who scores easily. All five players have one mission on that play: get the ball to Yao All four players did nothing but look at Yao. When the pass is not there, the ball swung to the next person quickly. The ball moved all the way around the half circle. Bowen's nifty little false drive finally got Yao open to receive. Result, easy 2 points. This would not have happend last year. P.s. pay special attention to Kandi and KG. They worked really really hard trying to deny Yao the ball. I love this video.
that was a very nice play and a good job in getting it to yao. had to watch it a few times to see everything going on. At a few points yao was being covered by kandi (or johnson, dont remember) and kg while having two other players within a step or two away and one eye on him ready to collapse. Despite all this, he still got the ball. I didn't watch the game, but the better we get at beating the defense, the better we will do (duh). In our other games I saw we definetly had a problem when yao was being double teamed or fronted.
Also when Yao's trying to go across the lane, there's two guys impeding his progress. KG with his hand holding Yao back, and Kandi with a forearm. With the new rules, if that was on the perimeter, it would have been a foul. But apparently anything goes on the block. One set of rules for the outside and another set of rules for the inside. Just wonderful.
just in case there are ppl too lazy to go find it.... http://www.emc2schools.com/yao111104-2.avi this is a great example of what kind of things can be done to get Yao the ball.....but Yao needs to realize that in order for us to be contenders...he must show the kind of desire to score that he shows here... When the team works so hard to get him the ball...he needs to do his best to put it in rather than passing back out...the quick move to the hole....the quick spin around...dont take your time shooting Yao...you get the ball....shoot it quick. There are many things to feel good about with this team.... this is just the beginning of what can be.... and it FEELS GOOD.
Thanks for posting the video link here. Yes, it feels GOOD. I felt we had won the game. It's strange, we lose and we feel pretty good about it. Last year, sometimes when we win, many people like myself still feel bad. I like living in present.
I love this video too. If you notice the Rockets bench, you can see that TMac is the first one in the arena to jump out of his seat and cheer. He is in the dark brown suit, one guy over from Ewing in his gray suit and in between a group of three Rocket players.
totally I just saw the clips r2k provided but even seeing those I am thinking man, We're without our best player, playing against a western conference, if not finals favorite in minnesota and here we are in it till the very end. Were it not for a really bad call who knows where that game could have ended. We do have a tough schedule coming up with a majority of the games on the road, but my god the Les was absolutely correct when he said the good times are gonna start rolling again now in houston.