Did any of you guys notice that Nate played Batum for only 5 mins? And than Rudy eventually took his starting position at half-time? I think that's a no-no for us. Batum really hasn't done much threat to us in this series, except maybe shoot a couple open 3s, and make only half of them. However, Rudy runs around so much, forcing our guys to chase him and than he pops out and shoots a 3, and make about 80% of them. Also, the alley-oops, well we haven't seen one to Rudy yet but there might be some when Rudy make our guys tire from running. What do you think? Would you rather have Batum playing more or Rudy playing more?
Rudy is WAY better than Batum, but Batum is a better defender, Nate has realized that neither Artest or Battier needs to be guarded by Batum.....so they can play Rudy more. Dang it...smart move by Nate. DD
Yeah, they even asked him that in the press conference, they asked him "Are you going to consider even starting Rudy next game?" "umm, i'll see, we are going to talk about it, it's definately something we can consider" Crap, they play Rudy, we have no Wafer -_-
I read Fernandez will be inserted into the starting lineup for Game 6. Given the boost he's been giving Portland, it makes sense. I think it makes Battier's job a lot tougher as he has to chase him around all game. But that also means Roy will be guarding Artest, which may be to our advantage.
Whomever Rudy tries to gaurd should post up...Battier OR Artest....my guess is they have Rudy try to cover Battier. DD
Yeah I heard Batum actually played only 3mins that game. When I seen how early Rudy was sub in for him I knew we might have a problem there. Batum didn't do **** and it was good when he was on the floor for US but now that might not be the case. I say we counter their move with a move of our own by starting Von Wa... Nevermind We still have James White!!!!
This could be very good for us. Our problem in all but game 2 has been our scoring. Our D has been pretty good and I think Fernandez will be a lot less effective with more minutes. He's also not a very good defender. This frees up Battier on the perimeter and allows artest to bully either him or Roy to the basket.
Make Fernandez work on defense, its that simple. Battier or Artest should have no problems posting him up. Lets see how long he can run off those screens after being abused in the post.
Rudy is a threat but he is also a liability. He scares pretty easily into taking jump shots. Sadly he has hit most of them but him taking more minutes mean he will hopefully tire easily. And if he is paired against a player that can play smart basketball, he can driven into making mistakes, just as easily as Batum was in the first couple of games. The only real problems it brings, is that we will not be able to easily have Shane and Ron be able to tag team Roy and Shane may get tired much earlier in the game due to running after him. Still, its our home court, so those lucky enough to get tickets should be extra loud to keep them off their game.
I don't see Rudy as a liability at all for Portland. That guy can flat out play ball and very athletic. He's very confident in his abilities as noticed by the strut he plays with and he seems to have absolutely no fear of the Rockets. I actually think he is their 2nd best player after Roy.
