Yes, I miss the good old days of when Dream was tearing teams up and we were winning championships. I don't really miss watching a mediocre team commit silly turnovers, play no defense, take ill-advised shots, dribble the shot clock out, and have a couple alley-oops a game. I wouldn't really call those the "good old days."
Hmm... we suck, yet without TMac for the 4th and at probably 50-60% the rest of the game, we were still tied/close to the Pistons - an undefeated championship contender. We suck, yet we played the Spurs to within 6. Another championship contender and one of the 2 or 3 best teams in the league. And Wesley did not play a bad game last night at all. Yao is well, still Yao and I don't know when the ref's calls, his nuts, and the Rockets' offense are all going to line up. Y'all want Swift and Head in the starting lineup? Swift looks like he's still learning how to play basketball out there. Please keep JHo in the lineup until Swift learns how to play basketball and where he's supposed to be. Just because he gets highlight reel dunks and swats about 2 times a game doesn't mean he deserves to start. For every good play he has, he has 1 or 2 boneheaded ones every game. Luther Head I can kind of agree with, but this is the same Luther Head that with about 13 seconds left in the game and the Rockets down 6 forgot to foul. lol. I mean come on - get your Head in the game Luther. That being said, I'd like to see him get more minutes. I wasn't expecting much from Rafer other than being able to handle the ball and push it up-court. Some of you guys act like he was supposed to be the 2nd coming of Isiah Thomas or something. DA has been the one that's let me down the most. He, for all intents and purposes (or as someone once said "intensive purposes"), has been a bust. Just like I said last year, I'm waiting until December/January to see what these guys do and if they improve. The offense is giving them open shots and once again they're not hitting. They're all shooting bricks. A teamwide slump? I don't know, but I'm willing to wait. In the meantime, we may have played ugly basketball, but ugly basketball kept pace and nearly beat 2 of the best teams in the league recently.
Bravo to the above poster. we pushed the world champs to 6 on there court. we also pushed probaly most complete team in years to 8. not bad for a struggling team. this team will click, it's only a matter of time.
Doc makes some very good points above but I'm just not all that big on "moral" victories. A loss is a loss is a loss as far as I'm concerned. He's right in that we should get a better idea of where this team is heading by January but it may well have to happen without another major trade ala last year. In fact, I can see this team can going either way: they can continue to improve over last year or they even regress from last year. At this point in time, I just don't see them actually contending.
what more do you want me to say? this is his 5th year in the league. each year everyone talks about his upside and athletic ability. you'd think at some point by now, he would have figured out how to play the game. instead of rockets fans are stuck with the promise of potential and the realization they have a big pile of crap.
I gave up "contending," two weeks ago, "winning" last week, and now I am just working on avoiding the Western Conference cellar where the Rockets are now. You think 6-11 was bad, brace yourself.
I love the doom and gloom talk 9 games into the season. Remember everyone, they started off 6-11 last year and ended up winning 51 games. All that with a team that had less talent. No way Alston, Anderson, and Wesley keep shooting this bad all year, the law of averages tells you that. They'll bounce back, all shooters go through funks, it just looks reallly bad cuz they're all going through it at the same time. Patience, this team will turn it around.
You must want a classic moment. That's my only explanation for a statement so far off base. Stromile has been better than Howard thus far, and I guarantee you if he was given starters minutes like I think he should, he'd be averaging 15 and 10 every night. If you'd watch the games you'd notice he looks pretty good in spurts, its just hard to get in a groove when your minutes aren't consistant and your only in for a couple at a time. He's shown he can knock down a 15-18 foot jumper like Howard, he's blocking shots from the weak side, taking his man to the hole and dunking on him and getting to the line, he's rebounding well outside the late stretch last night, what more do you want him to do??? Again patience, he's learning a completly new system under a very strict, overbearing coach. It's going to take time for him to look great, but he's already playing very well.
I was a bull's fan when the rockets won the titles. But since 98 ive been a die hard rox fan. I use to hate to see the rox lose with Cat & SF, but I sill came home from school feaning for a rockets game. Nothing like ordering a large pizza on a cold night watching the rockets(well the excting ones). I miss calvin,SF,Cat, well basically my generation of the rockets. I just hope the Rox can get ther ish togther and bring me back to my rocket feind days(lol). Let Go Rox
Don't be fooled by the score. We absolutely failed in those games. We were lucky enough to comeback against the spurs because of some really tough shots by Tmac. Are we going to rely on that in May? Detriot looked tired and still outhustled and outplayed us down the stretch. Since the first night against the Kings we haven't had a single good quarter of execution. Forget the scoreboard, point out one stretch of time in the last two games where you could look at the Rockets and say "Yeah, we need to do more of that every game." You can't. The execution just isn't there. I live in L.A. and this reminds of Laker fans last year in January. They were .500 on the season and had some close games against top teams. Fans just expected the team to build more chemistry and start winning some of those close games. But they couldn't point out anything in the gameplan that the Lakers could build that chemistry on. It was just "I hope Atkins, Butler, and Odom can hit their threes!" Half true. The offense is making every shot Yao takes a heavily contested one. His defender is set and help ain't far behind. The offense is giving our guards open looks, but from at least 18 feet away and with his own man coming back. No matter who your guards are that is a crappy offense. This is much different from last year, where the offense ran a lot more through Tmac. Now we're back to isoball with Yao instead of Hakeem. Ouch. With the offense flowing through Tmac defenses had to react to us. Now it's the other way around. Want a breakdown of the rockets offense? Wait 8-10 seconds for Yao to establish position, dump it to him, watch him get doubled, get the ball back, and settle for a three with the shot clock winding down. If they don't double Yao he does a hook. That's it. The defense dictates what we do. If I'm missing anything let me know. If the guards are doing anything besides standing around on the perimeter I certainly haven't seen it. Yao's the only guy on the team that gets a shot within five feet of the basket. Where's the easy layups for the guards? Where's the ball movement? What exactly is promising about this offense?
I love JVG's defensive strategy, but offensively he's not very creative. You won't confuse him with Showtime. He's being his usual stubborn self, grinding games to a halt. It really shows his offensive inadequacies when T-Mac is not on the floor. We don't have anyting resembling an offense. The frustrating part is, this is what he was doing last year, slowing the game down. You added speed with Swift, Anderson, Head, Alston. I don't understand why he doesn't loosen the reigns and teach some offense. Play to to your new players' strengths and fastbreak everytime you can. It takes so much pressure of any offense when you score easy baskets. We are looking like the Spurs and Pistons offense before they introduced their fastbreak.
Damn, pistons just got blownout by 30+ in dallas. maybe the result from last night was'nt so impressive after all?
I don't know, but don't look now, Detroit fans are probably jumping the bandwagon if they're anything like our fans... OMG THEY SUCK!!!
