alright, this is getting absurd. the "team" that lost to the Wolves last night was not the same "team" that rolled the last two games at home. are francis and mobley blind or dumb? i'm telling you, they have too much pride to give up the attention. it took yao 10 minutes into the game to even get one attempt. remember when cat was on fox sports this summer and said that he would rather have odom over yao? he probably still feels that way. and for francis, last night he said that he would take all those shots again that he did against the Wolves. he said he was open, and if he is open, he is going to shoot. last time i checked, the def. for open wasn't "crossover 10 times in front of your man and jack up a 20 footer." finally, i respect rudy for what he has meant to the organization and the city, but he needs to sack up and get on his guys and make a statement. if yao has his guy pinned five feet from the basket, throw him the damn ball. and for our offensive scheme, sometimes our spacing just sucks. if you dump the ball to yao and don't move, you are allowing your defender to guard two guys at once. give yao some room. and why the hell is eddie playing strong side with yao? so when yao gets doubled he can kick it out to a 6'11" guy to take a no arc, straight bullet 3? i think in the offseason, it would serve the rockets well to pick up a couple of sharp shooters. you have to punish teams for picking on yao.
I sadly agree. I think it is time for our "leaders" to take some accountability. Steve and Cat are the veterans of this team. If they cant handle this leadership role, we need to bring in someone who can. Simple as that... Imagine if we had a LEADER like Magic on the team. He would not put up with this cr@p. If a player took bad shots and killed our offense, he will get in the guys face and chew him out. He makes sure that everyone plays there roles. It is sad for me to say this but as another poster pointed out. It becomes real scary when our veterans are the root of our chemistry problems.
to me it looked like Yao was completely unable to have an offense run through him last night, which would make it difficult to duplicate the past two. Also having Collier come in for Yao is a joke, we need Cato back to give Yao some rest
It takes a great deal of energy to post up, to get position and you can't hold it forever. When you do this time after time and don't get the ball, it becomes very frustrating and eventually you give up and start looking for rebounds. Been there, done that. I know exactly how Ming feels. I will say it again, SEND OUR GUARDS TO A HIGH SCHOOL SUMMER BASKETBALL CAMP!!! I am mailing a case of DEPENDS to the Rockets to stop the dribbling! The ball corporations are angry because the Rocket guards have dribbled their logos and names off the balls.
Whereas the Rockets abandoned their inside game (primarily because of the defenses the T-Wolves mounted), Minnesota shot the ball really well in the second half. As with Dallas, it's hard to beat a any team when they just don't miss. The Rockets didn't contest their inside game and didn't adapt the offense to counter the Wolves' defense. We lost. It's one game. Let's beat Cleveland and Utah twice after the All-Star break to regain the lost ground.
What frustrates me about the rockets is their inability to go to Yao consisently. They give up on him too soon. If he misses his first shot, it seems like he won't get it untill the 2nd half. Of course, I'm exaggeratting, but U get my point. Also, when he kicks it out , they never give him a re-entry pass. One more thing I really hate about the Rockets is how many possesisons they have when only one Player touches the ball. Many times you'll see Francis or Mobely hogging the ball the whole possession then jack up the shot w/out a teamate even touching the ball. Granted, Steve can get hot, but I would think that demoralizes teammates who just stand around watching. In fact, it could have a domino effect. Other players may be more inclined to jack up stupid shots since they know they probably won't get it back.
I have to agree with Elliot on this one. Yao looked tired, and was outworked by Nesterovic last night. I never thought I would say this, but we need Cato back!!! The thing that aggrevated me about all of our perimeter players last night was the Defense. How many times did they not even try to cut someone off before they got in the lane??? Oh well, at least we get the Cavs tonight!!! I hope we play better perimeter D than we did last night though, or R.Davis and D. Wagner will have a a big night as well.
There are better ways to get Yao the ball than having him fighting his ass off for position. Someone please give him a simple pick so he can easily get into a good position to score w/o him working so hard for it. See what the Wolves did for Rasho in the first 10 mins into the game. They constantly send someone down to pick on Yao. As a result Rasho didn't have to work as hard as Yao to get easy baskets. After Rasho made those easy points, he feels confident shooting the ball everytime he gets touches the rest of the way. I still don't like the way Yao is being utilized. I don't like the Rockets dump it into Yao at the post and expect him to do Hakeem. He is not strong enough for that (yet). Yao is a great motion player. He is at his best when there are movements. I am dying to see the "motion offense" that Rudy was talking about during the preseason. Because when that finally happens Yao is going to be awesome.
I noticed that too. Yao would work hard to post up, and they would pass the ball to the weakside. I realize that's part of the plan sometimes, but they really had trouble getting the ball to him.
