ideas

cut down the turnovers, take the ball outta rons hands when he's doing his crazy ron act, and most importanly..PUT YOUR BODY ON A GUY WHEN THE SHOT GOES UP!!! i cant tell you how frustrated i was watching their guys just fly outta nowhere to the rim for the offensive board. gotta do better.also last nights game with all the threes made i think was more a fluke than the norm for those guys. do ya'll really think odom, ariza and walton will shoot 6-8 from 3 for the rest of the series? kobe shot 11-28 last night and ill take that every game. what i can do without is 2-8 from ron on 3's

 

Turn overs, Turn overs, Turn overs.
Cut the turn overs and we possibly even win this game.
Lakers had like 7 or so and the rockets had 17. That is not going to get the job done.

 

I agree. I thought of the same thing, to sit Yao more and play Chuck with the faster lineup, but knew alot of people would say I am crazy. Chuck is better defense off the pick and roll and can actually get back on "d" when the lakers try to run. He can keep up with Gasol, which Yao is a liability. I would play Yao more when Bynum is out there. Yao is not helping us if he is not getting shots, so in the first 4-5 min of the game and he hasn't touched the ball much I would put in Chuck and bring Yao back in when Bynum comes in.

Also before the series there were 2 things I said the Rockets needed to do to beat the Lakers. One was to box them out to keep them off the offencive boards (they are too tall and long to try and out-jump them), which we havn't done too well. The second was to not turn the ball over and if we do to get back on "d". Kobe and Pau are going to get their pts., but you allow the others to get involved when they start to run.

 

Yao has to not bring the ball down.
arron needs to gain confidence.
ron artest needs to go to the basket, hes a bull when he goes in. i just wish he could gets some foul calls.
scola needs to protect the ball and do the salsa on odom.
battier needs to keep on kobe but needs to score as well.
the bench has been great, imo.

 

start ron on kobe. ron should play physical against kobe and tire him out for the 4 quarter. then get batman on him to put a hand on his face.

 

hmm wear down kobe and battier picks up the drained kobe...
maybe that can work.

 

aside from the obvious (reduce turnovers and limit ron's dumb shots):

Yaos Minutes- don't necessarily reduce yao's total minutes, but put give him more frequent breaks. have him play 5 minutes at a time, and if he is in a rhythm, extend it, if not take him out. His best games are when he is in foul trouble, because he has more rest. We really need to make sure he has his energy when the going gets tough in the 4th.

Finding who's hot- Brooks was struggling, take him out. Wafer was struggling, try barry. Scola had a rough stretch, put in landry. Adelman sticks with struggling players too long in a game. Let them regroup mentally on the bench and give them another shot later.

stagnant offense Don't let ron run the point one thing. Another thing, if our offense has big problems with making something happen, throw in brent barry. Brent Barry is a great team player and has much playoff experience. Him having 0 minutes (when Wafter struggled at the begining, and no one else was getting our offense going) is a huge mistake.

Work through Yao/Scola our offense is at its best when we work through the low post. Simple as that.



As you can see almost all my adjustments are offensively. Defensively I haven't seen very many lapses, the reason why we are giving up a lot of points is the turnovers. Other than that we are playing very solid defense.

 

1. A zone defense would eliminate the Lakers' pick and rolls.
2. Less dribbling and more ball movement on offense
3. Play more under control on offense (Lowry, Wafer, Brooks, Artest) and reduce turnovers
4. Yao has to box out -- the Lakers are able to jump higher than him and just tip the ball back out to the key, keeping the ball alive. He's got to put his body on a man (Odom/Gasol/Bynum) when a shot goes up -- because he's not out-jumping anyone on the court who has not recently undergone microfracture surgery.

 

Invert the offense. Have Yao play the high post or high pick and roll just to pull out Gasol and give our guards a chance to penetrate. Also, post up Artest and Scola more since Lakers are going small. Yao needs to spread the floor and put most of his effort on defense and rebounding. Only post up Yao when there's little resistance.

 

Ya play bench more. It seems everytime they come in we start clicking. And oh man damn those TO's. If we didnt commit them it would have benefited us. Also I dont like when we dribble the shotclock down with one player. We have to keep moving the ball to get the best possible shot there is.

 

Rocks gotta rebound...I didn't look at the final rebounding count for each teams, but watching the game I saw way too many 2nd and 3rd opportunities for the lakers due to the no rebounding.

 

If we are going to win this series (which I am convinced we are going to lose), we have to

1. Run lineups out there that split up Scola and Yao as long as LA is benching Bynum and going with Pao at the 5 and Odom at the 4. We are trying to cross match Ron with Odom and that leaves Scola to cover Ariza. That isn't working. Then on the offensive end, they've got a defensive quickness advantage. We have to run Yao with Chuck and Scola with Landry on the 2nd unit. If LA goes back to Bynum/Pao at the 5 and 4, then we can go back to Yao and Scola and have the advantage on them.

2. We have to realize that the Sasha/Wafer matchup is not working out and go with Brooks at the 2 guard against Sasha. Sasha is quicker than Wafer. Wafer is having to force his shots and is ineffective. So, when Sasha is in the game, playing as the 2 guard, we need to counter by running Lowry at the 1 and Brooks at the 2. This gives us the quickness advantage.

3. The only time Wafer should be playing is if Kobe is off the floor. Wafer is a defensive liability. Wafer could play as the SF in the small lineup with Lowry and Brooks out there and probably do quite well if he wasn't having to defend Kobe. So if LA was playing Ariza at the 3 or anybody else besides Kobe and Odom, at the 3, then that is when Wafer should be playing.

4. We have to slow the game down and run pick and roll right at the rim. Brooks is not using the high pick and getting to the rim. Lowry is. Brooks is moving around and penetrating but he's screwing up the PnR, not using the screen, and therefore not getting the ball back to the picker (Yao/Scola). It is a fail. LA will give us all the pick and pop we want. We need to convert the Pop to roll and get to the rim, collect fouls and knock them back on their heels. That means Lowry should be playing bulk of the minutes at the point. He's got a better handle, and will slow the offense down and run it from the top. When Brooks is running the point, Artest becomes the defacto initiator too often.

Guess who has the best +/- for this series?

No, don't guess. I'll tell you. CHUCK FREAK'N HAYES

After 3 games, that should tell you something. What does Chuck have? He's got a strong body. But more than that, he's got quick, quick feet to get to the point and plant his body.

Our starters are getting slaughtered in this series in the +/- department. After 3 games, Yao has the WORST +/- on the whole team. What does that tell you? It tells you that LA is countering with quickness and negating Yao. But they've got enough quickness left after doubling and tripling Yao to recover and make the rest of our starters ineffective.

So, there has to be an adjustment made with the starters. The lineups have to be shaken up. That is why after game 1, I said that we should consider starting Chuck Hayes at the 5 for game 2 and let Yao come off the bench. And in game 2, sure enough LA countered with benching Bynum and starting Odom because their starters had gotten slaughtered in game 1. That small adjustment got Yao in foul trouble early and it was downhill the whole 1st quarter until we got Chuck and the reserves in there in the 2nd quarter and made up the deficit.

LA has made the lineup adjustment and the defensive adjustment to neutralize Yao. And we have not countered it. You have to counter it by giving Hayes around 20 minutes, skim those minutes away from Yao and Scola and give Chuck 20 minutes, playing alongside either Yao or Scola.

In the defensive halfcourt, we are actually doing an outstanding job on Kobe. It may not look like it statistically, but we are collapsing on him and forcing him to dish or shoot the J. Problem is the guy is so fresh all the time because he doesn't have to work hard enough at the other end, that his legs are there the whole game long and his J is working big time. And we are not quick enough defensively to recover after helping Shane out on him. If we were quicker defensively (minus one of either Scola or Yao and adding Hayes), then we could recover and close out better on their other shooter/slashers and force their FG% down.

Personally, I think at this point, I'd like to see Chuck start with Yao and bring Scola and Landry off the bench for some major offensive push from the 2nd unit. With Hayes starting, you can use Hayes to set more picks freeing up Brooks. Hayes is faster than even Scola. He's going to give you better defense. He can run pick and roll just fine and he will stay out of Yao's way offensively. Then substitute out Scola for Yao and Landry for Hayes and roll with Scola in the post against LA's bench. Scola can take everyone of LA's post players in the low post. But he needs spacing. When he is in the game, he should be the low post threat. You could put him at the 5 with Lowry, Brooks in the backcourt, Wafer at the 3, and Landry at the 4 and turn around the quickness factor against LA big time.

This series is all about controlling tempo. Offensively we have go to put LA in the popcorn machine and make them fly around rotating against us, make them work their a... off for 15 -18 seconds of the shot clock, take all the juice out of their legs. That is the best way to slow their offense down. And when we do this...............all of a sudden, Yao will become a huge factor again in this series. But as long as we are taking quick shots, and LA's defense is forcing us to play uptempo because we have 2 players out there who are not quick to the ball (Yao and Scola), LA is going to be able to keep forcing us out of our offense and into rushed shots, which in turns ignites their fast break.