people just need someone to blame......... i'm sure if the roles were reversed, yao misses 2 ft's and rafer launches a 20 footer down by 3........people would say "yao was just bad luck, it's not his fault, it's rafers for not realizing the situation" last 3 minutes of the 4th, the only points the rockets scored was a rafer floater, and a battier 3 off of a broken play where rafer found battier wide open (9 times out of 10 it would've been a turnover since landry wasnt paying attention and had it slapped away)
Yeah, but by that rationale, if you're going to look back at previous possessions, you could argue the only reason the rockets were even in it is because of Yao. Or Wafer. Or whoever happened to score on the previous possession. Therefore, if you don't want to blame Rafer for missing two critical FTs, you can't blame Yao either for the botched play.
we're talking free throws. no defenders, no clocks and everyone's standing still. hell, it's even a home game so minimal crowd noise. the whole team's to blame, but if you don't make your freebies during the last seconds, down by 2... i just don't know. and, he misses them both. i can't think of anything less "unclutch". that's less forgivable then what carl did. as for rafer keeping us in it with his floater, you can say the same about yao's first three quarters and waffer for most of the game. if you can fault yao's "unclutchness" for last quarter (perhaps rightfully so) i can certainly justify blaming rafer for his miss free throws in spite of his 59 seconds. this did happened to yao a while ago (i forget when), and he was blasted for not being clutch, including from me. only a few people let yao off the hook. i don't know why rafer should be immune. fwiw: i'm not going to lie, rafer is my least favorite rocket, but that's a story for the countless other rafer threads.
It looked to me like the Lakers made some good defensive changes in the final minutes of the game, and the Rockets were unable to adjust in time. I'll have to go back and watch it again to figure out what they were. For the Lakers, Kobe made some clutch shots and we couldn't keep up.
For all you guru out there. PLEASE! ROCKETS played a great game. They played underman without their two stars and still compete to the end. QUIT crying and looking for someone to blame. GOOD GOD! Before the game start I bet 110% person of you guru marked this game as a lost already because we're playing with 1 arm. No T-WACK and no ARTEST. You all really think we stand a chance against a team that went to the final last year? However, ROCKETS prove alot of us wrong. They do got the fight in them. They do compete with the best of them all. However, in the end they still have KOBE. Hate him or like him, he KOBE will not lose a close game at the last minute. True we could have sneak it out had CHOKE-FER didn't choke up the free throws. And that last in bound play. It's RA and AB fault. RA fault because with 7 seconds left and down by 3 you do not draw up a play to give the ball to a 7'6 center. You all watch the last few seconds again. As soon as AB gave the ball to Yao, the lakers immediately spread out and guard all of our perimeter players. They left Yao wide open and everyone of our players stand there as if they stuck in mud. What the heck u expect yao to do beside shoot? force feed the ball to someone and turnover? AB should had never get himself stuck in that corner, and pass the ball to your bigmen when you're down 3 with 7 seconds left. Run around, spread the floor, penetrate, and kickout. Again with all that said, it's not AB or RA fault we lost the game. We lost because we just dont have enuff fired power as the lakers. We could have sneak one out but we didn't because of those few last seconds mistake. However, the rockets gave me new hope from the game. They played together and played hard. Like lil-C said on radio yesterday. They're trading in star's power for consistency and hussle. Forget T-WACK until he get better. WAFER is a heck of a player. He wont have game like this every night but he sure will give you 110% of what he got.
I thought they just played harder defense. but they did make some adjustments on wafer, they double teamed him every time he touched in the fourth quarter or really tried to just prevent him from getting the ball
