Sadly, against certain teams, Yao is indeed a liability. And some of those certain teams are playoff teams. I've seen this performance before from Yao, so give the it's just one night excuse a rest. We actually need to play small in the 4th qtr of a tight game. Put Scola and Landry together.
amongst the few hundred games yao has played in the nba, how many more can give as examples that were as bad as tonight, even include his rookie season? scola and landry together tonight in the 4th? landry had 2pts (?) and 4 or 5 fouls. our issue is the lack of height when yao sits (hence the lack of interior presence). small ball? we're no 02-07 phoenix, nor the warriors in the past few years.
Foul problem aside, going small and quick has advantages. Like not getting pwned by the rim repeatedly, getting the tough rebounds and loose balls, and be quicker and mobile on defense. Cheap shots against Yao? Yeah, and I really don't give an eff if it is. Call a spade a spade and move on. I certainly don't have a statistical breakdown of the lousy games Yao has played, but my memory says he's played enough of them to not shrug this off and say it's a fluke. Or he'll have a good statistical game but become a liability down the stretch in a tight 4th. I still have memories from that NO game where it was a close game and on a pick and roll Chris Paul got Yao isolated guarding him up high and CP3 just ran circles around him en route to an easy layup, NO won. Was Yao entirely at fault on that one? No, but it just magnified the weaknessess of Yao. Yao can have big nights against crappy teams and teams with lumbering slow bigs. He passes that test. What about big games against playoff type teams that are agile and have good shooting big men? Hakeem would have been all over this type of hyped statement game. Yao, not so much. And a preemptive I don't give an eff to the ones who feel the need to nitpick my post. I needed to vent, I'm not looking to play the rebuttal game with people who are in denial.
i would also like to add that artest is shooting horribly this season so far. he has got to step it up.
he's our best 3 point shooter so far, and he doesn't miss layups. Also his effort on the defensive end has been consistent. He's guarding everyone.
he had a bad game, he knows it, hopefully it'll motivate him to play better from now on. it's time to move on people... next up...
I like how everyone is over reacting over ONE DAMN GAME. Besides, tonight's game is fishy and most likely fixed. Boston was underdog +150, Houston was favorite -175. For those of you fools that doesn't know how to gamble, it means bet every $100 to win every $150 on Boston, and bet every $175 to win every $100 on Houston. I have friends that are bookies, and they said A LOT of people betted on Houston to win tonight. That's why Houston lost. If Houston won, Las Vegas will be broke by now. Tonight's game was fixed. If you people don't believe it, you're being naive.
i understand all of this, i just want him to be tougher in the inside... i would personally have him shooting better around the basket than behind the three. going 0-10 inside the arc, and 3-10 from the three isnt steller by any means. i love artest, i would love him more if he was shooting better
im being hard on him. i know he will get used to our team, and once he does we will definitely be a force.
some of you are just plain ignorant. No doubt Yao didn't show up tonite, but is the lost of this game cost by Yao alone? Watching Yao's past few games, one can clearly see that he has lost his eleviation due to the foot injury. He can no longer jump. I am hoping that this is just temp effect as I don't think he is 100% back yet. The team as a hole is still not playing well, we were doing doing when we created two teams, Artest leading team vs Yao/Tmac team. We need to find cingery with all 3 of them on the court. Alston, don't get me started on him. Brooks has stolen his job as far as I concern. Which doesn't mean brooks as reached a point where he can carry this team, but just by the lack of depth in pg and that alston has sucks big time. I still think the RA made some bad rotation change error by inserting alston in when we needed O than D. (alston didn't even get to touch the ball, so arguement for him to make passes has neglected).
Not looking at his rookie season Jan 5 2004 @DET 4 pts 5 rebs Jan 11 2004 BOS 6 pts 9 rebs Jan 31 2004 NJN 9 pts 6 rebs Feb 7 2004 @ATL 7 pts 9 rebs April 1 2004 @LAL 6 pts 8 rebs Nov 5 2004 @MEM 8 pts 4 rebs Nov 15 2004 @NJN 6 pts 2 rebs Nov 26 2004 @Utah 9 pts 4 rebs Nov 27 2004 DEN 8 pts 6 rebs Jan 13 2005 NJN 6 pts 9 rebs Jan 17 2005 @MEM 8 pts 5 rebs Nov 23 2005 PHO 8 pts 8 rebs Dec 11 2005 @POR 9 pts 5 rebs Feb 16 2006 @PHO 6 pts 0 rebs Thats all of them outside his rookie year, games he played single digit minutes, or playoff games. Looking at his game logs, he seems to usually get into double digit scoring almost every game, but he has way way too many single digit rebounding games. I will say though that the biggest thing that stuck out at me is the amount of turnovers he accumulates. Yao is a turnover machine. That makes his play very inefficient.
