I have seen tonight what I have longed to see since the days of Mad Max. Not just guts, moxie, bravado or insanity. I see respect... From the opponent... From the refs... team wide. Because of Artest's presence, I see sincere respect being given to every one of the Rockets on the floor. I see Yao, in what once would have been a ticky-tack foul, get the no call. I see people scrambling in their mind to keep an eye on Artest, and allowing Brooks to motor to the hole. I see that when the opponent adjusts to Yao, or T-Mac, or another option, Artest burns them from some other spot on the floor. The season is young... but I see RESPECT for our complete team early on. Barring injury and a lack of further jelling... I see a great season ahead. MUCH RESPECT Houston, we have it again (and we're not even full strength yet).
I see true leadership that the Rockets have not had since the 90s. Ron running to pull Yao out of trouble showed leadership. The emotion and willingness to guard everybody on the other team. We haven't seen this for awhile. Ron is the leader as far I'm concerned, vocal, on the floor, off the floor, on Clutchfans..etc
Yes and it's about time...but I can't wait until everyone's healthy cause we're gonna have one BEASTY team.
Yea, Yao and Tmac are kind of relaxed in terms of leadership, so we've had to rely on Battier, Alston and Deke. But now you have Artest, Alston, Barry and Battier as floor leaders.
One moment that Landry should have stepped in and taken a charge.... Battier would've... when everyone is back, it'll be even easier to stop a team's momentum. tinman, I agree... the LEADERSHIP is back!
Watching Artest and Hayes switch defensively made me think I was seeing Otis and Mario Elie out there. You just have to love the make up of this team. And what more can be said about Aaron Brooks? Wow.
I wonder if Reggie Miller's seeming beef with the Rockets goes back to when Barkley chose us over his Pacers back in the day. Reggie sure is annoying but those announcers love Artest on this team. Or at least the man himself.
The one thing I was worried about going in to this game was matching up with a Howard, Nowitzki, Stackhouse type lineup. Obviously at full strength that would be covered in no particular order by (ideally) McGrady, Battier, and Artest. Nowitzki got his tonight because he had his way with Luis, Carl, and to a lesser extent, Chuck. Now I don't mean to sell Chuck short, because he's great defending the post and did so down the stretch tonight. Where the height really hurts him is face ups, and luckily Dirk didn't exploit him on that tonight. I just can't wait to get Shane back.
the leadership is there. yao is a relentless worker and now he has ron to back him up. i loved seeing ron get everyone in a huddle to tell them what to do defensively and then yelling at landry to join them when landry was upset about a call. stuff like that will only bring the team together. No one gets inside the head of artest...Artest gets in their head
The rockets looked good tonight. Really good. We still have a 75% tmac and no Battier. This team is legit. Drop Francis and sign Mutumbo and we match up with anybody.
I love Ron. He gets me absolutely fired up. He's always there for his teammates, and he gives 100%. I love this triple-threat.
That was frigging fantastic. Like stuffing a pillow over the Mavs' face and watching them flail till they were dead. I can hardly imagine what it's gonna be like to have Battier in the suffocation rotation with those guys.
