ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Clippers 11/24/2003

ttboy, you're singling out one quarter out of the four. The only reason why the Clippers were even close were because of the turnovers by the Rox and the amount of freethrows they got to take.

 

The 3rd quater was a bad one.

But I expected the Clippers to make their "run." I wanted to see how the Rockets reacted to their "run."

The 4th quarter answered that question.

 

No Sam, those stats were achieved against the lousy Clippers, not against the Spurs/Mavs/Kings/Lakers. I asked you if you actually believe that OUR PLAY TONIGHT would have beaten those teams.

 

We are SUPPOSED to beat the Clippers.

Last year we lost to bad teams as much as we lost to good teams.

 

Hitting open shots beats lots of teams. That's what they did.

THe only thing I would change about tonight was some boneheaded plays in the third and the awful foul situation.

We can't have Yao and Francis on the bench in foul trouble in the 4th period vs. LA, that's a recipe for disaster!

 

I thought the Rockets did a better job of getting Yao the ball early tonight. He wasn't open too much in the 2nd half and then he committed some pretty stupid fouls, along with poor rebounding instincts. Yao is weak in that area. He isn't boxing out anybody, they go right around him and get the boards. And he committed a lot of silly fouls, some were phantom fouls, but he did not play very consistently the 2nd half. However, I would have liked to see them go to him a little more often. One thing Yao does well is make good decisions with the basketball. When he got the ball with the double, it went right back outside for the swing around 3 pointer. Yao had his chances. The foul trouble took him out of the offensive flow tonight.

Maurice has got to keep playing that high post game. Whether it is Yao or Cat posting up, with Mo sitting inside the circle, feeding them the ball and then waiting for the double and the wide open 17 footer, that is Mo's game. He was dead on tonight, not down on the low block trying to make something happen. He was facing up the basket and getting the shot that he can nail off the double team of the post player. Mo should only post up when he has the obvious mismatch with a smaller, weaker player or someone in foul trouble. Otherwise he should be at the high post.

Cat looked great in the fourth quarter, playing the mismatch. I sure wished he would get more minutes with the 2nd unit. Did anyone else notice that Cat actually made 2 or 3 entry passes to Yao tonight in the 1st quarter? I about fell out my chair. It actually looked to me like Cat was playing more of the point position in the 1st quarter and Steve playing off the ball a little. Did anybody else notice that? It seemed to work, although how can you really tell? We were playing the Clippers.

All this fouling, I hope that isn't JVG's hallmark. The game gets really boring when there are 6 minutes left in the quarter and the other team is already in the bonus. All they do is run over somebody, draw the foul, and go to the line. Makes the game difficult to watch.

Cato looks like diminishing returns at this point. Didn't seem to be a big factor on either end of the floor tonight. I get the impression that other teams have scouted out the Rockets and have determined that they can get the midrange jumper over Cato, because he won't come out and guard the outside. And when he does come out, he is a sitting duck for the pump fake and dribble drive.

I thought Steve did an excellent job tonight and Steve and Cat both did a lot better job of looking for Yao down low.

Yao has got to do a better job of rebound positioning.

I love Pike's 3 pt. shot.

 

Didn't watch the game tonight. Who had the assignment on Maggette?

 

My point is that the Yao-fans DO have a point; you can't just say everything's fine because we won the game. This game should've been a blowout where we cruised to victory in the 2nd half, but it wasn't. It's true that Yao started to get doubled in the 3rd quarter, but it's ALSO true that we didn't try to get him the ball often enough or hard enough. Watching the game I got the distinct sense that, because we had a 14-point lead, the other players began to get complacent about "force-feeding it to Yao" (as Stevie put it the other night). I could almost see thought-balloons above some heads, thinking, "OK, we got a big lead, now it's time to get mines." It was exactly this type of attitude, this complacency, this fast-and-loose play that led to boneheaded plays. The kind of play we had in the 3rd quarter will let bad teams back into games, it will give good teams momentum into the 4th quarter, and it will give championship teams an easy comeback win.

 

Jim Jackson, when he was in foul trouble it was Boki. I also remember Mobley guarding him in the second half.

But the guy who started out on him was Jackson.

 

man, am i glad that wang zhizhi is no longer on the clippers, otherwise we would have been destroyed.

 

They let the Clippers back in even without have Q.Richardson for most of the game. They could have lost this one if the Clippers took the lead.
Cato and Yao have trouble rotating out and the rebounding was poor. Not going to Yao in the 3rd quarter caused a lot of problems too.
I'm glad to see Mo and Mobley making a good comeback in the 2nd half after struggling in the 1st half. I think unless they provide an additional scoring punch and some solid defense Yao and Francis will be overwhelmed when they are not able to score.
When we have trouble scoring the defense also tends to get worse. Consistant defense and rebounding will make it easier to score as well in addition to slowing down the opposing teams.

 

Unless the NBA invented an 8 point shot sometime during the night, i don't see how the Clippers could have taken the lead at any time during the 2nd half...

 

Batman and the boy wonder, Robin.

it still amazes me how damn big he is.

 

What's he doing?

 

it's called teamwork

 

Just hope that the magic word would be in the mind of whole team, rather than any single player only.

 

If a leg doesn't belong to a girl, I would never allow it on my lap!

 

geez...I never knew Cato needed help tying his shoes

 

Who can give me a link to Clipper's BBs?

 

>>>>>>Right here<<<<<<<

It has multiple links to boards for every team.