He wants to go baseline, you can see he at least thinks about, and this contributes to the slowness. He is not determined with what to do. With Shaq, one quick drible, boom either a qucik dunk if he gets poistion or a one hand hook. Shaq is not automatic either, but he is determined and it's very difficult to gaurd him. Back to the base line spin move. The opponents are shutting it down, because they know if Yao goes there, put some move, it's all over. Not only they shut it down on Yao, they also shut it on give and go for our guards. The oppsing center will now always move laterally to close when he attemps to spin over. The only one who ignored it was Mourning, because he never played Yao before and he didnt know. Like Calvin Murphy said, Yao's middle sky hook is enough, one quick drible, a giant step, leap and hook. He can mix it by driblling a little more to get a better position if the D relax or too concerned with our shooters. Turns and shoot over is not bad move. What I dont want to see is tries to move baseline, finding out no where to go, back out, turns and shoots a fade away. Yao's not a good shooter under pressure.
a defensive scheme that works really well on Yao is to basically just front him, and then when yao pushes forward to try to clear room for a lob, then the defender just slips back behind. Yao does their work for them but moving farther away from the basket. This problem would be solved if the guards could throw a simple lob over the top. props to Cuttino for throwing a nice pass early in the game last night.
Lob pass is a way to go in that situation. The other thing is that swing the ball to middle quickly and feed it to Yao from there. The problem is that we are very reluctant to pass it from top of the key. It seems to me a desined play. Yao needs to do a better job to hold his groud, he cant let the person fronting him move at will around him.
Rasho played dirty D last night, period. Yao has learned how to deal with physical player, but he still doesn't know how to play a dirty defender. As for TD, his defense is just superior...Yao couldn't do much against him..
Simple. That was the ref's fault. How come Yao was not awarded even one foul shot when there were in fact numerous body contact. That phenomenon aggregated the body contacts when Yao shot the ball.
I think Rasho just plane out worked Yao last night. Yao did not look like he was too interested in the game plus he did not look like he was in the mood for fighting for position. Rasho was not only denying him position on the offensive end but he was not allowing Yao Ming to get rebounding position on the defensive end either. Yao Ming just had a very bad game....I hope.
I think someone is missing that Rasho is a hell of a defender. He's not phisical or super atheltic, but his defensive fundamentals are almost perfect.
Since when? He certainly can not be compared to David Robinson on the defensive end. Rasho flat out, out hustled Yao Ming the other night though and I will certainly give him that.
I didn't get a chance to see the game but the stat line for Yao is none too impressive, I trust that he couldn't solve the myth of Rasho again?
Yes, just like Steve Francis couldn't solve the myth of Tony Parker. Nestorovic isn't making $6 million per year because he's supposed to be a stiff.
I didn't see any great defense on Yao in either Spurs game other than with respect to denying him the ball. I though most of his shots were pretty good ones and he just plain missed. A lot of them were close misses though, rattles in and out.
I thought the same thing too. Yao's normal shooting motions weren't altered a tad with Rasho guarding him, he just missed them. Yao's been shooting HORRIBLE lately. He needs to practice an extra hour a day of shooting because our main offensive weapon shouldn't be missing 5-10 footer with that much regularity. If he keeps this up we might want to consider using him more as a screener to setup Mobley...he's the only one that been shooting worth a lick lately.
Stiffs shouldn't be getting $6 million a year unless the GM is a dummie. I'm not talking about CD here. Popavich is a good GM.
Rasho has held Shaq to 19-41 in three games, 114 minutes. That's about 6 FGs a game. He held Curry to 4-10 in a full game. He's held Yao to 7-22 in an average of 34 minute per game. Many of these guys points have actually come off Horry, Malik, or, like last night, Willis when they're in for Rasho. Rasho's nowhere near as athletic as DRob obviously but he's a very high IQ player and his positioning and anticipation make up for some of that quickness difference. His passing and mid-range shooting are better than DR's was. He's also working hard, getting stronger. Spurs are probably very happy with their acquisition and don't feel the center spot is a weakness.
Nestorovic did not play well at the beginning of the season, but his improved play as of late is a contributing factor to the Spurs winning streak. Popavich has rarely made a bad decision lately in the personnel department. Nestorovic's role is just to be big body who can guard the good centers in the league. He's asked to shoot the jumper and occasionally dunk.
