Neither Fish Nor Fouls

I thought I'd get back to on court problems for a change lately, and with a tad less Xs and Os/stats than I have been including lately.

Do you guys remember that two headed animal from Dr. Doolittle's stable called Push Me Pull-Me? From certain perspective, it would seem that he should have been able to accomplish amazing things. Problem was, every time he'd get a few steps going in one direction, the other head would assert itself, arrest the momentum, and get going for a step or two in the other.

In many ways this mythical animal from a children's book would seem to be the perfect analogy for the current manifestation of the Houston Rockets. We are neither a center oriented team, nor are we a guard oriented team. We have established an overall team identity; that of a defense-first team. And that's great. But at the other end, we are dysfunctional, disorganized and disorderly. We try and do various things when the mood suits us, but we have yet to take the most important step: commit. Until we commit to what we are trying to do, as a team, we won't be able to do it. Instead we will still be like Push Me Pull-Me.

Instead I offer four reasons why, if you are going to be a center oriented inside out team, you need to commit to it, irrespective of immediate results.

1.The Ground Game

The center oriented game is somewhat equivalent to the grind-it-out mentality behind a running game in football. Both are battles with some immediate gains, but whose real advantages come over the long haul. In a runnung game you bang it out in the 1st and 2nd so you can run it out in the 3rd and 4th. You wear opposing defenses down, and when tired, players lose the ability to recover and rederict before they lose anything else. This favours the runner, as he is the initiator of direction, and from there can go where he wants.

In basketball this has a minor effect, but there are other, greater reasons. They're called fouls. Inside guys draw fouls...IF you use them consistently. Otherwise, if you let the opposition dictate on the interior, it's your guys who accumulate fouls. But more to the point, if you go to the inside game sporadically, it's like hamstringing yourself; you lose the war of attrition, or at least you let the enemy live to fight another battle. All the work inside dominators put in goes to waste when you only go to them in spurts. Their value is that when you go to them consistently, not only will they get higher percentage shots, but they will accumulate fouls against the opponent. Teams will have to sit their better players to save them for the 4th. Teams will lose players, good ones, to thier 6th. This is what teams with dominant centers do...but do the Rockets? When was the last time Duncan was sitting with 3 with 5 minutes to go in the 2nd?

And yet, as I showed last week, Yao draws as many fouls per shot attempt as the great Rocket centers of the past. So the potential is there. When we had Hakeem, etc., we became accustomed to seeing slews of opposing teams players in foul trouble, either sitting or playing less aggressively on defense as a result.It opens up so many opportunities. We have that, but we donlt follow through with it. Instead we are sometimes an inside team, some times a jump shooting team, and sometimes some weird indecisive combination, more by confusion than design. We'll always have something of a variety, to use Steve's amazing akills, but we need one direction to be clear as the path we are taking.

Commit to the ground game, and grind it out, and we'll reap the rewards. But it takes a commitment.


2. Clear and Real Roles

Any parents reading this will agree that it is rare for children to say that they like rules. They are equally reluctant to own up to enjoying discipline. But we all know that, to grow and develop their sense of identity they need both. It is similar with basketball players, and the biggest factor in all of this that the Rockets need is clear roles, whether they like them or not.

Remember how clear it was with Hakeem here? It was all so simple, Hakeem was the hub around which the other players revolved. If you had left it up to all the players as to what their roles were from opening day, we would never have gotten to that comfortable place. One of the few things Rudy was firm about was Hakeem was The Man. I don't know if any egos were ever hurt by that, but I do know that every one else found their jobs easier to understand, and eventually to perform. With this team, we have only one direction in which to go; to a center oriented inside out game. The sooner we commit, the sooner we learn ( often through error) all that we need to learn. You can see it on the floor in spurts; when the Rockets commit, really commit to the entry pass, we have a focus, an identity, if only briefly.

Remember when Hakeem was here...it wasn't " Are we going to get it into the post?" it was "How are we going to get it into the post?" There were lots of teams trying lots of shemes to prevent it back then too, but it never altered our focus. Ok, maybe there are a few more wrinkles now, but we simply don't have the focus. Once we get that...once we, as a team, concede that our road to progress lies through the middle, and start finding ways to get us there rather than oft times looking for reasons why it's not convenient right now, the sooner we're taking all of our steps in the right direction, even if those steps are clumsy and even faltering at times in the beginning. Better that than two steps forward, two steps back. It's a mindset we need, a conviction. It won't come in spurts.

3.R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Inside out is a simple game. Ball goes in. If doubled, ball comes out to open shooters, or at most rotates to open shooter, who can take the outside J, move in for a mid ranger, or drive against the rotating defense towards the rim. It's all predicated on the first stage, and more, on the opposition fearing and knowing the first stage. If opposing teams feel that by aggressivley fronting Yao early or at key moments than can intimidate ( or fascilitate) our players into abandoning the entry pass, they've accomplished what they wanted to, and left us as a team looking for something to do with the ball. This is why we often look half hazard, because while being technically on the offensive side of the court, the opposition has gotten us to play defensively.

In addition, if we commit to going inside with regularity, Yao will automatically get more respect from the refs. It works the same for team concepts as it does for individual players; if you do it all the time, refs adjust. We re-post yao, we re-set him. Our shooters learn where to be, Yao learns where they will be, everyone gets comfortable in their roles. There are times when we do this, so we know we can. Tonight there was an example: Nesterovic had Yao fronted, we passed out of the corner to the top of the key, Yao moved up and cut back behind Nesto, got the position we wanted, the ball went to the corner, into Yao, easy 2. Often it'll be plus 1. THAT's what commiting to the entry gets you. And if you do that regularly, you do to the defense exactly what they have been doing to us; you break their design, and force them to scramble to catch up.



Forget about the physical problems this team is having for a second and think about how many evils can be cured by tackling this simple mental step. It's about commiting to one way and going with it rather than muddling around in the middle. Right now we are neither fish nor fowl, we are going in two directions at once, we are a team with two heads, like Dr. Doolittle's mythical beast. And as Napoleon said; " better one bad general than two good ones." If you want to get anywhere, you've got to be going there. If, as a team, you want to go forward, you've all got to be walking in the same direction. If we commit, if we get that mindset down, and players adopt and accept their roles, we're halfway there.



Peace

JAG

 

But did you read it? Do you have any comments on the content?

 

My point is in part that A) The team will never truly 'learn' how to be a post oriented team until we commit to it; it's not something you can half-do, and B) Yao himself will never really be 'ready' until we try him and let him learn by doing. There's not a lot of book-learning that goes into being the center of an offense, it's only experience that will benefit him. It will probably lead to some short-term failures, but if he is our future, and I feel he is, there's no other way to get us there. QB's are often slowly eased in because of the equivalent of book-learning; reading defense, knowing the offense, etc. It's very linear. Basketball is much more phlegmatic, and can't be taught the same way.

 

Aside from the fact that it takes away from the foul attrition, I have tried coming up with various methods of combining Yao and Francis as focal points in the attack, but to do so means to leave it up to the players to read sistuations and react with the best plan. I am honestly not certain anymore that Fracnsi posseses the requisite ability/willingness to make those kinds of reads.

 

Originally posted by tothomas

Absolutely...but that doesn't make it any less viable. There are other teams, Lakers, San Antonio, Indiana, etc. whose offenses are based on feeding the post. It means you might face more wrinkles, but the foundation...the commitment...has to be there.

A bit of a misconception, IMO. Yeah, it's harder now...but there were times, particularly during the early playoff series, when teams made all kinds of concerted and often effective efforts to deny Hakeem the ball. It was only after it became apparent that we were going to do it no matter what that teams backed off. I hate to use a childish cliche ( quota is up) but where there's a will there's a way. It's not Rocket science, it's feeding the post. We saw in yesterdays's game alone two different means of countering efforts to deny, but they are predicated on commitment.

 

Bingo! What was the thread?