Why YAO was so soft in April

JVG probably said it right, Yao analyze his game TOO much. he is not playing out his instinct now. He seems to be hesitant on court, that makes him a step slow on everything. When he is out of sync, he can be painful to watch.

stop thinking too much, and practice your jumpers, and lighten up on strength training for now.

 

It has definetly been a month to forget, in regards to Yao's performances.

SF finally gave me something to be REALLY excited about. What a game.

He has had A LOT of assists the last few games. Man, I am loving it.

Now we just need Yao to come back. We are going to be a scary game in the playoffs.

 

Not sure. He's getting postion most of the time. It's not like he's not working in the post.
It just seems like his shot is off. Tired legs?

 

as JJ said in houston local TV, rockets-nuggets game, yao was double teamed all through the first half and rox could not excute inside-outside game very well. but nuggets paid for their double team yao inside in the second half. I suppose JJ knows Yao's situation better than us.
as usual, ESPN w/ TNT won't skip any chances to pick up yao's mistakes, esp. he is not playing very well this month.

 

Yao also seemed to slump at the end of last season. Perhaps, he's fatigued since it's the end of the year. Whatever it is, we need him to play huge for the PLAYOFFS (god that felt great to type)@

 

Fatigue!

 

And now Yao seems to be emotionally not in the same page as the whole team in this playoff run... Although he doesn't show emotion extrovertly, it's clear he's not passionate enough and try hard enough to meet the team's level. Van Gundy demanded that Yao need to play hard not only in a few minutes out of the whole game... He responded in the Sac game but went back to the disinterested/disorganised self in the GSW game..

Look at this quote about the celebration to the playoff berth:
"You can tell more from the other players because they've been here longer," Yao said. "They have more of a feeling for it. It's like New Year's to me."

I feel he'll get better once he's in the playoff... a totally different atmosphere.

 

They gave him credit when he was playing well last month. If he's a superstar, then he should take the good with the bad.

 

The thing about Yao is his slumps just seem to last forever. Most players will have a few bad games or a bad week and get back on track the week after. Yao has bad MONTHS. He’ll have a great month of basketball where he’ll look dominant. Followed by a bad month where he’ll look like Shawn Bradley. It's just one giant roller coaster with Yao.

 

how can he have a good game when the stupid ref let people murder him..i mean look at last night game...he CLEARLY got hammer in the arms and missed the shot..and the stupid ref was standing right there...but ...he JUST standing there..no whistle

 

Teams are collapsing on him more often, and the Rockets finally picked up on that in the last game where JJ, Francis, and Mobley completely torched them for it.

Nothing to be worried about. Anyone can be stopped if you throw enough players at them, the important thing is the team's ability to adjust to that, and the player's ability to defer in the right situations (constant double/triple teams).


I'm not worried. We wouldn't have been on a 5-game skid if we had Cato the whole time.


All Iwant now is for the injuries to heal up a bit.

 

I think Yao is not yet ready for Prime Time. When Rox season is on the line, he hesitates. It is mostly psychological. Fatigue? he looks tired all season.

 

I justed checked the overalls stats on yahoo's NBA site. Yao Ming averages 9.1 rebounds a game, while Kenny Thomas, ex-Rocket, and at least six inches shorter is ranked 10th in the NBA at 10.2 rebounds a game.

WOW!

Did we lose a lot by keeping Griffin and trading Thomas for Posey.

man.......

Now I missed the days when the Rockets had rebounding demon Otis Thorpe.

 

I agree. Once we lock the #7 seed, I think JVG would be wise to bench Yao and let him rest for a couple games.

 

Yao plays poorly in critical must win games. He is not ready for them mentally. This causes him to become tired and make repeated mistakes. New Jack is right. He has stretches of poor play that last for months which shows to me that he will need a lot more help from his teammates to succeed in the future.
He is very valuable to us but he is not a franchise player and that is a matter of concern.

 

Actually, Yao's best games this year have come against the best forwards and centers in the league and best teams in the league. He has the consistency problems that many players have their first three years in the league and he will have to get over that as well as his fatigue issues to become a true NBA star. We have yet to see what how he will perform under the pressure of the playoffs, but I think his record and statistics against the league's best this year speak for themselves. It seems to me that Yao's weakness is that he actually plays worse against inferior competition than he does against the league's elite so its clearly a problem of motivation.

 

Yao got his hands hurt in the clipper game. I guess that affected
his performance.

 

Yao's play lately just showed us why the Rockets should not trade Steve this offseason. Yao can not carry this team all by himself. His poor play is the main reason why we had this late season collapse. A franchise player should never ever play like that when the season is on the line.

I think that the main reason for Yao's slump is indeed fatique. Remember he played two extra months during the summer. So his fatique level at this point is equivalent to what it would be for a normal NBA player after the playoffs. I think that mentally he's exhausted. He thinks too much and that has a negative impact on his game. I wouldn't mind putting him on the IR for the last three games now that we've clinched a playoffs spot.

We need Yao to return to his Feburary/March form for us to have a chance in the playoffs. If he plays like what he did this month, you can expect a sweep from Lakers/Kings/Wolves.

 

If you watched the game last night, there were 6 different times when Yao had the ball in the paint and there was severe contact but no call on shots. On the other end, Melo drives the lane and initiates all the contact, and gets the call every time. It is totally ridiculous. And I'm just talking about when Yao had the ball and was shooting. If you watched our offensive sets when he didn't have the ball, there could have been at least 5 or 6 more calls on the bumps and literally pushing him out or rooting him out of position on the blocks. Not only that, but when he had the ball and wasn't shooting there was several plays that could have easily been foul calls but weren't. If he gets those calls, then Yao gets real aggressive and a 12 point night turns into a 30 point night quicker than you can say "blow the ...... whistle", and Yao gets to sit out the last 6 minutes of the game because we are up by 25. Why is it that the refs let all the contact go on him, and call every rinky dink contact that he makes, and they give a ROOKIE every call?????????? Melo got an extra 6-8 points on plays that were questionable at best. Some of them should have been offensive foul calls. Can anybody explain that??????? It is simply a lack of respect for the big, Chinese fella. Dude won't argue, or fight, so he is disrespected. Bottom line. I think it's sad that players gotta get into fights to get the refs to call the game right.

Don't say Yao wasn't playing physical enough. That's the problem. He starts getting physical and they rack him with the foul. It is totally unacceptable the way the refs call the game on him. Yao is not gonna be physical if they are gonna foul him out. He has only been able to not foul out by withdrawing the aggression and letting stuff go, just like that dunk by White last night. If Yao had wanted to blast him, he could have, but he already had so many rinky dink foul calls, he couldn't afford to pick up one and have to get even more tentative. We need him on the floor too bad and he understands that. So he challenges White just a little bit, and gets posterized.

The only thing that bugs me about Yao is I feel he needs to turn around and clock somebody with an elbow and then he needs to keep doing it. Make the refs foul him out. Then JVG needs to send a tape to the league of the constant pushing and hacking that is not called and tell the league that as long as nothing is called on his man Yao is gonna keep getting loose with the elbows. But that being said, it is too late to do that this year. We are around the corner from the playoffs. The best we can hope for is for Yao to just do it once during the game and establish that he is sick of that garbage. Maybe, just maybe, the refs will sense his frustration and watch the action a lot closer. I think they will have a tendacy to blow the whistle if they know that Yao is not going to take it without a fight. They don't want a fight to break out. And then next year, JVG has got to get the point across to the league office to call the game correctly and we need to get an Oakley type enforcer that just lowers the boom on people. That's one area of Cato's game that I wished he'd get stronger at. Just hammer the daylights out of the primary defender on Yao. Let Cato set a back screen for Yao and then have Cato just drop the defender with a shoulder right in the paint. If they fight and the refs are forced to warn both teams, JVG can tell them........again, "Clean up all the garbage on Yao and the rought play stops". Cato or Spoon needs to be this teams dirty enforcer in the playoffs.

It all comes back to this. Nothing is gonna change in regards to Yao until he gets into a fight. It's the American way. In this league, you have to establish you are not a wimp. He is gonna have to lay the wood to somebody before the refs give him any respect.

As you can tell I'm totally frustrated with the way the game is called on Yao. I'm glad they won last night and this team showed more maturity last night by not letting that stuff get to them. They just kept gutting it out. But I really can't stand the lack of respect that this team gets. I like to watch basketball, not wrestling. If the game had been called right, the Rockets would have won by at least 10. Instead, they have to struggle to stay on the floor and in ballgames.


We need to go back to that old Moses Malone play where the guards threw it off the backboard for him. Have Yao post up on the high right block. Guard brings the ball down the left side midway. Cato comes from the opposite side and screens Yao's man. Yao goes to the rack, guard throws the ball of the backboard for the layup.