Talked about how hard it is to lob to Yao, Yao has hard time catching it and staying balanced Granato said Rox is like a country club or repeating what Steve Mckinney said, Barry said he'd rather be a backup QB Talked about Jon's wife being knowledgable on sports Luther Head did very well in trainging camp, Keith Langford was the whooping boy...JVG told him one time "I don't have time for you so get it right" Saturns has standard DVD...whoops...nevemind Wesley's benching - had a tough camp...Jon was surprised how DA played....thinks Wes took it well...said he looks like Shrek... talked about Artest having monster year....thinks that he will be suspended at some point this year Suns are going to struggle to win 45 games Kings are interesting team White Chocolate-Wild dude...calmed down since having family...don't know if he can fit with Shaq... Kobe and Phil-doesn't see it in that team soundbyte of JVG "high turnover team, not overly intelligent team"...not in the optimism business... joked about JVG that Mike James got traded when said that we are the best team in west...wanted to go after Jon after he said we can be a 60 win team... John and Lance mocked JVG...
lol! Thanks for the recap. JB is a riot, I would love to have that guy do Rockets games with Worrell next season, I would watch just for that.
I thought the Yao stuff was interesting and definitely contradicted so many people on here who say that we should just lob the ball to Yao every time he is fronted. Barry was very clear in pointing out that Yao was not good at going after the lob because he did not have very good balance in the post. I also thought it was interesting that he mentioned how Yao tends to catch passes into the post moving backwards and that it would help him if he came forward to get the ball because it made it too easy for defenders to get a hand in there when he was backing up. Good stuff.
Yeah, it's been pretty obvious from day one that Yao is terrible at catching lobs. My problem is, why hasn't he gotten better at it at all? It's an incredibly basic skill and not too complicated. Seal off the man until the ball is thrown, go and catch the ball. Lonny Baxter did it perfectly a few games ago. Balance issues would probably keep him from ever being great at it, but I think he should still be better than he is. The lob pass to Yao has only worked like 5 times in his career. Most of the times he just waits too long to go after the ball. I refuse to believe that it is a skill that he couldn't dramatically improve with practice.
This is not a matter of a learned skill. Yao has poor balance and the primary factor in that is size. The guy is 7'6" tall. Very few people remotely close to that tall have had the agility he posseses currently. I'm not physicist, but I know that any person that has that much mass from the waist up is going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to balance compared to someone who isn't fighting gravity nearly as much. There's a reason there have been very few player's Yao's size that have excelled at basketball in the past. Physically, it is a battle against gravity.
I respectably disagree, I remember in Game 5 of the Mavs series the Mavs kept fronting Yao and Yao did not have any trouble catching lob passes from Tracy. I think the problem is that the guards are not good low post lob passers or are so scared the lob pass will become a turnover they prefer not to take the risk.
Barry imitating JVG bawling out Langford was HILARIOUS. "Son... son! You're here trying to make the D-league... that's about the best you can hope for. I don't have TIME for you, you can't come in here and screw up practice..." Good to hear that Barry's going to be back on the radio every week. He definitely has a future in broadcasting, hopefully it's in Houston.
Yeah, he said it. They asked Barry if JVG was ever positive in practice or the locker room, and Barry said he often told them that they were great guys and that he really liked them. Lance then did a perfect impression of JVG saying "...but you're really terrible at basketball."
i think the size excuse is overused. sabonis is only 3 inches shorter and he didn't have balance or agility issues. i'm guessing it's more to do with two things... some people are more co-ordinated than others, yao just doesn't have good balance. also his bad ear/hearing could be a factor, a simple ear infection can affect a person's equilibrium cause it's that part of your body that controls your sense of balance.
Yao does have a hearing loss in one of his ears. However, I'm not one to assume that he can't learn balance over time and a plethora of repetitions. I don't think anyone can answer this unless they have the same hearing deficiency that Yao does, or there is a doctor that actually knows his stuff.
How did JVG ever get thru those TNT telecasts when he wasn't coaching without ever saying what he really thought of some of those games. "Those are a really nice bunch of players, but they play basketball better as well as my sons team 2 yr old team"
Sure he could have a disadvantage, but I'm not going to buy the notion that he is physically incapable of catching lob passes. I think it's just more of a timing issue. Is it a balance problem that prevents him from winning jump balls?
I think I just posted yesterday about Yao's ability to catch passes and that I thought it may be a problem. I'm glad Barry backed me up on that today. IMO Yao has problems catching any pass and when the game is on the line with very little time remaing it really makes me nervous for them to dish the ball to him.
