I've found an excellent thread about Rockets at hoopchina.com. Although it's in Chinese, those pics are enough to show how JVG's tactics work and how Tmac becomes a playmaker. http://bbs.hoopchina.com/htm_data/30/0611/138476.html Wish someone could translate it. 1. 2.
Wow that is amazing screenshot step-by-step analysis. Must have taken a while. China fans are hardcore and knowledgeable.
All i see are a bunch of "?" with some "HEAD"s right in the middle. At the end, it says "OMG". Seems like an account of someone being doubtful about Head. But then once he experienced it, it was an exhilarating feeling. Never doubt Luther! But yeah some analysis would be nice.
This is a very detailed and professional analysis of the pick'n'roll between Yao and TMac in the 4th quarter of yesterday's game. Nothing to do with Head bashing or whatsoever. Wish someone else with better English than me could translate the whole analysis. It's really amazing!
Whoa my hats down to that person must be a basketball coach the analysis is unbelivably detailed probably what JVG taught the guys word by word
I wish I could read it. I noticed in the 4th quarter romp it was the Tmac/Yao pick & roll show which always ended w/ someone getting a good open shot. I can't wait for R2K's video to take a better look. All I could gather from the link was this: "Oh no..." "Candy!"
They basically break down with pictures a few plays the rockets ran. First one: Yao posts up, and Luther goes baseline after giving the ball to T-Mac, but not for the dish or to clear out for Yao. Instead, he turns around and sets a screen, Yao moves up and sets a high screen. T-Mac swings the ball around to Juwan, then goes baseline around the picks. Juwan swings it to Snyder who give s it to T-Mac close to the basket. Luther goes to the threepoint line and Yao goes under the basket, while Juwan sets up at the elbow. Defense collapses on T-Mac, who dishes it to Juwan for the open elbow jumper (which went in I think). Second one: T-Mac takes ball on wing, Yao posts up, Snyder and Head switch places. Yao comes up and sets the high screen. Both defenders follow T-Mac, Yao goes to the basket, and sucks the defense in, giving Luther a wide open shot. T-mac dishes and Luther hits. Actually T-Mac might have been able to feed Yao under the basket too. Third one: Mcgrady has ball, Head and Snyder switch positions again. Yao comes up and sets a high screen, and then rolls. Shaq didn't come up and show, so the entire defense is sucked into the paint. Luther is wide open in the corner, T-Mac dishes, Luther hits. Fourth one: Rockets get a steal, but it looks like they don't have a fast break. T-Mac brings the ball up semi-slowly, as if to set up the half-court offense, but quickly throws a long pass upcourt to Yao, who finishes the basket. Moral of story is that a successful fast break fast break does not have to be extremely quick nor super flashy like the Suns. Fifth one: Another high screen, this time Shaq can't recover, Yao cuts under the basket, and T-Mac draws the foul from Shaq. Repeat, this time Yao easily gets the pass from T-Mac, and dunks. Then the author comments: If this works so well, why don't they do this all the time? Well, Yao wasn't really familiar with playing the P&R T-Mac, and trying to do this if not coordinated well can easily result in turnovers, especially if Yao and T-Mac are too close together. But in this case since Luther hit a couple of threes of dishes from T-Mac so Shaq is forced to come out and show on the P&R, and Luther's defender can't leave him, so T-Mac can easily dish to Yao. Sixth one: Luther head starts with the ball on the left wing. T-Mac starts in the right corner, Yao and Juwan set a double screen, T-Mac cuts to the top of the key, forcing Wade to run through the screens, shoots, and banks it in. Next one: Heat called timeout, and took Shaq out of the game. Now they trap T-Mac after Yao sets the high screen and rolls, and a defender is watching yao waiting to pick off the pass. But Snyder is open in the corner, so T-Mac dishes to him. Defender (Antoine Walker) is caught in no mans' land and kind of stands there, allowing Snyder to dish to Yao, who gets fouled. Next one: Another high screen/roll. Entire defense collapses to paint where Yao and T-Mac are. T-Mac passes to Juwan, who swings it around to Snyder, who makes the jumper. Author comments: Right now the Rockets' perimeter players have two important missions: 1.) set screens, create proper spacing, and find open areas for shots 2.) Make the open jumpers at a high percentage Last one: Another high screen and roll, this one the Heat don't really even guard. The trap isn't very good, so T-Mac comes off of it, drives, and then dishes to Yao for the easy slam.
Oops, missed the last part, the part everyone wants to hear... Why do we need T-Mac? Well you should be able to see, but we should say something about that. When the third quarter ended, the game was very close, but it didn't end up that way. Why? T-Mac with his assists and timely shots lead the Rockets to the big win. This is true even though his numbers look crappy. We don't need T-Mac to score like crazy, because we have Yao to do that. He doesn't need to do the dirty work, Shane does that. We don't need him to shoot darts from 3-pt range, Head is getting better and better at that . We need T-Mac to be like he was today, setting the pace, distributing, and in the big games, share the scoring the burden with Yao, and lead the team to victory in the clutch.
These are really good....it shows the heat obvious trying to compensate for every play and the rockets find new ways (or did they already have it planned? ) to get around it. My favorite has to be the one where Miami just says "screw this" and sends everyone into the middle at Ming/Mac"leaving two people open and allowing Snyder to make them pay.
JVG's team tactics ! JVG hater should look at this thread to learn more about JVG. Hope Rockets get more and more amazing tactics!!
And more .... why we becoming loose in 3rd Quarter againt Knicks ?? Enjoy it ! bbs.hoopchina.com/htm_data/30/0611/138474.html
link doesn't work , try this : http://bbs.hoopchina.com/htm_data/30/0611/138474.html http://bbs.hoopchina.com/htm_data/30/0611/138474.html
Here is my translation, some of the pics would take forever to load, but you get the ideas ... ------------------- Why do we need TMac? Double screening -- creating infinite empty spots according to the picture, after passing the ball to Tmac, Head runs towards the baseline. As soon as he gets to the baseline, he turns around without moving towards the weak side. Similarly, Tmac doesn't ask Yao to screen because of Head and try to create his own space, instead, he passes the ball to Howard at the high post and runs to an empty spot himself. ----------------------------- The two red squares are Yao and Head, they are doing a double screening for Tmac, and Howard passes the ball down to Battier. ------------------------------ Tmac moves over easily, Battier(in blue oval) passes to him, (Battier's pass was a bit slow, and nearly got intercepted, next time he should do so without hesitation). After the screening, Head and Yao runs towards the 3-ptr line and the hoop respectively, openning up the defense in that area, and Howard moves back to his best shooting spot. ------------------------------- Tmac has the ball and attacks, since he's so close to the hoop, he attracts all the attention of the defense. Therefore, the red oval show that both Yao and Howard have really good opportunity, and Head's already moved outside (cannot see in the picture, should be at the top of the arc) without a defender -- this attack creates 3 obvious attacking points -- rather successful -------------------------------- Tmac chooses to pass to Howard, it's a good thing that his mid-range jumpers are still there. Even if he'd missed, Rox would still outnumber Heats 2:1 under the hoop, as long as the ball doesn't bounce too far, Rox still has front court opportunity. Therefore, this tactics is pretty successful. --------------------------------- Yao's highpost screen, and other people's quick passing after penetration --------------------------------- Tmac has the ball, Yao leans against Shaq, Battier and Head are near the arc and they run a cross-over (the advantage of the youth!) ---------------------- Tmac asks Yao to screen and he wants to penetrate the defense carring the ball ----------------------- Tmac's penetration gets Shaq's attention, if Shaq goes to chase Yao, then Tmac could easily penetrate. Yao moves to the hoop without being defended, the other two Roxes near the arc both have good positions and defenderless. In the end, Tmac passes to Head in the corner who got 3 points This effect of this play is not limited by the 3 points, we will see more of this tactics later on in other situations. It can be argued that Heats is beaten by this tactic in the 4th qtr. ------------------------ Looking from above, Tmac could've passed to Yao with higher chance of success than passing to Head, however, maybe he is already in motion and very fast, the pass may fail due to the close distance, it is still a good idea to pass to Head
-------------------------- Another high post screen with Yao -------------------------- Tmac with the ball, double-cross-over on the arc. I don't get why Heat keeps chasing Rox on the arc ... --------------------------- This time the screen is outside the arc, there is no way Shaq would get out there. Other teams like to attack Yao by forcing him out, but Yao's got better range than other centers. Sure he won't go for 3 but it's not really too hard for him to screen at that place. Rox used to use this type of tactics a lot, some people think this is a waste of Yao's stamina, but no ... if you keep physically fighting other people in the inside, it would limit your tactics and be easy to defend and it would cost more stamina. On the other hand, if you just come out now and then, it would make it hard for your opponents ------------------------- How many defenders does this attack attract? Sure Tmac doesn't have his old shooting touch, but he still gets so much attention from the defenders and still has the ability to pass the ball out easily -- that's he's so useful. Head shoots again for another 3 -- two 3s, Rox leading by 8 -------------------------- What's a fast break? -------------------------- This time Rox successfuly intercepts the pass, but they don't seem to be moving very fast on the counter attack. Tmac with the ball is behind everyone else -- are they gonna slow down and do the half court? Wait, Tmac passes !! To whom?? ---------------------------- OMG -- it's Yao!!! Such long distance pass, some old farts may have some problems with it ... ---------------------------- Yao gets an easy lay-up What is a fastbreak? It's not about how fast you can run. Remember, on the court, people can never move as fast as the ball. As long as the entire team moves properly and gets to the right positions, there is opportunites for fastbreaks at any instant. For example, this play is a standard fastbreak -- because Yao's got a good position and Tmac's observation is really accurate and his pass is just in time. This makes it possible for big men to do fastbreaks too. The number of mistakes have increased in the last a few games .. but JVG didn't criticise the players and he didn't ask them to slow down. Why? Because the Rox were the ones uping the temo. As long as we don't let the opponents control the tempo, Yao won't have to keep running back and forth uselessly. Instead, he will get more opportunities due to the speed and positions of his team. Blah blah blah 10 points diff, Heat calls timeout ------------------------ Another highpost screen, why is it going to become Rox's common tactics? ------------------------ Yao's high post screen again ... with the lesson from the two previous plays, Riley has asked Shaq to come out and help. ----------------------- Yao turns around and runs back .... Shaq cannot keep up with Yao, so he settles blocking Tmac -- foul ------------------------------- After the throwing-in, Tmac has the ball, and Yao screens at high post again .. what should Heat do? Shaq still helping on the defense, but cannot get too tight with Tmac to avoid another foul ------------------------- Yao runs back again, since Shaq cannot get back and cannot defend Tmac tightly, Tmac passes the ball the Yao easily blah blah blah
------------------------- Double screening in the middle ------------------------- The red oval on the top is Head, he has the ball and is organising the attack. Yao and Howard in the middle square are preparing to screen for Tmac. Tmac runs back from teh baseline to top of the arc to receive the pass. ------------------ Wade gets blocked by Howard first ------------------- Wade then gets blocked by Yao ... poor Wade ... no help from his team mates -------------------- Tmac gets the ball and shoots a turn-around -- 3 ptrs! Lucky, Heat time out again. ----------------- Variation of the highpost tactic ----------------- After the time out, Heat swaps Shaq out and go for the speed. Riley knows that as long as he can stop the highpost tactic, Rox would no choice but rely on Yao's power, and Heat can use their speed to make more trouble. The speedy makeup of Heat can be seen in the picture: when Yao is running back after the high post screening, Tmac is trapped by 2 rather energetic goons who keep waving their arms around and jumping up and down -- how's Tmac gonna pass to Yao? Furthermore, the Heat guy in the red oval is onto Yao and ready to intercept the pass! --------------------- Well, this is when the advantage of Tmac's great height and long arms shows -- he passes ball easily to Battier. ---------------------- Now the Heat guy in the red oval of the previous picture is in trouble. If he defends Yao, Battier will be defender-less, if he defends Battier, Yao will be defender-less. As he hesitates, Battier lobs the ball to Yao ... blah blah blah ----------------------- Big-vs-small, easy meat for Yao who gets a foul, time out for Riley
---------------- Another variation of the highpost tactic -- Heat has no idea what's going on ---------------- Still high post tactic, Yao runs back ---------------------------- The red squareis full of Heat, the previous attacks of Tmac and Yao leave Riley no choice but using the whole team to defend them. Tmac has great vision and passes the Howard ------------------------------ Howrd gets ball, not greedy, and passes the ball the Battier when he's full attention of the defender. ------------------------------- Battier drains it. Now Rox's shooters have two tasks: (1) Run proactively and screen for Tmac and Yao to open up spaces (2) Make sure they drain it from the outside ---------------- Still highpost tactic, Heat gives up ---------------- Still highpost tactic, Yao still runs back. Heat doesn't even bother to guard Tmac tightly -- given up already. ----------- Tmac passes the ball to a defender-less Yao while Tmac is in motion --------------- Easy dunk, Heat gives up
