You've got to be kidding me. This is not the defense the Houston Rockets were acclaimed for. Rafer Alston plays terrible, lackluster defense. Other teams pgs light us up and they always seem to have a open shot. Obviously he can't guard it everytime but the pg's seem to have more open looks than not when Rafer guards them. Kirk Snyder plays worse defense than Rafer Alston. Even Tracy McGrady plays atrocious D when he has to guard quicker wing players. He doesn't hustle fast enough and usually his long arms don't affect the shot. I know it's still early in the season, but even if the others teams shots are going in, the Rockets need to show more EFFORT out there. They let the Pistons run them over late in the game. For being a defensive minded coach, JVG can't get his players to hustle on defense this season. It's still early, but the Rockets aren't going anywhere with defense like that. When the other team misses, it's all good and dandy, but when they start making jumpers, the Rockets effortless defense is exposed. They didn't even show effort until too late.
It's embarassingly bad. Good PGs just get escorted into the lane and it's over after that. You're right about Chuck. We need his defense, his smarts, his rebounding, and his movement on offense. He's a big part of this team.
IMO, defense isn't our main problem, it's offense. When the team goes into our normal 2nd half choke mode on offense, our defensive intensity slips big time. You can see it in the defeatist body language of the players. Way too may easy baskets for the Pistons. Tonight, some of it was having Rafer and Luther in at the same time; some of it was just having Juwan on the floor. But they got 20 points off TOs while we got just 2. Ball game! I still think we will find our chemistry eventually. But it's time to get Novak and V-Span off the bench for a few minutes.
At one point I believe we had on the floor a team of... Howard Head Alston Tmac Yao That is FOUR slow footed players....FOUR !!!! Head and Alston can't guard my dead grandmother, Howard is a joke and his footspeed makes Molasses seem like running water, and Yao is just slow because of his size. You can NOT play a team with 4 slow footed players and compete, you just can't. We need Hayes back, Bonzi in shape, and quicker guards....like...oh...V-Span maybe? DD
V-Span needs a chance. There better be a damn good reason JVG isn't playing him. How do we play such terrible offense in the end of games? Why was it so hard to get the ball to McGrady and why was McGrady not working to get free. At one point, Rafer Alston looked at T-Mac for 12 seconds but didn't pass and then ran the other way and T-Mac threw his hands up in frustration. Something is not clicking yet. I don't think the team is a fluke but something isn't clicking. Bad offense leads to fast break points which lead to demoralization which leads to the defense the team was playing tonight. Not good.
JVG's Obstinancy This is exactly why we might as well play Vspan and Novak. We have horrible defense anyway, we might as well try Vspan who seems to hustle his butt off on defense, and since Juwan and Padget can't guard mannequins, we might as well throw in a guy who has shown that he can hit the open 3. Shane plays good but not great defense on players who are gifted offensively. That is, he can frustrate them to no end on an off night, but he doesn't really slow down hot players. He is great on team defense, but this is worthless when you have defensive sieves on 3 of the other positions on the floor. The reason we look so good with Chuck Hayes out there is because he multiplies the effect of Shane Battier. If you have two super stars and a bunch of Shane/Chuck types on the floor, you will succeed because they will feed off of each other by covering the floor and finding open spots on offense. Any team can usually afford one defensive liability on the floor at any given time. When any combo of Juwan/Padget, Rafer, and Luther (who may be slightly below average) are on the floor at the same time, they absolutely need to bring something offensively to offset their defensive shortcomings. However, in crunch time, they fade because defenses simply pressure the ball and none of them are capable of becoming driving threats to the basket. Here is why JVG's offensive scheme is obviously outdated at times. While the kick-out post offense is a great system, part of the reason it has been so effective in the past was because guard play was limited by hand-checking, and because post-play was efficient due to the lack of zone defense. In many ways, this reminds me of the beginning of the 04-05 season when our offense struggled to lift off. Jim Jackson and Juwan Howard/Mo Taylor as well as Tyron Lue (still can't believe we had him) made our team an atrocious one to watch. Then right before our eyes, Jim Jackson changed to David Wesley, Jon Barry replaced Andre Barrett, Mike James replaced Reece Gaines, and Juwan Howard became serviceable after trading away Mo Taylor. And all of this is not even including the impact that the return of our X-factor Bobby Sura had on our team. There was not a single player that I admired more than Sura that year. Every one of these players were either solid defensively and were adept offensively (David Wesley, Bobby Sura and Juwan at the time), shoot lights out (Jon Barry), or act as a spark off the bench as a creator when our offense was struggling as well as play solid defense (Mike James). This is also forgetting Scott Padget who was great for us that year. So when you subtract all of these things and add Rafer Alston whose only real strength is playmaking, Luther Head who is only a decent three-point shooter, turn Juwan from serviceable to horrible, then it doesn't matter how much Yao has improved since then. However, we have new weapons. In place of Mike James we have Bonzi Wells (if he can get in shape) who I would consider an upgrade or at least a wash. In place of Bobby Sura we have VSpan. In place of Jon Barry we have Steve Novak. In place of David Wesley we have Shane Battier. And we still have Scott Padget. Oh and I forgot, we have Chuck Hayes in place of Juwan Howard. Right now we are only playing two of these options, and with one of them injured, only Shane is really seeing court time. Play them. If they even come close to the 04-05 roster, Yao's improvement will vault us to the top.
Well, we played well most of the game, and we just blew it at the end. Breakdown..again? I guess they adjusted, and they were getting wide open jumpers. Not good
I love how everyone thinks we could actually be better if we played Steve Novak several minutes a night. Yeah, he can hit the three... and in the future he may be able to contribute something else. Right now he can't. If we would have played him tonight Rasheed Wallace would have eaten him alive. Once we get Chuck Hayes back we'll be doing fine. Everyone is so pessimistic on these boards... I actually saw a post tonight that said "OUR SEASON IS OVER." I hope to god that was meant as a joke. We are 6-4... we're off to a decent start after an extremely difficult opening schedule. Once we get Chuck Hayes healthy and Bonzi into our rotation we'll be doing even better. Everyone... calm down.
Umm dude, Rasheed was already eating up Juwan and Padget, why not play the guy who can actually hit a shot on offense?
I think what he means is that if Wallace scored on Novak it counts for 4 points instead of 2. When scoring against rookies, you get bonus. New rules this year. Apparently only JVG has gotten the memo yet. Wait till every other coach in the NBA gets the memo. Then they will sit their rookies too. Unless they are playing the Rockets of course. Because even the rookies dont have to worry about Juwan or Rafer scoring on them!
(1) Folks forget that making the other guy guard you on offense (ala novak or vspan) is a form of defense too. (2) Getting Chuck back isn't enough. The Rockets need to be a team like Miami or the Spurs that if they lose Shaq or TD they keep winning. It bodes badly for us that Chucky is the lynchpin in all this (which I don't believe is true either).
I'd say Yao way pretty clueless on defense tonight despite some good looking numbers on stats sheet. I watched in disblief/disgust he repeatedly missed his defense assignment on his man, some of which contributed to TMac's early foul trouble, who had to help Yao out. I don't understand why Yao should always come out to the top of the key to chase smaller and quicker players while leaving bigger man (his man) unguarded near/in the paint. No, many of those lapses were not about defending pick 'n roll. Yao was just wasting his energy in vain on JVG's poor coaching.
That's not Yao's problem, it's coaching. I don't think Yao really likes to "come out to the top of the key to chase smaller and quicker players". It's JVG's game plan.
I don't know if we have a player on our team that can defend Rasheed. Like Bullard pointed out, Sheed basically was non-existent during the 3rd quarter. He basically checked himself out of the game but was still on the floor. Then he got his 4th foul and sat on the bench. When he came back for the 4th quarter, Sheed decided to start trying and we couldn't stop him. No shame in that. When Sheed's head is in the game he can be a great player. Novak wouldn't have stopped him and he can easily keep up with Novak on the perimeter. Still, we should have given it a try or JVG better plan on trying it next time out.
If Yao doesn't do that, he's giving the Pistons a wide open jump shot. Actually, he didn't step up far enough on many occasions in the game, and that's exactly what we gave up as a result.
