yao was less aggressive, but with the game on the line and 4 fouls shouldn't equate with passivity on offense, rebounding and defense that is somewhat more understandable. thomas hasn't been the only person who has schooled yao on the boards this year. but that hardly means yao has to be silent on the offensive side, which is his strength. there have been good examples where no matter what, they were going down into yao. rafer and tmac looked once and thought better of it. they played without yao in the 3rd quarter because of necessity. when the big man is in there, he needs to get the ball.
They surely should be blamed if they really had that in mind, because it is NOT them "who took the lead". It is just like the game in which Rafer made a last 3 pointer. Would you say it is Rafer who won the game for Rockets? Well, it is much easier to grab defensive rebounds because you usually have a better box-out. And when your opponents are missing most of the shots, it's hard to not out-rebound them. It has little to do with rebounding ability.
what i want to know is how come it takes us so damn long to setup our offense??? this comes in play with the topic at hand.... several times last night (just in the first half mind you) it took us in the 10-12 second range to feed the ball into yao.... 10-12 SECONDS. half of the clock gone just to get the offense initiated! that's ridiculous.
How so? You don't buy into the +/- concept? Hayes had the worst on court +/- of any Rocket last night @ minus -12.
Sorry but that doesn't make any sense. OK, let's assume that they developed that mentality and thought they might be able to win. Are they stupid enough not to realize that it doesn't work when the Suns just built another lead and we haven't scored for 5 minutes? Read that to yourself again. Even you don't believe that. Yao wasn't aggressive as he could be last night, but it wasn't because of Kurt Thomas. Kurt Thomas didn't do ****. In fact, most of the 4th quarter, Yao had him sealed behind despite his attempts to front. Mark Blount did much better. He was pushing, shoving and trying to wrap around. The Wolves also used hard doubles far more often than the Suns' faux doubles The difference was with the refs. Mark Blount got called fouls and Kurt Thomas didn't. And when Mark Blount was sitting on the benches with fouls, Yao abused Madsen.
You know, I understand it was a back to back, which is fine. I wouldn't be b1tching about it if it was just because we were on a back to back. When we weren't playing a back to back, it also happened. Yao didn't shoot much against the Wolves. He didn't shoot much the game before that either. Early season it was much better, then Yao had 3 bad shooting games and all of a sudden, we stopped going to him. I think that you'd find a marked drop in his number of FGA compared to early in the season.
It wasn't any worse than any other loss. It counts once. And if its exposes an obvious opportunity to improve on, then it's excellent. Teams bound for the post-season play all year to 1. Improve 2. Get a good playoff seed. #1 is far more important.
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IIRC, the Timberwolves also had some success fronting Yao for a bit. But instead of stubbornly throwing lob passes at Yao, we mixed in more pick-and-rolls with Yao and T-Mac, freeing up Yao and resulting in easy layups for him. Didn't see much of this in the Phoenix game, but I didn't watch most of the second and third quarter so maybe I missed it.
Good post! When you have the biggest mismatch on the floor yet you don't use it that’s suicide in the NBA. How we don't use Yao in these situations will prevent the Rockets from taking the next step. I think Rafer did a better job last year getting the ball to Yao. T-mac is the one guy on the floor that can get the ball to Yao when he really sets his mind on doing it. V-span is another guy that has a good feel on how to get Yao the ball. With V-span his man often plays off of him because of his ability to drive around his defender so he often has space to pass the ball where Rafer's guy is draped all over him. JVG needs to give V-span a chance at the PG position. Part of the problem is Yao of course he must demand the ball and when he doesn't get it he has to get in his teammate's face and let them know that $hit aint going to fly. Yao is on the verge of exploding all he needs is that one move that no one can stop or deny like Shaq and Dream had. Even though Dream had multiple moves the defense had no chance at stopping. If you watch Yao's progress his face up 10 ft shot is nice, but his hook shot deep in the paint and his spin move base line are like the rain. You can't stop it just sit back and enjoy it. Once he starts to impose these moves on a more consistent basis especially in the 4th quarter he will become that monster in the middle that we all know he can be. GO ROCKETS!
Hmm.... 2nd game of a back to back, travel to Phoenix, No Wells, No Snyder, Phoenix had a 3 day rest... I dunno... I'm disappointed at the loss, but I'm happy we didn't get blown out.
I don't think a Robert Horry is the answer to the fronting defense. The answer to a fronting defense is to attack the rim with penetration. If a defender is fronting Yao, he cannot defend a penetrator/finisher.
Why is Yao exhausted? Because Rafer is running the point and trying to KEEP UP with Sun's speed. All i see from the game is that Yao is running back and fourth.
Geez I thought the thread was about why Yao's teammates didn't pass him the ball effectively and more in the 4th quarter when I wrote my previous post. My bad. But then again I was merely trying to offer some possible explanations. I stand by what I said on the 2nd point. Kurt Thomas got the best of Yao when both were on the court at the same time, especially during the late 3rd quarter when Yao was less effective than he was earlier in the quarter, and the 5+ minutes Yao played in the 4th quarter. No, Mark Blount was not a good low post defender, regardless of all the pushes and shovings and wrappings-around he threw at Yao. Those defensive "tactics" are not very useful if you still let Yao get into positions in the low post. Kurt Thomas is a veteran, and he knew what he was doing by keeping Yao as far from the paint as possible. Fronting wasn't much of a problem for Yao last night. I have basically re-watched the whole game. Suns' commentators also noted Thomas' effective and physical defense on Yao. Thomas was the key reason Yao didn't get a lot of rebounds. In many occasions, Yao simply couldn't outmuscle Thomas to get into position. Watch the game again if you can, and you'll agree with me. It's probably unfair to say the refs screwed Yao. They basically let Yao get away with a couple of fouls after he got himself into early foul trouble. One was very obvious when he was defending Amare's layup. There was, however, a very BS offensive 3-second call against Yao in the 4th quarter. I watched several times and could never count to 3 seconds when the whistle was blown. Even so, it wasn't a game changer. The momentum did shift irreversibly in Suns' favor a couple of possessions later when Yao was boxed out (again by Thomas) for a defensive rebound on a missed shot by one of his teammates from the right corner, which led to a fastbreak by Suns. That was essentially the play of the game.
this **** never happened to the 72-10 bulls team. that team used to play back, to back, to back games constantly every night, and they never ran out of gas. (except for the couple of games they lost to the nuggets and grizzlies).
I disagree. Yao wasn't aggressive last night. He was happy passing the ball to his teammates. When will he realize that Thomas, Stoudamire and other smaller centers cannot and should not be able to handle him? When will he learn to avoid stupid fouls? If he is out of position, he has to stop trying to play defense. Please hire Moses Malone to teach him how to play.
