Wow, i wanted to get on here and bash a litle at Rafer's shooting...but wow! Theres a LOT of hate for this guy! He's a great PG with a bad shooting night. I really wanted to bash but damn...i feel bad for him. Like clutch says, its just a bad night and he will light it up again shortly. Oh but about his shooting, guy should just drive mroe and draw fouls. theres my 2 cents on his play tonight.
Whatever. The good teams will expose him and go after his weaknesses. ala Matt Maloney back in the mid 90's. We need to be looking for a new point before playoff advancement becomes a reality.
LFE71... You need to learn basketball man. Rafer Alston sucks... and he has NEVER "lit it up". Youre trying to bring positivity to a completely negative situation. WE NEED A POINT GUARD. RAFER SUCKS
im starting to hate rafer man......this is ridiculous is it JVG's fault that he keeps going to him too? id ont know who to blame
That's exactly why I try not to be mad after a loss, since every loss is directly related to the coach IMHO. We have players who can shoot, penetrate, defend, but it is Coach's job to come up with a better mix. It has always been the plays' faults on execution according JVG, who should find the correct person at the correct time to execute his "correct" game plan if any.
well contrary to popular belief, JVG gives his players a long leash on offense. as long as they are taking shots within the system, he's ok with them doing so. i guess it wouldn't be fair to have a different set of rules for rafer, but it's desperately needed. rafer needs to know his role. he's not a scorer. he has no business taking as many shots as he does, especially when he his shooting the % he is. rafer does need to get benched. i've stuck by my belief that rafer is the best we've got, but now i tihnk giving jonjon more minutes is a good thing.
Are you being sarcastic? His whole career is a bad shooting night. His FG% has been in the 30's since 2000. In 1999, his FG% was in the 20's.
After this game, of 127 players who qualified for FG%, Rafer Alston's 36.4% is ranked in the last spot.
he's a horrible finisher. everytime i see him he's missing a layup. throwing it up off the glass hoping someone like deke will clean up his messs...... i hate ppl apolgizing for rafer alston. there is no excuse for a PG to shoot 17 times a game. even when yao is in the lineup, he shoots more than yao sometimes. he needs to start earning his money and step it up like juwan has the last couple weeks...get into a ****in gym. its his job and thats what he gets paid millions to do...
damn, i hate this guy. i can't stand his floaters....and, after missing his open shots, he would still laugh as if he is MJ.
I wonder why isn't JVG doing anything to stop him from jacking up stupid shots. If he can't change Rafer, trade him!
Smoothie, I beg to differ but Rafer is NOT the best we got! Rafer is the worst player on this team. (Now that the play of Chuck Hayes has inspired J-Ho to come with something better). V-Span and Jon Jon are better. V-Span has one on some pretty grand stages. What has Rafer EVER won beside JVG's unwaving, ill-warranted, misguided admiration.
can we bring in.....i dont know, nick van exel...he's gotta have SOMETHING left...at least more than rafer
Well, I just finished watching the game. Terrible game...I really don't have much respect for the Wolves team and think their defense is highly overrated...Wolves games are just ugly and boring, and the Rockets can be ugly too, so I'm sure JVG didn't mind the offensive ugliness throughout the game. Okay, let's look at this purely from a shot selection standpoint. The first quarter Rafer's 1st 2 drives he dished to Deke...no result (like reset play out of bounds or something). Then Rafer took a nice shot from 12 feet and made it (about 13 seconds left on the clock)...wasn't the first option, but T-Mac couldn't get the ball). The next 2 drives were with the shot clock winding down. He made one floater and missed the other (was offensively rebounded though). The floater he missed, he could have swung it to Jho in the corner, but KG was playing 1.5 defense. KG went towards the rim but didn't totally commit to Rafer...KG was going for the board and still has enough reach to intercept a pass to JHo in my opinion. Was all of Rafer's makes in the 1st quarter? LOL. I went to do some chores and came back...realized Rafer didn't play too much the start of the 2nd. You know, it's funny to hear Matt Bullard and Bill Worrell say stuff that we've covered in this thread ad nausum(sp?). "Rafer Alston is getting good shots, but he just can make them Bill" "You know Bull, this is the worst I've seen Rafer shoot (not really)" "Bill, this is when JVG needs to put in John Lucas" Van Gundy just doesn't trust those guys though (John Lucas and Luther Head) at PG. They're too short and turn the ball over. They're just as bad on defense as Rafer is one-on-one and not great team defenders either. T-Mac had sloppy hands all game, and T-Mac played Point Guard for much of the game because JVG didn't want Head and Lucas handling the ball. Personally, I didn't have too much of a problem with Rafer's shot selection. He took maybe 2 bad shots and 15 good ones. There's no point in giving up good shots for bad ones because our supporting cast: Battier, Jho, Head, Hayes, Deke, etc cannot make bad shots. The only guys who can make tough shots are Yao and T-Mac. That is why they are superstars. And it's usually because T-Mac or Yao has been denied or doubled that ends up being the case where Rafer has the ball with the shot clock under 10 seconds. Look, we all know every player on this team has strengths and weaknesses. The Rafer haters are too strong and not 100% correct. The Rafer lovers have the same problem. Krysofah, it is wrong to think that we have no shot of winning if T-Mac and Yao is playing average. T-Mac played good in the end today, but like crap in the 1st half..and the Rockets had chance after chance. Are the Stars the backbone of this team? Yes! Of course! But on Great teams, role players step up and win games when the Stars are average. Right now, Rafer is incapable of that. He helps the team and hurts the team. But if T-Mac is going at so-so, we need other players who can put the ball in the hoop. The Rockets have them: Bonzi Wells, Kirk Snyder, and of course Yao, but they're all injured. It's all up to Jeff Van Gundy. It's a give and take thing in terms of what you value. When you have guys who can put the ball in the hope doing it, then JVG Values Rafer's low turnovers and passing and decent team defense more. But when you need scoring, then JVG values Lucas and Head more...that's why Rafer ONLY played 30 minutes tonight. I say only because JVG would have played Rafer 40 minutes if Rafer would have made like 2 more shots. This is where Jeff Van Gundy and I differ. Even with the injury depleted team, I would play Rafer only 25 minutes per game and just tell Head and Mac and Lucas to play very slow, very very slow and careful in their half court sets...don't try anything fancy...but that's just me. So all in all, this was just an ugly game. I hope the game is better tomorrow. I hate Rafer and I love him. He is a Rocket and he needs our support. You guys bash him to much...he's doing the right thing, but he just sucks at shooting. T-Mac deserves some bashing too (though he did make good drives tonight...he was obviously hurting). Everyone deserves a little bashing. JVG probably the most, but JVG can't stand bad defense and values good defense/low turnovers/bad offense over good offense/high turnovers/bad defense. He's just the total opposite of Mike D'Antoni. But back to the point. Rafer tried to create on his drives quite a few times tonight, but the lanes just aren't there. Defenders aren't leaving open shooters and they're just daring Rafer to make open 5 footers. Rafer has to take open 5 footers. He just sucks...but don't hate Rafer for sucking...he's trying the best he can...if there's anyone to hate, Hate JVG for not being able to adjust his values when it comes to basketball philosophy.
people leave rafer open all the time because they know he can't hit an open jumper... i just don't understand how a NBA point guard can consistently have 4-17 nights and still play as many minutes as rafer does. shane was 8-12, if rafer gave up a couple of those shots to shane, or juwon who was also shooting well, maybe we would've had a different outcome. statistics shouldn't be the only measure of a player's worth, but when your starting point guard is jacking up 17 shots, and only making 4, his <25% shooing percentage is hurting the team. Too bad our other point guards are either too small or turn the ball over too much or else I'm sure the coach would've already remedied the situation.
Amazing. I'd like to see anyone defend the guy now. Oh yeah, "we cannot have an All-Star at every position". Do you have a link?
