One of the reasons that T-mac is more effective is that the team has less turnovers when T-mac is the main engine. If you look at the stats, in those wins, Rox has less TOs than their season average which is around 15 per game. When Yao plays and T-mac does not play, the team has to pass the ball a lot to Yao. This creates a lot of turnover problems. Now you can say this is due to the guards' inability to pass to the post or Yao's tendency of not securing the ball, either way, this is going to be a problem once Yao comes back. and Rox could lose some of the winnable games due to turnovers.
i totally agree. but yao has alot of TO's just getting swiped at and missing those kickout passes. he got around...what...4-5 tos a game? with deke in the game and jon barry saying "we dont ever pass to deke" thats really 4 ppl handling the ball, so less TO's. the TO problem is getting better without yao. But man need maintain that flow when the big man returns to be REALLY successful.
May I say: If Deke was 5-6 years younger, we don't need Yao anymore ? I love yao, but that is the truth.
If Deke was 5-6 years younger, he won't be on our team. We only got him because he was old. And now he's rebounding like a mad Ben Wallace (sorry for degrading you Deke).
Like our defense, the low TOs have been key to our 6-2 record. When Yao comes back our TOs will go up but our FG% and points per possession will get better also. My hope is the offense will catch up to our defense when Yao rounds back into dominant form and Tracy is healthy. We have yet to see the dominant Yao play with T-Mac. TOs will increase but we will be a much better team.
You know that's not true. With Deke, Rox can win many games against teams without a post presence, but Rox needs a post presence to beat good teams. It is just so hard to score with only perimeter players once you are in the playoffs.
it's a long two months left to go before Yao is close to back to full strength. Don't count your chickens.....etc.
Ironically, Tracy has been the turnover prone player as of late, but he handles the ball so much, it's bound to happen. When you attack as much as he has lately, you are going to TO the ball sometimes. Similiarly with Nash, the guy turns over the ball I think 3-4 times per game, but he gets his assists/points. He just always has the ball. I wouldn't have it any other way.
This is true. Also Rafer has fewer TOs when he does not need to pass the ball to the post. So that's something Yao as well as the team need to improve upon once the team is in full strength. If the team can cut TOs from 15 to 13 once Yao comes back, the team can be very competitive in the playoffs with teams like Dallas, Phoenix and the Spurs. Another thing actually for T-mac to improve is his FT shooting. He is averaging 67% for the season which is a bit low, but he never averages more than 80% which is odd for a player like him. Kobe is shooting 85%. If T-mac can improve his FT to 85%, that would add 1 point to his season average which is significant in close games. If he spends 10 minutes a day extra on the FTs, it would payoff tremendously during playoffs. I think it is something he can improve without spending too much time.
we need Yao, t-mac is not going to carry the offense all season long; and deke couldn't create any shots for himself and other teammates even he was five year younger. That is why we need to super-stars, like Yao and t-mac. When one is off the court, either iinjured or rest, the other one can still run the offense, and when they are both on court, no one can stop us.
The big difference between this year and last year is that without Yao we are still a solid team this year. The keyword though is solid,...no way are we a championship team without Yao, no effing way. I think they key will be that when Yao gets back, he isn't rushed. Now that Deke is playing so well Yao can really take his time to get better, and also when he gets back he doesn't have to play 35 minutes a game right away. We now have that backup center everyone was begging for, so giving Yao a breather every once in a while shouldn't be so scary anymore. As far as thinking we are better off without Yao, I'd say anyone who believes that is a fool.
Rafer's one saving grace is that he avoids turning the ball over (A/TO = 2.2). The recent winning looks to me like playoff-style basketball. Low shooting percentages, but also an emphasis on low turnovers. Most fans underestimate just how bad a turnover is. It gives up a possession and usually leads to an easier basket by the other team. So it's about as bad as two missed shots. I'm pretty sure this is the logic that JVG uses for keeping Rafer in despite the horrible shooting. This must be why JVG refuses to play VSpan, who has an A/TO of 1.1, which is barely better than Juwan Howard. Consider this: suppose Vspan were to take Rafer's minutes, and he commited 1 more turnover per game than Rafer. He'd have to make 2 more shots to make up for that. Assuming our point guard shoots 12 shots per game, that would mean he'd have to have a shooting percentage .17 (=2/12) higher than Rafer. So even if Rafer shoots 35%, VSpan is not comparable unless he can hit 52% of his shots.
One other note: John Lucas's FG% is about 0.1 higher than Rafer (.46 vs .36), and his A/TO is about halfway between VSpan and Rafer. This makes him pretty comparable to Rafer.
So you're saying Yao will only bring TOs which will cost us games? Please. Yao also brings many other things to the table, if you've watched the Rocket games at all you should know .
Besides, our high TOs was because we only had Yao at the time and no T-mac. And our offense was basically forcefeed Yao the ball. Of course we had high TOs with Yao only. When Yao joins T-mac again, TOs might go up, but not drastically because T-mac will prevent our offense from being a forcefeed to Yao type of offense. Our guards can pass to T-mac sometimes instead and T-mac himself has the ability to creatively feed the ball to Yao and other teammates (thus, reducing TOs)
T-Mac's turnovers went down dramatically after the leather ball returned. If you've been watching him, you'll see that it really helped to restore the "vintage" T-Mac -- palming the ball and holding it away from the defender a couple of seconds before he explodes to the hole, among other things.
