god forbid we expect more from the best C in the league during the playoffs It could be that Yao is just pacing himselfm although not likely as Yao always gives 100% on the floor, but I would really love to see the "you can't f-ing stop me" Yao. Yao will get his norminal 25/10 either way, he's that good. But if we want to go deep, we will need Yao to be MVPsque, we are not a deep team.
isn't the answer pretty obvious? utah plays yao on defence really really hard (P/R P/R and more P/R). not to mention yao is guarding one of the best PFs so far in the playoffs. AND yao is counted on to do this with zero help defence so that we can guard the 3 effectively, which we did. so on offensive end when yao gets the ball, he takes a few seconds to regroup and get enough breath back to own okur. thus making him seem more passive than usual. okur is just lucky kirilenko finally got a kleenex and help defended a couple of time. otherwise, yao did a good job, just a little slower than his potential. when rockets defence get used to all those damn pick and rolls (very impressive actually by sloan), yao will have to chase lost assignments much less and be much less tired. if yao was played this way in 2005, he woulda had a coronary by the half. props to yao for still pumping in 27 pts, and props to sohrab for reminding us that there are still crazy ppl out there (rockets fans nonetheless??) who think that yao is the same player as he was in 2005... BIG DIFFERENCE PPL
Granted that he shouldn't have started a new thread for this, but I have no idea why people are b1tching at the thread starter. Foul or not, fouled or not, I thought Yao's play was pathetic compared to what we know he can do. On top of that, he's not getting close to the basket. He's missing point blank. He's a step slow, etc etc etc. B1tching at the thread starter is as pathetic as people saying "TMac is a superstar" when he had 1 point in the first half of game 1. His supersterness didn't do jack that half. Neither was Yao doing well in this game.
wow, you must be the thread starters gf or something coming to his rescue... did you not see tmac play last night? did you not see the moves he made, the baskets he scored? yes, he shot 9-29, but he still got the 30+ pts that we needed from him. what do you expect when you face a defense that is as good as ours. and not to mention the fact that we has money from the FT line. tmac and yao are having troubles because the jazz are playing them very well. and even with the jazz's best defense (i'm sure they are putting in all the effort they got), they still manage 31 and 27 pts!!! You must be one crazy dude if you dont see that as amazing, and find a sh*t load of negatives from it. even if yao is a step slow, or if tmac went 0-6 in one half, we have no right to say crap about them if it is the great jazz defense that is causing it, and still win. as long as tmac and yao are putting in all the effort they have, which I know they are, to win, there shouldn't be threads like this popping up, and especially not support for the thread, a day after a huge win. buddy, leave it up to JVG to point out what they did wrong, at least he will have constructive criticism. and i'm sure yao is constantly trying to get as much blood pumping through his 7'6 body as he can to please fans like you. yes i know this is a msg board, and I dont want to encroach on your right to give your opinion, but honestly all I can say is COME ON, SHOW SOME LOVE.
stupid thread. it's playoff dude. yao DID perform not as well as you'd expected, but considering his contribution to the whole tactics, he's doing great.
He can play a LOT better, but so can the whole team........ That being said....being up 2-0 ROCKS !!! DD
Just needed Yao to throw one or two of Booziers shots back to China so he couldn't have got in such a comfort zone.
I don't agree with the tone of the thread, and yeah, "Yao of 2005" is a little much, but the OP does have a point. Yao isn't playing as effectively as he was to start the year. That's fine against Utah, but if we're to have any chance against Dallas, he needs to turn back into the monster.
didnt we win? after the first game, its "TMax doesn't deserve the credit...TMax didn't get enough credit...Yao's contribution was minimal...Yao was the reason we won, not TMax...my panties are on too tight" and now this? plz T-H-I-N-K before you post.
Despite his stats, Yao did play pathetically last night. He was also horrible defensively on a couple of those PnRs towards the end of the game, when he decided to leave Boozer completely open for a dunk/layup. He did get owned by Boozer in this game... it was sad. I'm not saying he's not important or that he's not good, its just that he was playing subpar and that was a fact despite the win. I have been harping on this ever since Yao came back, he's been shooting WAY too many jumpers fading away from the basket. He really needs to mix it up more. In fact when T-mac was jacking up jump shots in the beginning, I thought, oh crap... its going to be one of those days. Thank god he decided to drive it in more, or else this series was going to be tied at 1 a peice.
Utah and Lakers were the worst among all western conference playoffs teams. They were in serious slump before the playoffs started. Rox should handle Utah in 5 even though T-Mac and Yao are not on top of their game. But T-Mac and Yao should play better going forward. And I think they will. So far, Yao's performance is subpar despite of the stats. And I don't understand why he had no turnovers recorded last night, I saw his ball got stolen mutliple times while he was posting up.
look at how much effort utah is putting in to defending yao, and he still gets almost 30 pts. once our outside shooters get their rhythm, no team will be able to beat us, not even dallas. because once they have to pay more attention to battier/alston/head, yao will have plenty of room to get 30+ pts in 30 minutes.. and also get the opposing big men into foul trouble due to the lack of help defense
yea me too.. i think its cause he either picked the ball back up (after okur poked at it a few times), team mate picked it up, or counted as a shot
Yao is not 100% back, he needs to show that kind of superstar confidence. Look at TMac, he did not shoot very last night, but he always gave us the impression that he can win.
