The energy drain for the Rockets last year was as much on the offensive side of the floor as the defensive side of the floor. We struggled to score the ball and it wore down our players and on defense the Jazz scored basically at will against us. If we would have got the big defensive stops we needed we would've won the series - we did not. What was the shooting % for the Jazz? We had no bench last year to speak of. Our bench was J-ho and Head two players that's it. This year we are deep and we have a coach that will get the most from the roster for a change. I don't expect the Rockets to be wore down this year during the regular season and I feel we will get past the 1st round for the 1st time in a long time. JVG did a good job overall in the regular season to get the team to the 52 win mark, we were just to thin and tired to go any further.
i dont think people remember but when francis was with us back then he was in the top ten of rebounding guards, now combine that with the tenacity of battier, hayes, and our big man yao, even mutombo, teams wont be getting many 2nd chances, bonzi has the same potential
why quote yourself and worry so much about getting credit for an article that you didnt even write? WHO CARES? this is better for all the people who have pryuen on ignore!
my main concern... how long will it take for our team to "click" with one another? chemistry matters just as much as talent. i hope it doesn't take us long.
this lines made me laugh hard. you just can't be serious... you compare a proven championship team with a superior talent level with the rockets of last season? seriously? first of all, if the rockets would have done it your way they probably wouldn't even have made the playoffs. we needed a lot of hard work by tracy, dikembe, rafer, juwan, shane and even yao in the regular season to get to 52 wins (no, i didn't forget jeff, he was working hard, too). and those 52 wins were a success and a real accomplishment because of that. an accomplishment for all of the people involved. and even if you think the rockets could have been a playoff team with a lot less effort by our core players. last year's team had a good starting five and a very, very sorry bench. the overall level of talent was not really elite. teams that aren't elite need every advantage they can get to be successful. teams like the spurs with an elite level of talent don't need to care about opponents or home court advantage. they are good enough to beat every team in a 7 game series no matter what. the rockets were a team that needed every advantage to even have a chance at all against most of last years playoff teams in the west.
Yao was not tired. He missed most of the season. I don't want to hear that BS. McGrady was not "burnt out" either. He was just thinking of more excuses to make up for his sorry ass not getting us to the next round. Nothing new. TMac will shoulder the blame, but then say stuff like "I was tired, my teammates suck, my coach sucks, the GM sucks, blah blah blah". McGrady hasn't played many games the past couple years. The Rockets lost to Utah simply because they didn't have enough talent, or a deep roster, to win a 7 game series. Put Lebron or Kobe or Wade instead of TMac in the lineup, and we easily win the championship. But that's a different story.
Naaaaaah, not at all. I know there are posters that dislike or hate me. I can't stop that. I'm just surprised that posters can freely create threads without carefully checking, and thereby distracting/diluting the discussion by having posters posting their opinions in 2 separate threads on the same topic at the same time. Maybe our moderator/systems administrator has fallen asleep !!
Who cares? It is all just a matter of opinion anyway. Fans can be more insightful than columnists, just look at Clutch, his writing blows the Chronicle writers away. DD
Did Tmac say that he was tired? I did not read it anywhere. Also put Lebron in the lineup, we still can not win the championship, last year team are not very good for any champ. To me, TMac>Lebron, Lebron's team was defeated by Spurs 0-4. That say something. Kobe and Wade are better than Lebron.
He said it in an interview earlier this summer... I believe it was one of the videos from when he was holding his youth camp.
He writes for the Canadian sports network. He posted a Mavericks review today. I don't know what order he is doing the teams in, but he is going to do one for each day until he gets through them all *should take us to the pre-season start up. There is a link posted that will take you to the original article, then you can get to the mavericks on through a link on the right hand side, or choose NBA... and it will be listed in the first section. Edit... I found what order he is going in... here is all the teams he did so far if you are interested... http://www.tsn.ca/nba/feature/?fid=5305&hubname=
The "Yao is finally living up to expectations" comment really pisses me off because I've been hearing that for the last 3 seasons. Apparently Yao will never actually surpass the expectations, regardless of how well he plays. It's always -- "Well, he's supposed to do that. He's a 7'5 center!" Great argument, I forgot about the long line of 7'5 giants who've dominated in the past.
