Ball moving better without T-Mac?

Let me add something to your post, Tmac-lover.

Tmac should move his ass a little bit to make the offense flow; he should stop making bonehead jumpers with 20 seconds left on the shot clock; he should attack the rim more like rafer did; he should let the ball getting out his hand sooner if he is doubled; he should contribute to the defense; he shouldn;t smell on the bench like a b**** when the team is losing....

 

The ball is moving better without Tracy because you don't have him in the lineup holding the ball at the elbow for 8-10 seconds on every posession down the floor. Tracy was a Ball stopper because he would be isolated in the offense looking to go 1 on 5 so the ball just stopped in his hands when he touched it.


Plus he had the basketball trotting up the floor and about time he reached half court the shot clock was at 16 and then you had 8 more seconds of him isolating his man for his 1 on 5 attack.



The ball movement is clearly better and you can throw the statistics out the window because we are defintely scoring more points because we have 4 and 5 guys in double figures instead of 2 with 20 and 1 with 9 points. Not only is there beter ball movement but guy's are setting screens and moving their bodies and the weak schedule crap that mcgrady thinks is why we are playing better is bull because with him we struggled against sacramento,memphis,Phila and a few other weak teams but now we score and move the ball better against the same weak teams with him out the lineup.




We need him in the long haul but weak schedule and all we are moving the baskteball better we are playing HARDER and TOGETHER,which wasn't displayed with tracy in the lineup.

 

Let me add something to your post, Tmac-lover.

Tmac should move his ass a little bit to make the offense flow; he should stop making bonehead jumpers with 20 seconds left on the shot clock; he should attack the rim more like rafer did; he should let the ball getting out his hand sooner if he is doubled; he should contribute to the defense...I can add more

 

Keep these things in consideration:

When Tracy is out...

- The ball goes to Yao in the post more. Many times he catches the ball with his back to the basket and surveys the court before making a move to score. No assists there.

- More players get their hands on the ball in 1-on-1 situations with the green light to shoot as opposed to looking for Tracy.

- Guys like Rafer, Luther, Aaron, and Bonzi seem more confident to push the ball on the break and take it all the way on their own, or pull up for a jumper.

- The Rockets may be assisting on a lower percentage of their shots, but they're making a higher percentage of those shots. 46.4% in this 8 game stretch, opposed to 43.6% before it. This is even with Bonzi shooting blanks most nights lately. Overall, this tells me that the ball is finding the right player at the right time, whether it's an assist or not.

 

Just imagine what the team's assist% would have been if they weren't shooting so poorly.

My opinion is that the team is not doing anything drastically differently. It's not like Tracy said "Screw the system." He was singing it's praises and was saying some of the losing after 6-1 was just growing pains.

Ball stopped moving when shots were being missed, again and again and again. Even still, the ball only stopped moving as much later on in the game when each possession was that much more critical, and do you all remember why we lost those games?

NOT Tracy. PG turnovers.

 

Ball movement meaning we are not waiting so long to get into things.Tracy has a tendency to wait too long to make his move to only settle for a 20 footer which leads to long rebounds and poor transition defense for us. We have to make quick decisons and not waste the shot clock just for the sake of going 1 on5. We had too many shot clock violations when tracy was in the lineup,Too many forced plays and just a lot of stiffness.




You can't hold the ball for 10 seconds and make your move because you are telegraphing your posessions.Teams knew what we were going to do because we set up our game plan in their face. Then he wants to dribble the ball too much and it takes him half of the shot clock to bring the ball up the floor and then the defense is locked in and our bail out offense was tracy shooting a contested 20 footer. The game is quicker,you have 8 seconds to bring the ball up the floor not 10 seconds like in the old day's which was where jeff and pat riley have their minds.




The ball is moving better guy's are not forcing the offense to one side.We struggled early on because you had tracy,james,bonzi all in the game at the same time,none of them reversed the freakin basketball. James would just force the play to one side,now you are seeing guy's not waste any time if they don't have anything on one side, they are swinging the basketball even with Yao in the post, they are swinging the ball to the other side.




Tracy can fit in but he's going to have to sacrfice soem 1 on5 and save it for the fourth quarter when we really need this explosion.

 

I thought it was the endless supply of T-Mac 22 foot jumpshots with 20 seconds left on the shot clock in the 4th.

Seriously, how hard is it to realize the offense changed back to the T-Mac iso stuff when Adelman was trying to get the role players into more comfortable shots. Why not go back to what they did last year, if it means hitting shots. Didn't work, but hey, at least he tried something.

 

If you want an unsmartass answer from me, durvasa, this is what I think it is:

Yes, the teams we've played against have been par or below par on defense. The only team that's considered a defensive elite, stats-wise, was Boston. Ball movement is better--or looks better, depending on the fan,--is because the role players NEED to move around and get open looks. They don't have McGrady there to give them the pass for an open 3. They can't rely on him to do that anymore. Now, of course, this makes them look helpless because of their reliance on McGrady, but that's only because they had to. He's the star, he's the one banking 18 mil a year, so he's the one that has to do it all. It would be all fine and dandy if we actually had PURE shooters. Battier, Alston, James, and co aren't PURE shooters. Head and Novak are probably the only pure shooters we have. These other guys rely on a different type of game--one that involves penetrating and getting shots closer than 24 feet. If those shots starts to fall THEN their shots from outside will hit at a more consistent rate.

Having McGrady be the main scoring threat AND the ball handler is just not going to work. That involves a lot of shot-clock foreplay on his end and that either sets the team up for:

1. A last second drive to the basket by McGrady looking for a foul
2. A drive and dish out to an open shooter (Battier or Rafer) who has to shoot with 1 or 2 seconds left on the shot clock
3. A low post pass to Yao with about half the shot clock left to work with.

Aside from Head's insistence on throwing bounce passes to Yao and Bonzi's insistence that he can dribble-drive, the ball movement is better because they have to rely on each other and not solely on McGrady. It is then magnified because the same players that would only dare to shoot back then only when they're open for a 3 are now having easier opportunities to score because they have "freedom" to drive in or take a mid-range shot instead of a 3. Luther is actually putting up mid-range shots. Rafer is penetrating for easier shots.

That's why ball movement "is better".

 

How often was this happening during games 1-10 vs games 10-25. T-mac was doing the iso stuff because Adelman told him to. He put in the JVG stuff to get the ROLE players more comfortable shots so they might start hitting.

 

Tracy did say screw the sytem,they asked him on TNT, the denver game and he question teh philosphy of the sytem openly.


Tracy McGrady on the Rockets lack of identity as a team: “We don’t know our identity right now, we started off great at the beginning of the season and ever since we’ve been up and down. It’s been tough for us as a ball club to figure out what kind of team we are going to be. Are we going to be a running team, are we going to be a half court team? We don’t know."


And he said this same mantra in the houston chronicle and I belive he privatley said that he didn't think the offense will work as well. He was trying to throw adelman under the freakin bus and then he was talking about,I don't know how serious thi knee is it could be catostrophic and blah blah blah.

 

I think this argument is dumb the only reason we were a good team last year was because of our ball movement and guys making three's around T-mac and Yao.

 

He put this in because he seen guy's were fixed on jeff and they didn't want to cHange their style of play but they didn't realize that what jeff did last season was a miracle and those type of seasons don't come too often but it didn't last because they still had a first round exit.


Rick did that to keep the ship afloat but the league get's better every year and teams find new ways of exploiting what worked on them from last season. Teams get better and running jeff vangundy's slow system wore down because the league got better that style didn't have a long life span.Tracy has to learn a new way of playing basketball,PERIOD,POINT,BLANK.

 

I think the ball movement applies to the extra passes we are seeing in the offensive sets that were not there when we ran a lot of "post up Yao, post up/iso tracy plays". Now I can almost count a minimum of 5 passes on every offensive possession that previously was just Rafer taking it up the court and handing it off to Tracy/Yao and then maybe another pass or another swing pass after that because Yao/Tracy decided they couldn't score

Assisted field goals might not be the best measurement either as I am seeing a lot of driving now from all players off of passes that was not there before. And I don't think that you get an assist from doing this. I think that when people talk about ball movement, they are also referring to this which was defininitely not there the first month or so of the season. I don't think we are just standing in the corners any more waiting for passes from TMac/Yao.

 

Having difficulty finding "Screw the system" or any kind of questioning of the philosophy in there somewhere. He said they were searching after changing the offense for the 3rd time since training camp. I would agree with that. Thats where he felt the offense wouldnt work. If guys cant hit open shots, there aren't many offenses that DO work.

Didnt see him throw Adelman under the bus either.

 

Tracy DID play a new style. Just watch the clips of the Lakers game on TNT day 1. Tracy didnt change until Adelman changed.

 

Thats the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. They HAVE to stand around? Are you serious? It is possible to move when one has the ball. When T-Mac has the ball, the guys can move, cut, set screens, ect. You say they are waiting for McGrady to decide to shoot or pass, well, if you cut and set screens, he will find you. Unless he is telling everyone to clear out, those guys don't HAVE to just stand there.

When McGrady has the ball, and everyone is moving around, we have the defense on their knees. McGrady is not the only "initiator and facilitator" in the NBA. By your logic, any team with a "initiator and facilitator", has role players that just stand around because they HAVE to.

 

The laker game was like a training camp game.The next game against utah, he was chucking but it worked.Guy's couldn't touch the ball in this game, he played the same way from that game on and then he quit on the system and openly question how it wouldn't work.


New style means he is going to need to learn how to move the ball. He has to learn to be a ball mover not a draw and double passer, but a ball mover.He knows how to draw attention and pass out of double teams, he is going to have to learn to move the ball.



Adelman changed because they were stuck on the past 4 years, he didn't want to pull teeth and take 2 season for soem guy's to get the past out of their heads. Yao nad mac were both complaining so he gave them something comfortable.

 

He needs to learn hwo to be a ball mover,plain and simple