I thought Rafer and Shane, in particular, were excellent in this game. Rafer's defense, in general, is pretty underrated in my opinion.
Most of those where when Scola trapped the dribbler on the pick and roll and then went to recover. The weakside defender is supposed to come and pick up his man and then rotate....but that was not happening. Scola is a heck of a player. DD
What about that double fake under the basket? Man, he has some GREAT low post moves. He's playing exactly as advertised now that he is getting comfortable
One thing that made me respect Scola, was his defense on Tim Duncon earlier this year. He challenged all of his shots, and i remember him causing Duncon to miss SEVERAL shots. Let's not forget about his taking charges either, that is defense at it's finest sometimes. In that Spurs game where it looked like Houston was already playing to good to maintain, Scola took a charge from either ginobli or parker at the half-court line bringing the ball up. The fans were already on their feet from our previous offensive play, but then when Scola took that charge, it was just a rush. He's really made some truly outstanding plays that i've never seen of anybody on this team make. How about him stealing the ball during an in-bounds play and tossing it out to Head, that was insane. He makes our starting line-up so much better! Teams are not used to us with this line-up and he really shines when our offense starts to look stale! We can make it so much father in the play-offs because of Scola alone!
Scola's PnR defense is improving. I do think that sometimes he's a little too aggressive trying to trap or draw a charge, and we'd be better served with him just showing and getting back to his man more quickly.
DD, I think in terms of skills, Scola might be even better than Yao, except for FT. He is just smart. Oh btw, you looks have a man crush on Scola.
i'm just glad this scola-wagon is getting full! myself have been a fan for several years. forget about the juwan-mj trade not working, i say morey deserves a raise just for pulling the scola trade alone.
If you check out my posts since the beginning of the Scola trade, I am the one driving this Scola bandwagon!
Just like the rest of you, i'm loving Scola more and more as the season progresses. I guess now that everybody like the Lakers and what not are pulling off their something-for-nothing, highway robbery trades we can always think back to the offseason and remember how we did exactly the same in acquiring Scola.
Since Scola has been the starter at PF. Rockets are 7-0 Averaging 99.29 PPG and giving up 89.71 PPG So much for losing Hayes hurts our defense. DD
I have expected Scola to replace Hayes as a starter sooner or later, the moment he joined the Rockets. He is reigning MVP for FIBA competition and looked dominating for the Argentinian team against teams like US, Puerto Rico and Brazil. He is a fantastic player who is very skillful and hustle too. I hope he'll be our third scorer or go to guy when our stars are off. With that, this means Rafer is now our weakest link.
Yes, but Rafer is now even farther down the pecking order and his load is lessoned, and that is a good....nay....a GREAT thing. DD
If T-Mac wants to do his best Magic Johnson impersonation every night maybe he can take some of the load off of Rafer.
I like Scola as the starter but we've been playing the easiest part of our entire schedule over the past 5+ weeks. A few good teams and a lot of bad ones. The record with Scola, and our overall record, have as much to do with our schedule as the performance of any player(s).
