After watching the replay, I thought that shot by Tmac was so in ... But ya. If it had went in, everyone would praise Tmac but w/e. I was kind of watching the game on and off. I think we did very good with the offensive rebounding for some stretches. Tmac was doing fairly well to me ... Considering he hadta do so much. He gave it his all and his final shot rimmed out. I think he thought it was good. Oh well. Hmm, Landry really didn't get a lot of looks in the game. I noticed a lot of foul calls ... particularly loose ball fouls at the end of the game by scola and co. But scola did pretty well. He's pretty consistent with his production. For the most part, I thought Chuck and Landry did well on the one on one coverage. Artest is a freakishly hard matchup and hayes did pretty well. Some of T-Mac's shots were a bit difficult. Some more difficult than they had to be. Part of me thinks Bobby shoulda saw a lot more action ... Dude was hitting a lot more shots than rafer today, not to mention the past few games it seems. There's my random thoughts about tonight's game. Where was Hakeem??? Did they mention him at all??? (I'm actually watching some awesome old school games of our clutch city years ... Dream is unbelievable. Heck, that whole team is so unbelievable to watch. Horry is a beast ... and Clyde glides ... haha. Forgot how good they were or I didn't realize what I was witnessing more than a decade ago.)
US as in the FANS. If you read the predicted game results, almost everyone was predicting a victory by 10+ points with smilies such as And now look at them...so angry
Another example of why trading bonzi was a bad move. The kings played without a pg for much of the 4th. Since the rox have no size in the backcourt and the type of player artest is, we had to play hayes. Everyone is screaming about landry, but the team put a lot of faith in a rookie with injury history.
I sure as hell didn't. This game scared me just as much as the Spurs game. We've had problems with the Kings since Artest seems to kill us every time out(and did so again tonight).
Man what game were you watching? T-mac was one of the ONLY aggressive players on the rockets at the end of the game.. Of all games, you cannot blame McGrady for this one. I loved his aggressiveness. He was just wasn't getting any calls..
even a huge critic in fran blinebury thought tmac did his best tonight. shots were just not falling for anyone, including tmac in the 4th. but tmac was aggressive and that's all u want him to do. he did his thing. the game should never have gotten to that point where he would be trailing. if we had played some semblance of defense and stopped them, we win. we were never a team that lives and die by our offense. our calling card is defense. we haven't played any since the streak.
The thing that bugs me is that seemingly every time the Rockets would start to get something going, there would be a bogus call or two that would slow their momentum and give the Kings the ball back or free throws. I mean, the team goes on a 10-2 run, the Kings miss, and they call Battier for an offensive foul because Martin falls down. Team gets up 4 or 5 again and they call Hayes for some bugus fouls just because the other guy fell down or something. One even took points off the board that Rafer made. Then the bogus calls against Sacremento seemed to come when nobody was on any kind of run. You could tell that in teh third and early on in the 4th quarter the Rockets were frustrated by the officiating. It was kinda funny seeing T-Mac flop on defense after he got mugged on offense with no call, then got the call on defense. First time I had ever seen him flop.
I hate to be that person, but the officiating really was terrible. It was totally inconsistent for both sides, but I felt we got the s*** end of the stick more often than not. I just didn't understand 75% of the calls. Really close game. I don't blame T-mac for not being able to pull off that last shot... He really brought it. It's too bad that we lost at the very end.
I agree there but on the other hand this game was so close so you can't really blame Rick. You wanna have McGrady out there. As for the last shoot of course it was not the best, he was doubled. But that's not the key. We should worry about our defense and Rafer's game
I am glad that we are still showing the problems and looking about the level of a team which should not be in the playoffs. It means that Coach A and Morey will have to roll their sleeves up this off season and make several sharp moves to bring a very ordinary team to contender level. I am not looking forward to seeing us in the playoffs- Coach and the team seem to have gone soft- where is the defense , where is the rotation, why is Landry now being used as fodder and not as one of our prime scoring options ?
The sooner people realize this is a avg roster, the better. The rox have to play to their ceiling to beat people. They can't out-talent many teams in the nba. What frustrating is the team isn't that far, but they keep fooling themselves with this regular season play that they won't change. They got smaller by giving away tracy and shanes backup. They still don't have a legit 3rd scorer because they gave him away also. They hitched their depth to a rookie with prior injury problems, a d-leaguer in hayes, 2-1 dimensional players in novak, and a backup tweener whose last effective days were 5,6 yrs ago. What do we expect.
Scola was kicking ass today. Im still not understanding why they passed Rafer passed the ball to Chuck for a hookshot... I mean... wtf! Even if Scola doesnt make the shot, he will probably get fouled. Sigh... To win consistently you have to play smart.
Hey look, we're not winning the championship without Yao. If we make the playoffs that's awesome. but i figure every loss is one spot better in the draft. I thought TMac played hard tonight, and the rest of team gave a good effort too. The Kings just benefited from some very poor officiating.
Rockets never win a close game! never in my memory! There is no one can be trusted in the last minutes like this game!
T-mac Scola were the only ones that did well. Like I said before, Alston is not a good starting pg, he is a backup pg. We need a starting pg that can pass like Miller. This summer Morey will have to look for a great pg. We did make bad decisions in the last minutes. At the end of the game, I wanted to hit Hayes and Alston. I was so angry. That was a game that we should have won. The officials were horrible!!!!!! Landry will need to be effective because we wont go anywhere with him getting 0 point. Aldelman should do something about that. Next 4 games are must wins if we want the home court.
I forgot to say that Scola have improved for the free throws. He did shoot 10-10 and 10-12 in the Spurs game. That guy works really hard!!! Also the funny was that at the trade deadline, when there were rumors and we were getting Artest for Brooks, some people were saying that we shouldnt do that trade.
We're looking a lot like the team between the 6-1 start and the beginning of this year .... We're getting blown out by the powers in the West and having a lot of trouble in every game now. I hate to say it, but it looks like an easy first round exit again for TMac and the Rockets.
Keys to the Loss: 1. Free throw shooting; what a killer. 2. Rafer, what me thinking? 3. The officials, some amazingly bone headed calls? 4. Lack of defensive intensity, where did it go? 5. Not TMac, he hasn't played at this level for awhile, All Star like. 6. I like Chuck, but we are seeing way too much of him. 7. No one passes the ball to Landry any more, what's up? 8. Not Scola, solid performance again. 9. Hakeem didn't play. 10. The Kings, they played really well, even on defense.
