I said Lakers, as weird as that sounds, I dont think we can contain Deron Williams.. We shown we can stop Kobe, we can guard Farmar or whoever the Pg is for Lakers, we can settle Scola on Odom, Mutumbo on Bynum and Landry on Gasol.. Even though Gasol might be too much for Landry, I still like this matchup over the Utah jazz where we have to guard Korver, Brewer, Williams, Kirilenko, boozer, Okur
Also, Id like to add that the Jazz will most likely get homecourt and I think theyre 35-4 at home... so yeah
That was a different team in a different time. If the Rockets put up a good fight in Utah at the end of the season, we will learn more. I remember last year folks were saying DWill would dominate Rafer. Well, aside from Rafer's poor shooting in the series(a glaring weakness), he held his own pretty well. It was Boozer who really killed us, along with Fisher and "I feel like playing today" AK47 in the latter part of the series.
lakers. Cant see bynum playing at 80% of his capabilities and the other players in the squad other than kobe and fisher are not playoff tested. Unlike utah, who have only change brewer with fisher in the starting line-up, kirilenko who is not complaining and they added another 3p shooter from their western conference finals team of last season. besides, there are players from utah that rox have a hard time going against, i doubt bjax could guard Deron williams, where deron williams will just flick off alston or brooks. Of all the good work that hayes could do with guarding boozer, rox will be stuck playing with hayes, against a very good defensive team of utah. Compare this to lakers, if lakers have both trevor ariza and bynum fully recovered, i doubt there is team that could play them, but as of now, with this 2 still injury doubt, fisher and gasol still have niggling injuries, and kobe still have his finger problem, this is the best time to play lakers. Couple that with the match-up between gasol and scola. Scola seems to defend better against low post players compare to mobile pf that do jump shots.
Guys now that i look at our roster it just looks incredibly messy, everyone has to acknowledge the fact we wont get anywhere deep with rafer running the point. We NEED to give Brooks some playing time just to see how he does. Rookies have gone a long way to prove themselves in the playoffs, if he does bad just take him out. Also a healthy Landry would take us far, but the way he has been playing I dont see us going anywhere. For us to even remotely match up well with thses teams TMAC is going to have to go for 40+ scola 20+, and i want to see ALOT more of NOVAK. The dude is a machine we dont even use.... Woods isnt too shabby so plzz play him Adelman if we have a comfortable lead let some rookies in to see how they do, isnt that how we spotted Landry? Give them a chance to shine. The most i see us getting anywhere is ridding Alston and grabbing a nice free agent next season. Rid Hayes as well his defense isnt worth the liability. Who saw Utah murder SA yest? They are damn near impossible to beat at home, and i dont see the refs calling the game close to fair....its going to be just like that series vs dallas 3 yrs ago
We want the Jazz. Do not fall for that BS that the Spurs pulled the other night. I recall the Lakers with no Gasol and Bynum opening a new hole in them in Utah not long ago. What bothers us the most is length. The Lakers have 2 athletic 7-footers up front. On top of that they got Odom(who's been great the past month) who is a mismatch(at least supposed to be) to anyone he matches up with. Even though they're an average team at best defensively, that length can lead to a lot of offensive boards for them even though we may get the initial stops. However if Bynum isn't back then we could take them. IMO they need both Gasol and Bynum(min 80%) to beat us. The Jazz don't have that length, and their lone 7-footer Okur just roams on the perimeter. Though he's good for a 20-10 game once in a while he won't be a major factor against us cause we can have any of our 3 headed PF monster cover him out there. We can rebound with them and get our defensive boards. We can also play Boozer better than Yao did with another PF who can step out on his jumper and also has the foot speed to stay with him. They are also a poor defensive team especially on the road and if we win the games we supposed to we can have homecourt on them. They never were able to guard wing players(going back to Stockton/Malone era). Note the fact that AK-47 is a weakside helper NOT a man up defender. Deron Williams is the lone mismatch. If Rafer can hold him to averages of 17pts/7asts in the series and cover for it with a 14pts/5asts effort we can take them easily. Our 3 PF must be able to give us a combined 27/20 to overcome a likely 20/10 from Boozer.
i think we have the best shot against the lakers with their uncertainty in who is playing. We also have an opportunity to get hca with them as well.... lakers would have to fall to the 4th seed and utah moves up to 3rd. Then we catch that 5th seed with a better record than lakers and we have tiebreaker so that gives us a better shot at having hca against them.
With six games left the Rockets are one game out of 2nd and a half game out of 6th. Three games out of 1st, and three and half out of 7th. I wonder what the probability is of us playing a team other than LA or Utah.
If we play the Lakers with Homecourt advantage that would be a great series. Is it easier than Utah, I don't know but I like Mutombo in the middle shutting down lakers drives and Battier on Kobe and T-Mac doing what he wants as well as Rafer, Bobby and Aaron have field nights against the their point guards.
we're going to lose in the first round no matter who we play. i'd hate to play utah because it'd just be a rerun of last year. if we're going to lose i wanna see a different team like the Lakers.
guess the NY giants should not have shown up to the super bowl then our chances of winning are not very high, but it depends on if we click on all cylinders. if we play defense and rebound like we did during the streak, along with guys knocking down more of their shots, i like my chances.
This depends completely on if Bynum comes back and is healthy. With Gasol and Bynum, we just can't matchup with them without Yao. I think we can beat them if they only have Gasol.
watcha mean 3 headed PF? landry has lost his explosiveness this season, its practically done for him i doubt he could be affective, basically he is the x factor in either series, if he played like he did vs the mavs we got it. Also plz keep rafer away adelman, well if hes shooting 20% again plz take him out and dont hesitate to put brooks in
