I believe T-Mac is our best player when both are healthy. No, it's not just because i am a T-Mac fan, but it is just he can do it all. He can do anything on offense, but on defense, when he tries, he is pretty good there as well.
Scola has played with both and this season I agree with him. Hopefully Yao will get his health together next season so this team can do something special.
There's a 99% chance McGrady won't become what he was up through 05-06. Yao is the best player on the Rockets barring some type of miracle recovery. McGrady is going to have an operation going into the offseason so it's highly unlikely he'll come into training camp in shape. (Again)
they single covered him last yr, where yao had his best offensive scoring season statistically. they have done when they faced us this yr. this is one of the teams, along with the lakers and detroit, who rarely double yao. the reason utah doubled tmac early in this series is b/c they didn't respect our role players. since rafer had been back, the doubles haven't been coming as quickly.
I think all Rockets' players' (including Tmac,Scola,etc) saying "Yao is the best player" is just a reminder to the media and fans that they have done their best and overachieved what they have done without Yao. While they are not really defining who is the best in deed when they said that. So we needn't read too much into it and just really appreciate what they are doing.
Last year Yao was hobbled going into the series. He wasn't himself and could not dominate. Okur actually played him well. Reason being, Yao wasn't 100%. Factor in Yao's new found stamina... You better believe they would double team him.
they never doubled him this yr in any games though. in the 2nd game of the season, they left yao several times to double tmac and yao capitalize late in games. most teams double yao 90%, but utah is one of those teams that rarely double him (along with the lakers and pistons). they have the big men to guard yao decently well. that's not a diss at yao though. sloan never double anybody. hell, he didn't double kobe this yr when he went off for 52 pts in 3 quarters v. the jazz. that is what surprising for me when he doubled/tripled tmac so hard in the first 3 games of the series. he has gone back to more single coverage since rafer has returned and only help when tmac is using the pick and roll or posting up.
At this point of their careers, Yao is the better player. Why argue about it? They like eachother, no chemistry problems, and T-Mac likes to defer to Yao. Why wouldn't you want your most consistent player who's nigh on unguardable to be the first option? His shooting % is going to be higher than T-Mac's simply because they play different positions, and Yao is suited to his position well. I just said it in another thread, we are going to be well off next season, with a whole season of the Adelman experience under our belt, a healthy Yao Ming as the first option and a healthy T-Mac willingly playing second fiddle. How many teams can say they have a T-Mac caliber player playing SECOND option? Not many. Our PF problem is relatively solved (Scolandry should be a good 1-2 punch, switch the styles up) and I hope we all see, that even if Rafer isn't the answer, he's great at running this team and unless we can find someone better, there's no point in arguing that he's staying solid as our starting PG.
i agree with you 100% that yao is the more consistent offensive player on our team BY FAR. he should take more shots than tmac b/c he shoots a higher % and tmac should be more of a playmaker (which will happen next yr and already was the case this yr when both are playing). i don't think that equates to being the best player though. if yao was 100% healthy right now, i don't think he'd play more than 30 minutes b/c of his inability to guard any of their big man. and you can also say that v. some teams b/c he can easily be taken out fairly easily with double teams (like how adelman sat him out v. the blazers when we were playing well without him on the road in the reg. season). yao just has too many weaknesses and we tend to play better without him v. some teams.
As compared to 6 billion people, any NBA player, even the 15th man on a team, would be in the 99.99 percentile.
Some of yous guys need to look up 'hyperbole'. When a statement like "so and so is one of the best" it's not meant to be a precise statement. He's definitely not one of the worst players. Sensationalism sells I guess. Why else are so many magazine covers filled with ads for top ten lists or the best of this or that? We have to know they're full of it in some way. I doubt most of us take them at their word.
But see, you gotta look at it this way: who's going to perform better on a nightly basis? Yeah for one or two or games here and there T-Mac will explode and play better than Yao, and overall T-Mac has accomplished more things in his career (individual awards wise of course), but I meant at this point of their careers. T-Mac has the ability to play better than Yao, but I think there's no denying who wants it more, at this point of their careers. Yao is going to be the most consistent player every night, night in and night out. Yeah, T-Mac has more potential to have a big game, but you gotta look at the production. It's not like Yao consistently averages 10/5. The guy averages 22/10 nightly. Also, Yao is a big man, so even though he may have some weaknesses 1 on 1 defensively, he is a presence who changes shots and grabs rebounds simply because of his size. No one fancies having to take a shot over Yao Ming, or at least very few do. Offensively, he creates a mismatch on pretty much anyone. He's also a willing passer from the post and a capable one at that, he just needs some work on it and he'll be unstoppable.
I don't like the notion who's better. Both are great players in his own right. If you say who's more valuable, , my votes goes to Yao, just because it's probably easier build around him, barring injury. But they need each other to win. At this point, if we put Yao on the market, we can pick and choose pretty much whoever we want except for 3 to 4 players maybe. That cant be said about Tmac.
Actually, Okur defended Yao 1on1 most of the time during last year's playoff, and Yao couldn't do much against him. I still remember Okur made the **** comments about him "figured Yao out", and Yao was never responded to that. You would think Yao is more valuable to the Rockets because it's easier to build a team around a center, but the fact is that Yao has missed many games in his short NBA career, you cannot be more valuable to the team when not on the court. The same thing is true with TMac, who has a history of injury prone.
Yao is just too tired, I think coach overuses him. haix, whatever i hope he could play the whole season.
