Athleticsm is a problem for our team. You can see how it is important for a team from the last shot Granger made in Yesterday's game. He missed the shot and then made up for it through his leaping ability. In our team, neither Artest nor Scola can jump, not to mention Yao. Personally, I think one of the reasons Ron Artest was blocked so many times is that he can't jump. You can see how Landry is that important for us because of his leaping ability and athleticsm. Did you see that dunk over Mupphy? Comparing to most NBA teams, our team's athleticsm is averagely low. How can we compete with teams like Lakers, Celtics, Hornets, etc? Maybe it's time to change.
Rockets can already compete with (and beat) the Hornets. Landry gets blocked as much as anybody. Rockets either have athleticism in undersized or non-rotation players (Landry, Brooks, Wafer, Head, Dorsey). Or the players with the decent length are plodders (Yao, Artest, Battier, McGrady, now Barry). Rafer is surprisingly the one with average height and quickness for his position. But what do the Rockets change to? Would you really just deal for athletes rather than have good chemistry?
Remember years back Kenny Thomas trying to play 3 launching outside jumpers.... If Landry's having a tough time defending power forwards, shudder to think how he'll guard the Danny Grangers and Rudy Gays of the league.
Rocket manager, please cut Adelman, he does not suit the rocket very much! Hoped that Fangandi can come back to continue to teach!
welcome to the bbs. and id like to remind people that its not right to make fun of some ones grammar when they are trying to post in a second language. however, in this case... fangandi? awesome.
the rockets need height, i love landry, but he gets neutralized against athletic power forwards with height, and scola has good height but he isn't a good leaper. if scola could jump, he'd be a beast
at least VANGUNDY can give us an identity. we're like the phoenix suns now, a mixture of a bunch of loose screws.
I can't believe this team still struggles with athleticism -- it seems we been trying to fill this void for the last 4 years. We could really use a guy like G. Green off the bench -- oh well...
if yao could jump just enough to finish at the rim he'd be one of the greatest to ever play the game. i agree completely, this team needs hight. scolandry produces, period. at the 4 i'm comfortable with our platoon. however, it's when one of them has to slide to the 5 that we encounter problems. we need a backup center. when are we signing deke?
Fangandi...priceless I completely agree that we need more athleticsm. That's the reason why we miss out on so many loose balls or rebounds that could easily be grabbed by the player that jumps higher or quicker.
This team has needed some athletes for awhile now. Sadly I do not see this need being addressed anytime soon. Also people alway bring up Mutumbo but Deke is a year older and I know he is not in basketball shape. Also Deke has not been what you can call athletic for years. Barring some kind of trade our rockets maybe stuck with what they currently have. As far as atheletes are concerned.
When are we going to go away from the idea of positions and just play basketball? Most people have the idea have the idea that there must be 5 very distinctive positions on the floor. I'm tired of hearing things like "can Landry play the 3"? Who cares?! Just play the damn game.
That particular play exposed more about our lack of height and length more than it was about athleticism. Plus that was a case of poor rotation and weakside help, although you could argue that Landry was not quick enough to keep Granger in front of him on that drive. Oh, and a particular 7 footer could have greatly helped in that situation.
Lakers and Celtics have height but they are not that athletic. We maybe need height but overall health. Everybody healthy, Battier, T-Mac, Yao etc are good enough to compete with anybody any day.
It should be Mr. Fan. Jeff has lots of fans in China, although he doesn't even know how to play the game of basketball. The reason why most Chinese fans love him is he knows how to use Yao. He never criticizes Yao even if Yao sucks. He takes the responsibility. Look at RA! He just complains too much.
