Well, I think by now it is obvious how important Shane Battier is to this team, he allows Tmac to rest on the other team's weakest offensive player, and he closes down on the weakside stopping all those putbacks when Yao rotates over. Shane Battier is the key to this team's defense, he is the best team defender the Rockets have, and him being out has exposed the team. Our defense sucks right now, but the Sherrif is coming, and his name is Shane. Please no more undervaluing what he does for the team, the guy is flat out key to the team's success. DD
Transition defense. I wonder how many fast break points we give up in games Shane doesn't play versus games he does play.
Keep dreaming DD. Shane is not gonna seal all the holes left in our D. The coaching staff is clearly not doing their research, or the players are not executing well, or both...
Half of Battiers critics don't even pay attention to all that. They just look at his lack of offense at times. In the game thread all people did was bash Battier by saying Wafer >>>> Battier on offense. Well offense isn't this teams problem IT'S THE DEFENSE!
Today that was true, but a lot of those were our guys being loose with the ball, they were just sloppy, and lots of those slap away steals led to fast break points. Shane though, helps in so many ways, he covers for so many sins on defense and hits that corner 3 to provide spacing for Yao. DD
If this season continues the way its going, I'm going to blame Ron Artest for messing up our chemistry. But I had a question for both DD and durvasa, heck anyone, do you really think Adelman is the right coach for us? His system is just not right for our team.
He is a good defender... but lets not make him out to be the sole reason why this team has absolutely zero energy on the defensive end right now (just like T-mac is not the sole reason why this team is slumping overall right now). Playing defense is a mindset that this team no longer really buys into. They don't play help defense (by design), they don't get back in transition, they nearly always get burned on their half-ass double-teams. Its painful.... especially since they've done nothing but defend the hell out of the ball since 2003 (even before Shane was here).
Shane is not coming back till Saturday against the Knicks and Artest will probably be a game time decision.
Roxfan123, I don't think there are a lot of holes, mainly one each possession, our team defense and rotation is the problem. DD
trust me when i say battier's defense is underrated.... with that said, he didn't play all that well defensively in the short amount of games he played so far. for some reason, our play on both ends of the court is more contagious than usual hopefully when shane comes back, he will be fully healthy.
Honestly, I don't know, I wanted Rudy T back.....I was hopeful with Adelman, and think he is a good coach, but I do question his motivation of players. I have been consistent though, I gave JVG 3+ years, got to give Rick the same consideration. DD
All the negative cry baby post need to quit.You cannot win in this league without building any type of team chemistry. How can we have that defensively or offensively if your team has been injured since the first game of the season. This injury vibe has created inconsistent lineups which produce inconsistent negative results.
I know he is a glue guy, but Shane alone is gonna fix our team defense? Should we put him on the court or the coaching seat? And honestly, are you satisfied with coach's timeouts and substitutions?
This season again is all about HEALTH .How can you prepare defensively every game when you never know every game who has what assignment defensively.
I "wonder" the same thing. Except I already know Battier is putrid in transition O so it's at best a wash.
I agree with this to an extent, and I also fault Adelman for not doing a better job of plugging his player into a role and leaving them there. That is one thing that JVG did a lot better, if there was an injury, JVG did not switch everyone's role around, he just simply inserted the next guy in line to play that one particular role. An example would be Aaron Brooks who has struggled since going back to the bench and having to play alongside Rafer.....Brooks is better just controlling the ball and going......penetrate....as a SG it looks like he is thinking way too much. And all of the players have had this problem...Scola and Landry...PF and Center..... Artets/Tmac...SG/SF The roles are just not clearly defined, part of that is injury, part of it is poor definition by Adelman. I do think Shane would help a lot more than we realize. DD
