The Rockets biggest problem defensively remains their interior defense, lack of size inside, and inability to protect the rim... esp when Yao is on the bench. So I'm watching the Nuggets throw down dunk after dunk and get about 7 or 8 And1's at the basket. I'm screaming at the tv for Adelman to put in Deke. What's going on????!!!!!! Adelman just about cost us the game by leaving Deke on the bench, esp with Yao in foul trouble for much of the 2nd half. (it's not like the Birdman would've started raining three's on Deke) I just really don't understand. This isn't the only game I've noticed this since Deke's been back. Yeah... we play 4 on 5 at the offensive end but these days our other four are way better than they were last year. He could be especially vital when Battier's out of the game since Barry is more likely to get beat off the dribble or might need help with his man posting him up. I'm not asking for 20 minutes of Deke. I'm not asking for him to play every night. But there are nights when he can give us a huge 10 minutes that could easily make the difference between a win and loss. This year we'll need every W we can get. PS And I haven't even mentioned the benefit of a Deke elbow or just the emotional lift one of his blocks seems to give the team!
Watching Deke against a run and gun team like the Nuggest would've been disasterous Besides, Deke needs someone like TMAC or Artest playing alongside, someone who can find him if he's wide open. If he played with the current crew, defenses would completely leave him on defense and zone up on all our perimeter players. Deke will earn his money though, against slower teams and environments, once we get healthy. For now, Adleman is sticking with a fast paced, pass oriented, offensive rotations and its working.
To motivate our two stars which is pretty sad. Obviously defense too if he ever gets consistent playing time which I doubt. He did play some the other night.
Right now if you put in deke who are you taking minutes away from. Scola? Landry(whose minutes are limited as it is), Chuck Hayes(ditto)? Thats the problem right there. Right now the purpose of Deke is to get the team ready to play in practice and in the locker room. Deke is now guarding Yao in practice which is huge IMO because before it was someone like Chuck or Scola garding him in practice and that is just not going to happen in a regular season game. Deke's biggest assett right now is teaching, mentoring, and motivating. There are certain games you will see him out on the floor when we have major size issues, but not too many teams present us with those issues.
To **** all over a chance for SF3 to have a comeback, haha I kid. More or less he's the number one cheerleader and the head of emotional state.
Deke is here for certain matchups against bigmen. He's also here to keep great locker room chemistry while also keeping TMac and Artest in check. You can see that everyone is accountable for their actions now that Deke is back.
i think the best thing about deke is that he is providing yao a good challenge in practice. in fact, yao's shot looks much better after deke joins. It's better than practicing with a bunch of 6'9 guys for yao.
Deke's role is an insurance for Yao as described by Adelman. Adelman is an offensive mind coach, the last thing he will do is to stop someone, that is why he even used Landary as a center to score more points. It is somehow sad that we just can not find a coach who can do something of both offensive and defensive ends, just like Spurs's coach, who is not on the markets.
I love that you bring this up because I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought about this. I think some credit of Yao's recent offense explosion has to go to Deke. Having a player of similar size and of the same caliber defensively as Dikembe only helps Yao's game.
Aside from being best 7 foot cheerleader and a locker room leader, he also seems to be Yao's favorite target for jokes. These are from the last two games:
Put Deke in you gain some defense and lose some offense. I guess what RA was thinking was the offense gained by put Deke on bench will more than offset the defense we gain. The bottomline is: RA was right.
I think it's funny that people were wanting Deke to re-sign so bad but they never remembered that he rarely played before Yao went down last year. If you watched the team last year, Deke's lack of playing time shouldn't be much of a surprise. He almost never played when Yao was healthy. They only played in 14 games together and 8 of those came in October and November.
Yes but the problem with this line of thinking was that Deke played well during the minutes that he got last year. Not just well, he played amazingly well during his stint as our starting c when Yao went down. He closed the lane down against all comers, got board after board and even scored a bucket or two. If he could do that twenty mins a night a year ago, why couldn't he do the same in 5 or 10 mins a night now? There's more to being a big man than scoring- there's also rebounding and defense. Deke does those 2 extremely well, that's why him not getting at least 5 mins of burn every game is a mistake on Adelman's part.
He's definitely right about big men and drawing fouls. That's one part of Yao's game I always hope he'll get past, trying to draw fouls, both on offense and defense. On offense, he'll sometimes do a pump-fake and jump into his defender trying to draw the foul, but it rarely gets called. He hasn't done that too much recently, but he's still trying to draw those charges. Big men shouldn't do those things, because it's rare they'll get those calls. Hope Deke's wisdom doesn't go into Yao's deaf ear.
