I often see people asking for a 'closer'. They switch from yao to artest to scola to brooks to lowry to wafer... Firstly, people need to understand that there's no real 'closer' in the world, not even MJ or Kobe. If you get the 'closer', you are a instant champion. Even when Tmac's healthy, he didn't 'closed' that many games for us either(look at our regular season/playoff record). Kobe never passed first round before they 'stealed' Gasol. On the other hand, you can say everybody is a 'closer'. More than often, yao is the closer when he's single covered(we actually won many games that way if being objective). When yao's double/tripled, artest/scola/brooks... closed a fair share of games for us. So they can be 'closer' sometimes. Finally, we can't be so desperatly asking for a 'closer'. That's the same as asking for an instant championship. Basketball is basketball, you win because you are a better team. If you don't have the best combination of players, you simply don't win no matter who you choose as your 'closer'. Right now yao's still our best offensive weapon. You have to at least 'look for and try to establish' him before make any wise game time decision. Even when other players really 'closed' the games, it's usually a result of defense collapsing on yao rather than simply that closer's superior talent. Our best chance lies in cooperation between yao and his teammates to: 1)Get the ball to yao's hand and let him make decisions; 2)If yao's defended too intensely or doubled, find the open man wisely and quickly and let whoever he is be the 'closer'; 3)If we are not able to accomplish 2) due to execution issues, repost yao and restart steps1&2. Again, that's our 'best chances' to win instead of a 'garantee' to win. To be honest, 'our best chances' are not better than that of the Lakers/Celtics because they ARE better teams. However, as long as we work together to stick to our gameplan, we do have maybe 30%-40% chances to win games against them.
Good post. Fits well with the "Wanted: Sharpshooter" thread. We have guys who can shoot. It doesn't get much better than Artest's 3P% this season, and we also have Barry, Brooks, and Wafer. People often say "the pieces were missing are: someone who can automatically win any game for us (aka a closer), someone who never misses a shot (aka a shooter), and a point-guard who scores a lot, but assists more than he scores, and never makes a turnover (aka impossible)". If we have those ingredients, they claim we'll win the championship.... so they all sit around making thread after thread complaining that our players don't fit those roles, and wondering if anyone in the league does. Heh, no.
Yao is treated like the Kobe of big man in late game situations. I don't think people realize how often he gets doubled and triple teamed during clutch time more than he is during the 1st 3 quarters. The only difference is that Kobe is bringing the ball up the court, while Yao relies on his teammates to find him in the entry pass which is even harder in Yao's case. Yao is our closer in my opinion, I just hope we can find another guy because we can't rely on Yao for everything. We already rely on him to be our defensive anchor and our interior scorer. The last thing we want is to have this guy play point guard.
The Rockets have already got a closer: his name is Smart Team Play. The only problem is that all the Rockets are not "superstar" level players. When they forget the existance of this guy and play their own games Rox will suffer. For this season, I think only team plays can bring Rox to higher levels in the playoff, just like the Pistons did a few years ago.
