I was merely pointing out that the times in the 3rd quarter I saw Brooks dribble a little much there wasnt anyone else moving much. I just chose your quote to make the point about other players watching. You have gone about making valid criticisms of Brooks the right way, and I would not call a valid criticism a whine. I think Brooks' poor plays (all 3 of em including his missed floater during the 12 minutes of the 3rd quarter) were as much about AB making a mistake as other guys not doing anything to give him something to pass to.
Just like with the yao v howard comparison and goiing on recent history, players are asked to do different things on their team. The rockets ask scola to rebound, try on defense and hit open shots. last night, he did those things. Portland ask aldridge to create shots for himself and others,rebound and play defense, he didnt. This season, la has killed scola to the tune that chuck hayes has to come in. Dont ever get it twisted, and i bet you would agree, if you were choosing between the 2, who would you take? Thats what i thought, but i never said scola was a bad player, just a limited one. If scoal could produce like that every night in the playoffs and defend like he did, then the rox can go all the way, but asking him to do so is probably asking too much, see last game vs dirk and every game vs gasol.
And what was his point? my point is, teams are going to force teams to the 2nd,3rd,and even 4th options. This is the playoffs and no one will go in and say, we want yao to beat us. They try their best to make scoal,battier, and brooks beat them. Last night, Yao got rolling, so by the time they made the adjustment, the rockets took advantage by penetrating and forcing a big to guard a small man. Thats called fluidity. Now if the other rockets arent making shots and playing defense which i think was the most important thing, the game is closer, but anytime you miss alot of shot and dont play defense, you're probably going to lose. We've seen Dream almost put up a quad-double in the playoffs and the team still lost. We saw tracy play pretty good in a game and the team still lose because chuck hayes was getting minutes. Its all about balance. Tonight Ariza dropped 21 on 8-10 in 35 mins. Kobe didnt go off because he didnt have to and thats good for a team. Yao played under 30 mins and the team won by 20+, hot is that ever a bad thing?
I guess some are never happy. I mean, if Yao gets 6 points from putbacks, but the defense on him is SOOOO overplayed that its almost 4 on 2 away from Yao the Rockets will dominate. ANd ya know what, the ROckets dominating = win so that's a good thing. Except to these Yao fans.
I think he shoots his jump hooks better with his left hand, from what I've seen. Yao shoots only 40% on his left handed hook shots it was said recently.
I don't really care who score the points or who gets the ball. I just want them to play the game the right way. Brooks had a hot shooting game. That's fine to keep shooting if you are hot. You don't always have hot shooting game. What you want to do is to create good high percentage shots. Giving Yao the ball is usually one of the best ways to create high percentage shots. When the defense starts to front him or other ways to deny him the ball, they need to do something to punish the opponent for doing that. I reread Adelman's quotes. Now I realized that it was Adelman's idea that when Yao was out of the game, they did lots of pnr to free up Brooks. That's probably why Brooks was dribbling around, finding pick after pick to get his shot up. So they were doing what the coach wanted. What happened a few times was when Brooks couldn't create a shot after a couple of picks, he didn't know what to do and kept on going around finding picks. That's when it looked ugly. I am sure they will make Aaron watch some films and tell him what he should have done in those situations.
Parker dribbles alot also. they free parker up by those illegal/staggered screens in half court. People defending him have to apply for training of a pylon course. I think adelman is thinking the same with brooks. He had some nice plays when he killed aldridge on the switch. also in the 4th qt, the pick and pop with him and scola was money.
Yao, Scola or Artest should touch the ball inside EVERY single time down the court, atleast once. You need to go inside out. AB had a great game, but he probably won't have that good of a game in Game 2, so we should look inside and run the offense inside out. They can't stop Yao. Make Aldridge play D on Scola, and Batum and Outlaw are too skinny for Artest. If they front Yao, go to Scola, he will still probably draw a double team. But at the very least, we need to look inside to Yao, just to get their defense focused on him (which they will be cuz they were frightened by Yao in Game 1) and that will open up everything else for AB, Artest, Scola, and Battier. I also think they should post up Battier occasionally if Roy is guarding him, just to make him expend a little more energy. He already has to do everyhing for the Blazers on offense. Make him have to play D as well.
But but but Yao is a 100% shooter this series, they should go to him every time. Not give the defense different looks. Dont go to Artest down low, he just chucks bad 3s all game long. Scola flops around too much. Only go to Yao. Seriously, good analysis with the various inside out options. They cant prevent all 3 of them from catching the ball. Most of game 1 was Yao down low, Scola down low, or PnR with Scola or Artest being the picker. Bring more Artest down low for game 2, especially if they focus more on Yao.
I think you go with what works. if they play behind yao and single coverage, go to him as long as he's aggressive. If they 3/4 shade or front or come with a hard double quickly, you have to adjust on the fly. When battier takes the ball to the rim 2 times in one quarter, that tells me they're really overplaying yao which opens stuff up for everyone else. I also like how yao is shooting that elbow jumper. People were crying earlier in the season that coach was trying to make yao brad miller. That wasnt the truth, but adelman does like to open the baseline, plus its a shot yao can make and its butt naked. Its a flex offense that have built in answers for defenses. Its no differnt than the triangle and i know at times it turns to the kobe show. Yao isnt kobe, but that doesnt mean the offense will forget about him. On a good shooting night, the rocket will miss over 35 shots, yao can do like he did the other night and get in position and get some of those 35 misses and convert those.There is more htna 1 way to be effective in a game.
Great post. I agree with most of the people who say that Yao needs to be fed more in order for the Rockets to produce better results. On a side note, could it also be possible that Yao just needs to DEMAND the ball a bit more? Too often in that 3rd quarter I see Yao settling on setting the pick for Artest/AB instead of working the post. By setting picks, he's encouraging the other rocket players to shoot instead of feeding him. Just a thought.. Go Rockets!
I am also worried about this problem based on Yao's performance of the first few minutes in the third quarter. Any way, good luck for Yao and for Rockets!
Seriously you sound more and more ridiculous by the post. Yao is a great player. Doubters and Haters like you who try to sound wise but actually sound quite pathetic. Yao came out all guns blazing. Yao having trouble with fronting is only 30% to do with Yao. Ofc we want to get points and stops from whoever we can get. Infact Im all about balanced offense, which certainly isnt when Yao makes 1 basket. If he ever did that, this team would be out of the playoffs; your wish fulfilled. Get Yao the ball. Period.
The problem is it's clear from the Mav game's collapse, things were going so well when they feed Yao. Yao either score or draw fouls, or finding the open man. Once we were up 14, guys start to jack up ill-advised shots (especially AB), I saw for about 10 minutes Yao did not get a touch at all. I don't understand why when you have a hot hand, you don't feed it until the defense changes it. Mavs starting to get the Rockets miss and putting it in, once a good shooting team like Mavs get hot, it's very hard to keep pace with them. In my opinion, that's why we lost to the Mavs in the last regular season game. Our Rox needs some discpline, especially when opponents are starting to play fronting and when we are up by 10+. Don't lose sight of game plan, and keep executing, feed Yao and good thing will happen. Just have to be patient and swing the ball around, when Yao get the ball, other guys will be opened.
I'm a fan of the rockets, no one in particular, so that crazy right? Like DD said, i dont care who scores, as long as it says Rockets on the front. Yao has been in the playoffs how many times? When the team loses, its says Rockets eliminated in x games. If the Rockets advance, it says the rockets advance in x games. It doesnt really bother me if you say i'm a hater or whatever because i know i've been watching the rockets since 77-78. I watched moses pack a .500 team to the finals. When he was traded and the team sucked, i was still pulling for the rockets. When we had to watch dram play with the lies of winston garland,terry teagle, dirk minnefield, and joe barry carroll, i was still watching the rockets. Through all of that, i didnt ever care who scored or cried about who didnt get the ball enough like some of you. People that always whine and cry about Yao not getting the ball enough even if he gets the ball more than any pivot in the league is the reason why alot of old school poster dont even come to this side anymore. Yao is the best player on the rockets, but he has problems when the defense is turned up. We've seen this happen for 7 years now and nothing has changed. The pg and wings have changed, but yao is the constant. its nothis fault he's limited physically in terms of quickness to the ball. Normally when this happens, the rockets go into a mini slump. The last game, they played away from yao and kept the pressure on utah and yao still helped his team without the ball. Those 2 drives by shane was because of overplay by portland. Those 2 mid range jumpers by brooks over aldridge were because of a switch and portland sinking. he's helping the team even if he's not scoring and thats what he needs to do. Go look at the 94 finals when NY was fronting dream, harper with intense ball pressure and ewing standing backside. In the 4th qt's, the rockets were struggling and they had the most dominant center in the last 10 yrs in dream. Starks was catching fire, harper was killing smith, but the amigo's,cassell's, maxwell's, of the world started stepping up because of overplay. Thats called basketball. Some stop whining and if you dont like pulling for the rockets, go find yourself another team. If you want yao to score all the points, xbox and ps3 have nba 2k and nba live made for their consoles.
