I think the Houston Rockets should trade Yao. The rox now need a good blue collar player, but Yao seemed not the one. The rox now need a good rebound and blocker, but Yao is not the one, 2. The rox now need build around AB who is the Rox's future for the Prinston system offense, and Yao obviously dont fit this system. There are tons of reasons the Rox should trade Yao, but they didnt. There was a rumor that the Rox wanted to give Yao a new contract witch provide Yao more than 20 million dollars a year. So I was confused why the Rox do so... Besides, Yao is soft, slow and unclutch, so trading him in this summer should be a good idea for both Yao and the Rox.
He was getting single coverage and not being fronted when the run as being made. Instead of passing it to him Artest got dribble happy, Brooks started taking it to the paint with no plan and Wafer got shot happy. They did not recognize that Yao was open and it was time to punish Portland for that.
First of all, this isn't a post about getting Yao the ball. It was a post to highlight a change in RA offensive strategy that was very effective at getting Yao the fall in the first period. Then its like Rick pulled the rug out. I didn't see that same play but maybe 2 more times the entire game. Second of all, this team was not better with Yao on the bench. What game were you watching? Yao did a much better job of sealing off his man. AB just did an absolutely horrible job of well.....being a PG. He never let the play unfold, he constantly swung the ball to the other side when Yao was open or had his man sealed, and he waved off plays RA was calling from the bench. Finally, if AB would just use that penetration to actually set Yao up, he might get more than 2 or so assists a game, instead of constantly turning it over, or getting blocked, or taking a horrible shot under the rim. The game plan was right, I blame AB, Artest, Wafer, and to a smaller degree Lowry. We almost let this game slip away because once again our team can not seem to see when Yao is in position or had his man sealed. How many times did you see Yao waving his hand and pointing his finger to position AB to a spot on the floor because he had his man sealed. NOT one time did I see AB move to the correct spot. I could care less about how many points AB is capable of scoring, JVG said it right when he called AB out. He spends too much time dribbling the clock away and making low IQ moves. Like giving a man 10 feet of space backing up with a 4 point lead (something like that) as his man rains in a few wide open three's. Im no Yao fan only. I want Rockets success, and if we would of blown this game i guarantee you the Rox would lose this series. Success will come when the Rockets players Mostly AB, Wafer, and Artest learn to, as JVG said it, find SOME way to get Yao the ball. Yao worked his ass off all night, and RA implemented some nice changes to get Yao space. Too bad it stopped after the first quarter.
Plain and simple, AB is a 2 trapped in an undersized PG's body. We expect him to be the player he is not. I would like to see Lowry close games. He is built for playoff basketball.
qft. totally agree. read the garm all night and didn't notice this thread. some intelligent discussions here. 5 star. right now, it's like the glass is half empty and half full with the level of execution we can achieve, with ab and lowry being the pg. one can argue we BARELY lost game 2, but at the meantime, we just BARELY won g3. a team with its best player scoring in single digit can't go far in the playoffs. i firmly believe that, no matter what kind of role players the team may have and how much they may "step up". if role players can step up each game, then they should've been called allstars instead of role players. our main issue is we have a 21 mils hole on the roster, and that may be adelman's main headache. but in any case, we have to in some way involve yao in the offense a lot more. otherwise bad things are bound to happen eventually. i just hope adelman has another rabbit or 2 in his sleeves, rather than just saying "as long as we win, who cares who takes the shots"; that sounds like an average clutchfan, not an nba coach. maybe he's caught in the moment.
and to the op - i noticed the same thing as you did. i think as a result, all yao's pts come from the 1st qtr. (iirc he was 7 and 5 after the 1st qtr and ended up with 7 and 13.) after the 1st qtr., i thought they made some major improvements in countering the fronting during the last couple of days. but it ain't look like it now. frustrating.
Rockets organisation, training staff and players should be lucky Yao is a humble, peaceful, easy going, selfless and good spirited person or else we would have had a serious problem. You would Yao scream to his players to get him the ball everytime, he would get frustrated and would definetly force a trade in the off-season. I bet you a $100000000000 that Yao is not happy with this team and is seriously considering going to another team, especially if this keeps up. Let's hope Yao stays here for life and others have to go because of their incompetence. A good point brought up is how they're USING Yao, because that's how it seems indeed. Artest, AB & Scola all missed assignments, Battier was the only starter really involved with Yao. The bench has never been that great with Yao, especially Wafer. That guy just gets the ball, you see him step back in this dancing type fashion he always does and puts his head down. These guys have serious issues with getting Yao the ball, two huge examples: - 3rd quarter when Yao was posting up or about to post up and could easily get the pass. Wafer has the ball and blows right by Yao, complete ignoring Yao and turning it over - 4th quarter (last 2 / 1 min), AB runs a pick and pop with Yao, Yao gets open on the left top of the circle, puts up his hands and screams for the ball. AB never even looks at Yao , focusses on beating his man and guess what, no basket !!! If I were Yao, I would play somewhere else next year but then again Yao has another really inspiring quality: LOYALTY. Something other Rockets have problems with too (not taking a jab at Tracy)
They've done this before in the regular season when fronting became an issue. There are several things that can happen from this play. 1) Shane sets a successful screen freeing Yao to get to the post where AB feeds him. 2)Yao gets free to post position but scola's man at the high post has to come down and help. 3) Post entry passer hits scola at the top of the key for a jumper OR 4) man on weakside rotates to scola and he hits teamate going towards opposite side towards shane. while this is happening Yao comes back towards the weakside IF the shot goes up then he has inside position and IF they rotate to shane in the corner by then hopefully Yao is open on the other block in the post. Blazers did a good job of covering yao on both post BUT we did a great job of hitting the open jumpers they gave to us throughout the game and that's what won it for us. I'm thinking the blazers are going to take that chance that we can't continue hitting open jumpers like that. If we start out like that in the next game and the jumpers fall I expect them to rotate to our shooters harder and hopefully that will open it up for Yao.
I was stuck at work but saw parts of the game I like LOWRY He makes that illegal-defense-playing-defender in back of YAO defend Everytime. . RAM THE BALL INTO HIS CHEST!! Fouling out that 9-second-in-the-lane-guarding-noone-peice-of-crap out Rocket River
It's a double team in the first half. They adjusted the defense to a single front on Yao in the second half. We have to make a lob pass but we even don't try. We have to attack the rim when Yao has the position to grab the boards, but we just dribble and dribble.
this is where the reality lies he needs to be a 2, iverson size jr. Lowry is already better at running the team
The shocking thing I heard at the post game conference was that Adelman was visibly frustrated with Yao's fouling and some other things (my DVR was skipping and I had trouble hearing what he said). He also defended Aaron Brooks saying his penetration was important, and then he said that they weren't getting Yao the ball when he was open (didn't call out a specific person). Does anyone have this on tape and could post an accurate recap? Overall though, it was the most frustrated I have ever seen Adelman. Cleary, the Rockets aren't doing what he wants. It looks like we can add one more major symptom to the loss of McGrady. In the regular season it was just a difficulty closing out games in the 4th quarter. Now Yao is not getting the ball when he is open. The loss of Alston is definitely adding to this problem - Alston was much more disciplined than Brooks on this. So, if we had McGrady and Alston playing, would things be better in this series? Probably a little bit. I doubt we would have had the same difficulties closing out game 3 because we really handled them at times.
It took me a couple of years to realize some player just doesn't have the talent to do certain things. For all these years Rafer played here, i keep wondering, why he had to throw up a hopeless floater every time he drove to the basket, while he could have passed to Yao and he would slam it home. Then i finally realized he's just not capable of doing that. And Rafer is better than AB in every category of setting up teammates. So if you are hoping AB could learn to pass, well that's not gonna happen. And then Lowry did exactly what I mentioned in the first game he played with the team. I was almost in tears thinking the team finally find a great PG who can run the offense and attack the rim and get fouled. Some one just has the talent to be PG. And 2nd, this is no doubt for me Adelman wanted to use Yao as a decoy and decoy only. If you are talking about AB or Artest not passing to Yao, i will give you the benefit of doubt that it's the player not executing the game plan. But did you see battier did exactly the same thing, passing to the other side of the court from corner when Yao just sealed his man, at least in three occurrences that I counted. Hello, that's Battier we are talking about, for all these years, his entire offense move was dumping into Yao from Corner and wait for a double teamed Yao to kick back the ball to him and shoot behind 3 point line. You think Battier would forget how to pass to Yao? And give Mark Jackson some credit, he said Rockets should have looked for Yao in transition, that's when Yao have a better chance to seal his man off. And indeed happened quite a few times that Yao had his man on his back. But then he got waived off by AB and had to go to the other side of court and fight for position again, and usually the Blazers took the 2nd chance and fronted him. I was like, wtf, he had already his man sealed off, pass him da ball... The bottom line is the game plan was not looking for Yao period.
Doctor Robert, they have the video of Adelman's postgame news conference at rockets.com. Also, the transcript excerpts can be found at the bottom of the site's recap of the game.
