I agree that LA can win in Houston, no doubt- not a big believer in the whole "stealing home court" thing. That said, the Rockets are still in a really good position.
I love how they're all saying LA didn't play up to par (true) but that we basically played a perfect game (false). As if we were really good and they were really bad and we still barely managed to beat them. There's still tons of room for improvement on our part. That's bad logic right there. Yeah, LA "can" win in Houston. But they won't regain HCA until they do. Saying they regain HCA if the win tonight is completely moronic and blatantly false.
I think it is ridiculous how some people think this is the only challenge we'll face in the playoffs if we win this game. What makes you think denver or cleveland will be easy. Because we dominated cleveland one game during the regular season we are going to win easily if we face them again? If you believe that logic then we should be getting swept by the lakers right now because they won 4 times against us by an average of 13 points.
Against the Lakers, yes. PG is the Lakers' weakest position. And all their PGs are slow. It's just a good match up for us because we have a fast PG. Adelman was a genius in playing Lowry alongside Brooks in the 4th, raising the the speed a notch to put even more pressure on the slower Laker guards. If we had Rafer, instead of Lowry, we wouldn't have had that advantage.
You have to also look at this series from a business side: Espn isn't airing our series as of now (not game 1 or 2) why would they want to hype it up that much if they don't really benefit from the ratings etc. If you ever notice, espn has day of talk about the games airing on their network. Later in the series when they are airing the game, you will see us on the front page quite a bit with the lakers advertising our series. As far as the experts go, it was a 7 day layoff, and lakers looked rusty. The lakers will score more than 92 points at least 4 or 5 games of these series (assuming it goes in 7). There is no reason to write off the lakers at this point. On the flip side, wafer and scola did struggle and the rockets also had trouble on the boards and turnovers. Battier also didnt contribute at all on offense. All the previous stated about the rockets, won't happen a majority of hte time either. I like the point one of hte analysts brings up towards the end (I feel like end of season play determines how you do in the playoffs, or has a lot to do with) Both the rockets and lakers finished 27-10.
Stein said esentially the same thing too. I didn't realize it was a given Houston couldn't win at home.
As Cannonball said, the statement simply isn't true. We're coming back to Houston with HCA no matter what. That's what's so galling about the prevailing national media's attitude toward the Rockets.
Obvious mistakes made in Game 2 that we can improve are: 1) Taking care of the ball. We had 18 turnovers..........18!! 2) We got outrebounded, so our defense could of been a little bit better. 3) Scola, Landry and Wafer respectively didn't have their best games.
Honestly, none of these fools expected us to win Game 1. They handed the Lakers the chip before a single Finals game was played against Boston last season. What makes this year any different?
something seems to worry me about the nugs. cant put my finger on it. we gotta beat those lakers first though.
I was scratching my head on that on, too. Landry, Wafer, Scola, and Battier were sub-par. 108, 103 vs. Portland (playoffs) We averaged 98.4 points, during the season which means we had alot of games we score over 100 or 102 to 105 range, maybe not as much as the Suns or Lakers. But, when we had to we could score. So what would be the accuse, if the Lakers score under 90 (win or lose), does that mean they had another off night or was it credit to our defense.. These media pukes make my own vomit nauseous.
If the Rockets had T-mac I think healthy they win this series easily. Not to bring up T-mac here but this team is just one dependable scorer/closer away from a title to me. For the Rockets to win this series all the role players will have to play perfect and Yao has to stay out of foul trouble. I think Scola had a bad game because he was not getting the looks he got in the Port. series and that caused him to look tenative but it didnt really matter because Yao went off. Rockets need to put Shane on Kobe for the majority of the game and neutralize Ariza and Odom. I think Odom got far too many offensive rebounds and put-back opportunities.
The other thing Houston has to do is not lose sight of what won Game 1. They're good when Yao Ming is getting touches in the post; when they can't get it in to him and Ron Artest starts going one-on-five, they struggle to score. The test for the Rockets is whether they can stay disciplined enough to keep feeding the big guy game after game. So far this year, they've been erratic at best in that department. Im glad SOMEONE was able to point this out
true. IMO, Denver>>LA>>>>>>>Cleveland that is going to be a toughest series for us if we do passed Lakers.
