Maybe we should hope he doesnt try to. Ron seems to be trying to hard to carry this team on his back. He is trying to force his way in and take his crazy shots when its not working. We need him to not force things but to take what they are giving. They are doubling him but his passes are bad. He needs to work on finding the open man and actually getting that player the ball.
Can anyone help me posting links? I got links to Artest and Adelman postgame interviews, but I'm still not allowed to post links. Could someone help me through pm, and maybe post them? Thanks!
With Yao and Deke out, our chance to win is just like game 4 we moved the ball fast and penetrated more offen to have better shooting. I'd like to know if Dorsey can be in the list if Yao out? We badlly need backup center to help Chuck. Ron controlled the ball too much in his hand, he should let the ball move quicker.
I'm sure this post will get lost in the mix. And I haven't read the rest of the posts in this thread. But, to me, Rick Adelman gave up this game by emptying the bench at the end of the first quarter. We were down 10 or 11. And Adelman went to Cook, Barry and Wafer. With Battier and Artest on the bench. ****ing What??? We should have been scrambling on defense and calming it down and getting to the basket on offense. But instead RA wanted us to try to out-offense the LA Lakers with Brian Cook, Brent Barry and Von Wafer. Not in the last minute, mind you. AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND QUARTER. I have never in my life seen a coach give up a playoff game so early. And I'll never forgive it. JVG for ****ing ever. Great players here or gone, this is a DEFENSIVE TEAM. That's where all our success has come from. I miss the **** out of JVG. RA's a great offensive coach (over the long run) but he couldn't suck more at substitutions if he tried.
hayes has 2pf. artest play very poor after hayes is out. using cook is a gamble for his 3pt but we loss. overall, lakers is better than this rockets teams. i think main reason we loss is hayes early pf and artest play very poor rather than cook's dump play...
I'm with you on some of this, but wouldn't go that far on Adelman. For him to play Cook, he must think he has no other option when Hayes is in foul trouble. I've heard nothing but bad things about Joey Dorsey for a while... considering he didn't play even garbage time in the second half this year, and they're playing Brian Cook for crying out loud, I'd say they must really think he's not an option. Personally I would have preferred he exhaust Scola today by having him at the 5 and Landry at PF. It was unbelievable how the defense just collapsed the second Hayes went out of the game. I think that's the only hope we have left... that Scola/Hayes/Landry can play 96 minutes at PF/C.
I wasn't hoping for Dorsey. The above is exactly what I expected. This is play or go home time. Cook??? No! Landry! And Scola and Battier and Artest! None of those guys needs rest in game 5 when Yao is out. And we certainly don't need to be playing a sucky 3 shooting center or a washed up 3 shooting forward. Especially at the same time and especially while our two top defenders are on the bench. The thing was it smacked of a desperate attempt to out-3 the other team. When what we needed was defense and an attack on the basket. We played desperate, manic offense when we should have been playing desperate, manic defense. And we played calm, reasoned defense when we should have been playing calm, reasoned offense. That's how you sneak a win from a superior offensive team when you're missing your stars. Tonight was an incredible lesson in how to fail at that. The Lakers weren't that great tonight. Our coaching and our strategy was just that horrible. Even without Yao we have an excellent defensive team. And we have a team that can also get to the basket and make things happen. Instead of playing that team tonight, at the beginning of the freaking second quarter, RA went with a bunch of unreliable 3 point shooters. That's really the only way to look at it if you consider the whole squad he put out there at the top of the second. He panicked. He thought we needed to throw threes to catch up. And everybody knows we can't catch up with the Lakers by putting our bench out there to throw threes. When we're down 10 or 12 or whatever at the end of the first, you play DEFENSE. We will never win a scoring contest. Even RA should know that.
There is no excuse for losing by 40 points, especially in the playoffs. We knew Rockets did not have enough offense but defense has always kept us within striking range. This was just pathetic. We better come prepared for game 6 because it was embarrassing. Our bench kept us in game 2, but even they were terrible. We supposedly had a deep bench, this game proves LA is deeper. We have too many inconsistent shooters and our FG% this year can back that up. The only way we're shooting well if the ball movement is good and it wasn't tonight. We did miss a lot of wide open shots which is unfortunate but AB & Artest were back to dribbling, dribble, TO again. The refs definetly favoured the Lakers, Hayes was major for us in game 4 so the refs decided to take him out of the game. LA got called for nothing, not the hacking, slapping, coming over the back etc. Let's hope Rockets will get the confidence back and still believe.
Great points Batman -- I definitely agree with your close here. The Rockets held the Lakers to under 90 on average in their two wins and the Lakers are scoring 112+ in their three wins. Tonight, the Rockets were subpar offensively so it likely wouldn't have mattered -- they are inconsistent on offense but overall above average. It's defense where they must be exceptional every night and it's the only weapon the Rockets have that gives them a chance to level the playing field. I'd like to say the Rockets have got to get Ron Artest going, but Ron (as much as I like him) is just a wildly inconsistent offensive player. 1-13 from three in last two games is painful. Anything can happen in a Game 7... Rockets now just have to make sure we get to one.
Hope we can win the game at Toyato Center. At least we need to win at home, no game 6 only, next season also, just like Blazers, at Rose Garden there are no games Fakers can win..
