You could arguably make the same case for the Knicks without Melo, Bulls without Rose, hell half the eastern conference and western conference as well. Lin had an awful night running the point, but he showed up at the end of the 4th and helped Rockets win. Ugly but win nonetheless. TD was in with the bench when Timberwolves went cold, and Rockets clawed back in it. I actually think these kinds of wins are important for teams during a season. Especially a team this young. You will have a better feel about this team by the end of the season. If **** truly doesn't look like it will work, blow it up. I personally do not think this will be the case.
Offensively, TD is always neglected by opp.'s D, which makes him effective, particularly against bench. Def., he is hustle but not as smart as Lin. In fact, they won the game due to Lin's D on Barea in the final 6 mins. Lin got beat a couple of times, but he recovered and really disrupted Barea's rhythm. It's fortunate that TD got hot middle of 3rd and MCale kept playing him through to mid 4th and only substituted Lin in due to TD's fatigue.
TD is good mostly because he can drill 3s, sometimes happened in crucial moment, thus people tend to remember his big 3s other than his poor FG% and poor playmaking skills. Plus he gives the impression that he's very good at defending due to his waving arms 'in your face' style of defending. He does bring the ball up court very fast which our coach, especially Sampson likes very much. That's why he gets a lot mins. If you watch the game and examine his performance from the data sheet, he has been terrible in terms of FG% and he took way too many shots which should have gone to Harden. He is over confident in his playmaking that he doesn't pass the ball to Harden or Lin as much as he should. TD should improve his Bball IQ and stop thinking he is PG and trying to make plays and start to think himself as SG and sticking with spot up shooter. He should keep practicing his 3s and becoming a lethal 3s expert and keep improving his overall defense. If he does the two things well, he will always have a spot and good mins on any team.
I like Toney as long as he confines his plays to what he's good at and not try anything fancy. It's his contract year so I hope he shines.
obviously this huge hole in our bench is why morey went and got patrick beverley. supposed to be a good playmaker, defensive minded pg, downside is the outside shot is somewhat suspect. but should be a significant upgrade from td as far as running the team anyway. this should enable both lin and harden to sit at the same time and especially both to sit at the end of blowouts where until now we have needed lin to play out until the end even with leads of 25+ because the team self destructs without him or harden out there. if we had a decent backup pg who could come in with fresh legs and knew how to run a team maybe lin and harden sit last night against the bulls for the final quarter and we don't have them missing layups today against the wolves on the second night of a back to back. td tried to do too much today, he did bring some energy at first but then he tried to play heroball. mchale maybe left him in 2 or 3 minutes too long but at least he had the sense to swap out for lin with like 6 min left. remember toney was in the game playing d on barea when barea got hot. looking forward to seeing what this beverley guy adds. he probably will spend at least a few weeks in the dleague though.
Worst Rocket point guards ever to get playing time in games; 1. Tony Douglas 2. Elridge Recasner 3. Brent Price 4. Moochie Norris 5. Tyrone Lue 6. Charlie Ward 7. Emanuel Davis 8. Rafer Alston 9. Scott Brooks 10. Roderick Rhodes
I'm not sure why Rafer is on here. He was a solid PG, he was just streaky shooter. He was by far the best passer especially at making entry passes to Yao Ming and he was a solid defender as well. After the trade deadline in the 2008-09 season, they showed how much they missed his passing because the Rockets couldn't even get the ball to Yao because Aaron was a horrible passer. It's JVG's fault for not utilizing him correctly and making him a spot-up shooter. Alston is a pure PG, similar to Lin actually. Alston was used better when Adelman was coaching (2008 and 2009).
Ouglas won't pass the ball until there is only 5 seconds left on the clock. Happened over and over again in yesterdays game. Is he Sampson's missing son or something
Td is not a good spot up shooter if you look at stats. Delfino is a better shooter and a better play makers. He should control the ball for our second unit
I think TD played OK last nite. He brought a different pace to the game. He made the Minny run and paid.
I gotta ask. Why mess with success? However odd the pieces are, McHale seems to have adapted them into a winning basketball team. The Minnesota game is one that young rebuilding teams almost never win. The Rockets have made significant strides since the very early games. I say go with it and don't look back.
