As I said on the other thread, Steve should sit a few games. His back hurt big time. I could see his painful face and back several times, not only this game but in the last few games already.
in an OT game he only took 13 shots. only 2 or 3 times did he force it and several times he passed up jumpshots to drive in and get to the line b/c he realized he couldn't shoot. finally, he had 8 rebounds and 7 assists. and get this. only 1 turnover!! people always say they'd rather lose the right way than win the wrong way, well here ya go. steve didn't force it and had a 7:1 ast/to ratio just like a good pg and we lost. oh and jp was far more detrimental to the cause than steve. bricking and horrible d and everything else. man he is sucking. i really would trade him for a bag of chips. or at least sour cream and onion pringles.
Sit Francis, he is hurting and not 100%, he needs the rest, no need to jeopardize our future this year.
I could give a damn less if he had a bad shooting night...as long as we win in the end. His boneheaded play at the end of the game cost us a chance of tying or winning the game. He's our leader, the last play was in his hands and he got greedy, but also got VERY STUPID. Yao fires the pass to steve hoping he might be able to outrun any defenders for an easy layup to tie.....BUT NOOOOOO! Steve lightly runs the ball up the court with 5 secs left...allowing any trailing defenders to catch up to him....then, instead of calling a TO with 3-4 secs left he decides to go for the win(even though he's 1-13 and clearly shooting horribly)...OH but wait, there is a defender that caught up to him because he took too long to get up the court (as freakin usual ), so he's caught in mid shot with nowhere to go and makes an awkward pass to mobes, who is covered by 2 people and forces him to take a bad shot with no time left on the clock.(usually there's no time left on the shot clock but its the actual game clock in this of many instances.) All of this could've been avoided if he just got across midcourt and called a simple TO...is it really that freakin hard?! Thats the moronic streetball selfishness that he resorts to in any panic situation.
Our future this year is rapidly approaching.....he does need rest but we cannot afford to be without him. Have all of you forgotten last season. Even when he is at his worst WE NEED HIM
This team will not develop. This team has stagnated all year long and has made ZERO progress except for Yao... ZERO!!
Stev should sit bench when he is not involved in the game.And or he should pass the ball to the shooter of the game instead of his shooting.
I chalk this up to Rudy T. Our offensive scheme rides on the shooting and decision making of SF and Cat, and as they go, so go the Rockets. If they do well, or one does spectacularly, we can win against anybody. Otherwise, flip a coin. We're mediocrity personified.
Remember the movie REPLACEMENTS with Gene Hackman? Well he said, 'Winners want the ball in their hands when the game's on the line.' Steve Francis had the ball. Enough said.
Geez the man has a couple of bad games in a row and suddenly you guys start calling for the hangman. Cut the guy some slack, there's a whole season adn 5-10 years left with Franchise at the helm, why overreeact just cuz of two games. Big picture people, please, damn good thing Franchise wasnt struggling around trading deadline or y'all would be clamoring for him to be traded also. sheesh
Not really, I'm thinking Yao couldn't call a timeout with his hands full and defenders all over him so he threw it out to his POINT GUARD, you know, the guy who runs the team. And steve decides to try the impossible...It's not like Steve was forced to run a fastbreak...he just chose to. What should Yao have done? Hold the ball until the time expires?
Wait a minute.... Did Tyrone Lue just outscore Steve Francis? 12 to 8 huh? Sometimes, I wonder why we can't have a simple point guard like Kenny Smith. He wasn't the top assist man in the league, or a prolific scorer. But at least he didn't hold the ball to long and just dribble his way to a turnover. If we can get Kevin Garnett for Steve Francis, I'll say go for it. No it won't happen, I know. But this Steve Francis, guy....he ain't smart enough to be a team leader....This isn't a go-to-guy...He's athletic...very athlethic yes....
The big picture is that Francis hasn't improved as a point guard in his career in the NBA, and he continues to make really bad decisions and have glaring flaws (his fast breaking weakness was obvious on that last play). He is a good player who can give you 20 points and 6 boards, but I really question building a whole franchise around him and setting up the offense around him. He isn't that good or smart.
Ok, I know you did not just say that. lol! The same Kenny Smith who would practically give the ball to Harper cause he was so scared. Let me translate your statement : "Sometimes, I wonder why we can't just really really suck instead of being just 'pretty good'."
Umm, all players have down nights. You are ridiculous. He didn't choke, even Kobe, T-Mac, etc have 7-25 type nights so shut the hell up. The problem has and will continue to be Rudy. As Kenny was saying, our offense is ridiculously predictable. Come on, we have run the exact same play at the end of games multiple times. So much that the freaking announcers diagram it before it happens. We were lucky for Cat to even hit that shot. We use the same damn entry pass for Yao every time. We have Yao sitting out there to set the pick 5 seconds early, Lue can just jump in front of him. We cannot defend a pick and roll to save our life. There is no ball movement STILL. There are a whole lot more problems than Steve not having a mediocre shooting night. A coach not only has to be innovative with the Xs and Os, but also get through to the players. Rudy does NEITHER.
Yall are being too harsh on Francis. ON the last play: If the fastbreak results in a basket, everyone would be praising Stevie for having the guts to take advantage of the defense when it was not set. A timeout will allow you to set up your offense, but it will also allow the defense to set up... so you just have to pick your poison. He prolly could have had something ( a foul called, a pass to Hawkins on the wing, a layup) if he just pushed the ball more instead of going for the win and stopping at the 3 pt line. He had a bad shooting game, but what can you say... it just wasn't his night. He had 8 boards and 7 assists as well, so it's not like he was totally useless on the floor. My main concern with this game is the fact that we were down by 20... yes the Wizards were uncharacteristically hot in the first half, but we still should have only been down by 10 or so had we played well on offense. Just like we were down against the Celtics, we were down against the Wizards but this time we weren't able to finish off the game. We can't depend on these late 4th Q runs to get back in a game; instead we need to come out in charge of the game from the start. I think Posey/Griffin are major contributors to our slow starts. The defenses can just leave them, and btw the Posey AIRBALL from 18 feet was quite pathetic. Yes we lose our scoring punch off the bench if we start Taylor, but it's not like we have to sub in our ENTIRE bench at once... we will still have yao or steve or cuttino in the game when Griffin comes in. I'd rather lose some scoring punch off the bench than be down by 10 or 15 all the time.
