Well here is my first post of the regular season

A couple of thoughts:

(1) I thought that Olajuwon looked pretty good early in the first quarter and then Rudy sat him for what seemed to be the rest of the first half. When Olajuwon finally got back into the game, he seemed totally out of it and he never recovered. Given the way that Cato was playing (crappy -- does he have awfully soft hands or what?), I didn't understand why Olajuwon was sitting. Was Olajuwon winded? He didn't look it.

Nestorovic (or whatever the hell his name is) torched the Rockets last night for 18 points I think. How the mighty Dream has fallen. Dream would have eaten this guys lunch a couple of years ago. I was embarassed. If this is how Dream is going to play, I'd rather him not play at all. The Rockets need to have a post up player. Cato is not the man for the job. If Olajuwon isn't going to score in the post, the Rockets don't stand a chance of making the playoffs.

(2) Did the Rockets run any set plays last night? I certainly didn't see any. Even when the Rockets called time out (presumably to get their act together and to run a set play) they then did more of the one on one basketball. Everyone here keeps telling me that Rudy T. is a good Xs and O man. I certainly didn't see it last night. I won't lie to you, when the Rockets are running, they are very exciting, and when Stevie and Mobely drive to the basket, they create a lot of opportunities for others to score (e.g. all of Cato's dunks last night), but the Rockets can't always run and you have to have a halfcourt offense that consists of something other than Francis, Moochie, and Mobely dribbling the ball around. Time for Rudy to step up -- if he can.

(3) Boy are the Rockets a lousy defensive team. And the surprising fact is that I thought that Mo T. played some pretty hard defense against Garnett (Garnett can just hit anything). What were the guards doing. You can't leave your man to double team if your man is torching you from behind the three point lane.

(4) We missed a lot of free throws last night (something that is probably expected from Cato, Carlos and others but from Moochie?) and we missed a lot of layups last night. Part of the problem with the layups was that Francis and Mobely were trying too hard to make ridiculous plays. There is no need to throw a ball up backwards. But also, the Rockets have to do a better job when they have numbers on a fast break. The guy bringing up the ball can pass it to someone on the wings. There is no rule that he has to shoot. We missed a lot of easy layups on fast breaks. And that is inexcusable.

(5) Ok, we lost to a pretty good team last night and the Wolves always seem to have our number. So I am going to give the team a little mulligan here. But I think that we can't make too much of the second-half comeback (which, I admit was exciting). I think that the comeback resulted more from the Wolves being sloppy with a huge lead.