Come on, verse...you can be a little more objective than that. Yeah, Steve does jump in the air without knowing what to do and passes it out....sometimes. However, how many times have we seen him draw doubles and toss up an alley? Those are NOT bailout passes. When Rice was in the game, you could tell that he would drive in such a way to purposefully draw Rice's man for a double, creating an open shot for Rice. Again, not a bail out scenario. He DEFINITELY needs to improve on the whole jumping-without-knowing-what-you're-doing thing, but I think that generalizing Francis' passing as a bailout isn't entirely accurate.
yes, there are times when steve purposely tries to set up his teammates... cato for the oop rice for the 3 i'll even add one to the list cat for the oop it's bad when you can name 3-4 plays francis performs where he tries to set his teammate up. most good playmakers (be it a sg or a pg), set up their teammates in the natural flow of their game. i guess that's what separates the allstars from the truly elite players...
btw, i know this is coming across like i'm anti-francis. really, i'm not. i can plainly see that he is phenomenally talented. his brain just has not caught up with his body...and i'm not sure it ever will.
I don't think better shooters would make that much difference. Look at my comments regarding Marbury, the best player to compare Steve with. Marbury's assists and a/to haven't fluctuated that much from being on one of the worst teams in the league (NJ) sandwiched between two western conference playoff teams (Min & Phx). Steve needs to get a lot better at creating the easy baskets for himself and his teamates even if means not going for the most spectacular play. With Rice, Cat, Mo and Yao often around him--Steve often had a line-up with pretty good darned shooters--certainly better in pure shooting than any of Marbury's teams could ever line up with. Just getting a little better shooters w/o addressing his fundamental decision making will not make that much of a difference unless you take the ball out of his hands (he by default becomes less important as a floor decision maker). Again, it is a lot more than just having better shooters, Francis has to become more disciplined and get a better eye for where the easiest shot on the whole floor (his or others) is had. Just watch Jason Kidd--he can take average or below average shooters and get them shots they can make at a good clip (in other words he makes average shooters look like good shooters and below average shooters look average). For Steve, his limitation right now is either discipline, floor sense, or both. I hope it is the former, because he for sure has control over the discipline issue--the jury is also out however on whether he has the floor sense to perceive the highest efficiency play available to his team. The latter (big enough basketball brain) may or may not be something he has in him at this point.
True. Dirk is the real leader. But get this. Dirk was as first round pick in 1998 (9th overall) and has lead his team to the best record in the NBA. Francis is a first round pick in 1999 (2nd overall) and is barely an 8th seed. I guess Francis will lead the Rockets to the best record next year? The excuse of "youth" is getting old.
I don't put is all on the other shooters, but if they hit their shots more consistantly then the floor would open up a lot more for passes and better shots. Which would help his all around game and Yao's too. As it is teams double down all the time against our guards when they drive because they know that the forwards probably aren't going to make the kick out shot. He makes bad choices, no doubt, but a lot of that is trying to go inside and draw the foul instead of taking the easy bucket. He plays a little too much streetball but Rudy seems to enjoy it and he's never been reported to feel otherwise. Maybe Rudy thinks this is how the game will be in the future and is trying to be ahead of his time? I don't ignore his faults, and I think that if they aren't coachable then the staff needs to design an offensive game plan that accounts for them. Which would be a lot better than the lack of offensive scheme we have now. If they are coachable, which is what I believe, then the staff needs to get off their butts and start riding his to become a better player. I don't know that we have any assistants that are capable of teaching young players. I know that Rudy has been total denial about today's NBA and what its going to take to win and I don't know that he's isn't still.
Those who think having better shooters would boost a PG's assist numbers should look at Andre Miller. He had 8.0 and 10.9 averages in his last two years in Cleveland. You think Cleveland was loaded with talented shooters? The interesting thing is, his apg dropped to 6.7 this year with the Clippers, very comparable to Francis'. The Clippers are supposed to be more talented than the Cavs. I suspect that assist numbers does have something to do with your teammates. But it's not talent, or shooting ability. It's the overall ethos of the team. We all know that the Clippers are a selfish team who only care about free agent contracts. I wonder what his assist average would be if Francis played for the Clippers.
Steve Francis vs. Steve Nash. 1on1? Haha! Steve Nash.....everyone would be laughing at him. I love Steve Nash. He makes all these impossible crazy fanatical turnaround twisting awkward looking layups that amazingly go in... But anyways.....Nash has Michael Finley, Dirk Nowitzki, Raef Lafrentz, Michael Finley, and 12 times more coaches than the Rockets. He is also more mature.....and more intelligent......and is from Canada. He is a good point guard. Good shooter as well. But sometimes.....has horrible games.
I was listening to Legler talk about why J. Kidd and some of the other good pg ca start a fast break. He said the reason why NJ is such a great fast break team is that Kidd is always moving up the floor after a rebound. Even if its not him, when running a fast break, a pg has a split second to make it happen. He showed a film on how Kidd always is moving forward and gives his rebound man a clear lane to pass to while he's doing this. After this ,I started looking at Nash and the other remaining fast break teams and its very very true. I go look at my tape and and don't see anytime that Francis does this. Most times when Francis gets the rebound, he comes all the way back to the rebounder to get the ball, thus killing any chance to run a fats break. What does this have to do with this thread. Francis through many of his physical gifts just don't have the mentality to lead a team and make quick decision. Yes he's a great athelete like Marbury and Davis, but his decision making is what hold this team back. If J.Will can learn how to make better decisions than Francis and have a outstanding asst-to ratio, why shouldn't we expect the same from Francis. If we can't , then what good is he making same poor decisions at the 2 guard? Like I said before, Franchise players don't miss the playoffs 4 yrs in a row no matter how you look at it.
We are a young team, I think Verse did a pretty good example of showing how young we are. The only team close to us in youth is Pheonix and Marbury is much more a leader than Rice, Taylor or Cato combined and they are our 'seasoned players.' Pheonix also got knocked out in the first round despite a nice show of heart. We got younger this year by starting Yao and brining in Posey to replace tired old Rice, and he didn't exactly blow up the spot. Which happens to all SF in our offense. Francis' growth has been r****ded by our messed up game plan. If I'm wrong then we should sign even a mediocre PG with our exception (since an average PG appears to be favored over SF by most people around here) and bring Francis off the bench. If the new guy makes us better imediately then trade Francis for a tough PF but I don't think that will be the result. Basically i'm saying, have some patience with the players and start yelling at the coaches on up to Alexander. They are the only ones who are really in a position to make a change anyway. We've run the same sad sack offense and lazy D for three years now and we haven't done more than inch towards the playoffs. Since Alexander wants to give Rudy more time and Rudy thinks everything is working according to his plan maybe we fans should just shut the hell up and wait till next season. Our boys are out fishing right now anyway.
Old school, new school? Let's back-up here...Francis is at the other end of the spectrum of Stockton. But, Stockton is NOT my ideal point guard. Isiah and Payton are. They had athletic ability AND bb-smarts. The goal is to mesh fundamentals (solid basketball understanding) with God given athletic ability. But, Francis choses to rely just on his athletic ability only. He has made virtually no change in his stats from his rookie year. True, stats don't tell the whole story. But I watch the games too. And what he does on the court are mistakes he's been doing since his first year. He's got stronger/faster, but not smarter. Take the whole of Francis's game. Not one game. Just because he dunks once in one game, doesn't mean that he doesn't want to do it the whole game! Why? Because he's better at dunking than passing or the sound jump-shot off the screen. So, it's natural to want to do things you are good at. He *wants* to do the flashy stuff, and ignore the other stuff. You can see it in his game. No need to counts successful dunks. Francis is a bad PG. He's an excellent SG. I'll tell you what. All this talk about moving Francis to the 2 and giving him more shots could all be put to rest if a few things happen. And that is this: If Francis is able to average 2.5 to 3.00 turnovers per game at a 6.5 assist per game ratio. And this is being conservative for Francis because Payton was able to get around 8.5 assist per game at 2.5 turnovers per game (last ten years). So I don't think I'm asking to much of Francis. If Francis was ever to average 2.5 turnovers per game at a 6.5 assist per game. Francis bashers would start to subside. In reality, 2.5/6.5 is a bad ratio compared to the elite guards. Elite PG are able to get 7 assist per game (Nash) or higher (8 for Payton) and maintain a 2.5 turnover ratio (or lower; Nash at 2.1). That's efficient! If Francis could every achieve that, I'd change my username to Francis_is_God.
If fans don't say anything, nothing would change. Or at least things would go much slower. And Rudy is conservative enough! We don't need the ice age to reoccur before things happen. It the fans didn't say anything, we'd still be doing the ISO game exclusively. The fans don't want that.
um yeah, that was my point. My suggestion that we shut up and stop talking about how bad things are going was sarcastic. I think we should b**** less about the players and more about the coaches. Put the pressure on Les and maybe he'll put some on the coaches. Les cares a lot more about fan opinion that the coaches do. He's the one who will get boiled alive by the media and city government if the team fails to produce and draw capacity crowds every night like Dallas.
What's most impressive is that Nash likes to dribble a lot and looks out of control a lot of times, but the Mavs led the league in fewest turnovers. Also why do people keep saying Nash benefits from Dirk and his stats are good because of that? Can't it be turned the other way so you could say Dirk benefits from Nash and his stats wouldn't be as good if he wasn't on the team. Nash penetrates a lot and gets Dirk the open look, so without Nash, Dirk wouldn't be getting all those open looks. Nash is making Bibby look like a grade school kid trying to play in the NBA in this series with the Kings. I know he doesn't rebound as well as Francis, since it's not really his game, but man you had to love him yesterday when he flew in to grab two offensive boards and was dragged down both times by Divac to get him into foul trouble. I read one poster on another board comment on how soft the mavs are cause all of their points in the paint were coming from Nash and Van Exel....that's so true.
He's the one who will get boiled alive by the media and city government = he just got a new arena that your tax dollars and my merchandise dollars paid for, in case anybody had trouble making that connection...
Yeah. That's because Francis is lazy. But what the heck? James Posey is always running.......lol.....that's why I love Posey. I mean...is it his habit or does the coach tell him to run? Maybe he was taught to always go...GOGOGOGOGO...I remember Posey said the team "wants" to work on their running game in the summer. So yeah...hopefully they do change it up. Moochie has to be waived first. Francis...is he like the only point guard who brings the ball up the court slow as hell? Besides Derek Fisher.....man.....our team must have had the most 8 second shotclock backcourt violations in the NBA. Probably... Oh well. He's our franchise player. But yeah...he's a scorer...not an all around true pure point guard. OUTITAN...you must love Steve Francis. DavidS..."If fans don't say anything, nothing would change. Or at least things would go much slower." Well...are the Rockets reading this board???
I love his potential and I don't think that Rudy is really making an effort to teach him a better way. I admit he's got some flaws and if they can't be fixed with coaching, current or replacement, then trade him but how about we run a real offense first eh?
LOL...yes that would be nice... A system. A plan. Easy simple plays that they can continuously use..like the Pick and Roll...but no more ISO... Francis is too cocky and Rudy is too stubborn...will not change...and then just add Mobley. And two guys who don't talk. And one freak...and 3 incompetent assistant coaches who are useless. And one loser with an afro who does not improve anybody or does anything positive.
If they are no wonder the players seem so depressed. The only player everybody likes is Yao. Everyone else sucks and should be traded. That kind of talk would make me feel like the fans supported me too. So let us hope not.
