I ask you all to recall... he only took 9 shots in the first game. The difference this time was he didn't touch the ball near enough - but that was two things, his teammates playing too much one on one ball and him not being able to move to get open because his teammates weren't swinging the ball.
Yes, i agree with you what you said at the end of this post. We have already stolen the homecourt advantage after all. The rockets must learn to how to pass the ball to Yao immediately when Yao has the position better, and patiently seek the right way how to pass the ball to him. Yao doesn't get the ball in the air and dunk the ball as what O'neal or Howard did in the game, he also can't jump and jump seriesly.
The Vegas was -6 favor blazers, even rockets had blown out blazers (-5 favor blazers) few days back. My guess is that AD knows refs will be hard on Yao, if you force the ball to Yao, it will be either an offsenive foul or a TO. Instead, AD wanna keep Yao in the game, even without touch, Yao still creat space for others and defend their bigs... Back to home court, Yao will bounce back with +10 shooting and torture blazers once again, hopefully The bottom line is, there are hiden rules on playoff ground, you dont upset be loved home court crowd that much.
Alot of it is on Yao and what he is able to do. When Shaq gets fronted the ball is usually lobed over the defender and Shaq tears the rim off knocking any bodies to the floor that are inside the circle. If Shaq sees that the weekside defender is out of the circle and knows he could be called for a foul he'll pass to the player who was being guarded by the weekside defender for short shot/layup. When the Rockets try to lob a pass to Yao he usually fumbles the ball with just the slightest contact coming from the week side and he doesn't have the strength or the will to go strong to the rim like Shaq. Yao's advantage over Shaq is that he can be a very good mid-range jumpshooter. I'm fine with Yao taking 10+ jump shots a game. Hakeem was great in the paint but could kill you with his jumper as well.
I think a lot of this accurate, but even so, they should have tried to get the ball into Yao more than they did. Don't force it time after time if it's not working, but they didnt even try and establish Yao last night. We're lucky we didn't get blown out, because we hit a lot of low percentage long distance shots (see Ron Ron) that we can't count on going in most nights.
Most of you didn't even watch the game! A little more than half of the time, we ran plays for someone else, which was fine. We have other players on the team! When we tried to establish Yao in the block, the Blazers doubled team him before the ball arrived sometimes and after the catch the rest of the time. Which meant we played 4 against 3 somewhere else. Yao getting 6 shots was not the problem. The double team created shots for someone else. The only thing I saw about getting shots for Yao was that we were too predictable. Sometimes he had deep position but we were determined to go somewhere else and we did. Sometimes he did not have good position and we waited too long for him to fight for it and the shot clocks ran down. We just need to be flexible and not play like robots.
He has Pryzbilla/Aldridge/Oden fronting him. In addition, there was Pryzbilla/Aldridge/Oden behind him at the same time, sandwiching him. If, by some mental lapse on Portland's side, Yao pinned both his men down (or there was only one at the time), a double team came from the baseline immediately when he got the ball. How, exactly, do you get the ball to Yao in this situation? Swing it to the other side? Can't do that because he's sandwiched. A high lob? Too dangerous and we saw at least one turnover because of that. No, when they devote THAT much energy to Yao, it shouldn't be shocking or worrisome that he only got 6 shots. When they devote THAT much energy to Yao, we should capitalize on the gaping holes left in the wake of this massive double-teaming. We did, quite often, we just didn't make the easy shots (Scola's typical top-of-the-key jumper) or free throws (less than 70%). You can't just force feed Yao when he's covered in that manner; turnovers will happen if you do.
why do we keep saying the same things over and over for years regarding yao's touches? sure some of it is on his teammates. but if it has gone on for years, maybe yao has to do something about it.
well when IS it worth talking about? definitely more than a casual fan, but even a casual fan could observe; we are in a very tight playoff game, the entire front court of the other team is in foul trouble, and he doesn't get touches...not even shot attempts, but not in his hand. If anyone concludes Yao doesn't need many touches for this team to be successful, why does he need a max extension? general consensus is that he's the most important player, by a good margin, on our team, but we're content and "just accept" this. whatever.
when i guy is double and tripled team (literally swarmed) that HAS to result in easy opportunities for team mates. If it doesn't, we are dead. Can you imagine what Kobe would do if a team tripled Gasol????? Or what Paul Pierce would do if you tripled KG or what Parker would do if you tripled Duncan????
This is overstated. There were possessions where it was true. There were others where they swung the ball to his side and he was unable to get position on the one guy who fronting him.
and bingo was his name-o. i know it's way premature to be talking about that while we're in the middle of the playoffs...but we've been discussing it off and on all season long. we're just seeing it now when it matters most. when your max contract guy can't get more than 6 shots in a huge playoff game on the road....then maybe you do something different. i can not imagine any all star caliber player only finding 6 shots in a freaking playoff game.
