Stats of the night: Rafer Alston: 3-11 FG%, 2-7 3PT, 9 assists, 8 points. Shane Battier: 2-4 FG%, 1-2 3PT, 5 points. Ron Artest: 3-10 FG%, 2-3 3PT, 9 points. Aaron Brooks: 1-8 FG%, 0-3 3PT, 2 points. There are your problems, plain and simple. And it doesn't get much better. Ron and Aaron might have consistently better shooting nights, but to get a mere 13 points from two of your starting five is inexcusable. I'm with northeastfan on this one... too many "intangibles", not enough tangibles.
Yeah, the callers on the radio shows can be pretty ridiculous at times. That's why I feel better than a lot of them because Clutchfans automatically know more
Fine. A poster said his shooting was bad for a wing player. That's what I was disagreeing with. And I was responding to your comment regarding McGrady's "decision" for Yao to set a pick. This is imagined, since Adelman explicitly said after the game that they expected them to switch (meaning, the intention was to run a PnR). As I've said already said, turnovers must be understood in terms of touches. You're comparing apples and oranges. McGrady got more touches on the perimeter, he was making more plays (for himself and others) and he got 4 turnovers. Yao got significantly less touches, he was making less plays, and he had 5 turnovers. Which player was more secure with the ball? It's not just proportional to the number of turnovers you had ... it's how many turnovers you had given the touches. Yao had the same number of turnovers as he had made field goals in the fourth quarter. Moreover, all his his makes came after Tracy got back on the floor. And two of them came directly off plays from T-Mac (one an offensive rebound off of McGrady's miss, and another off an assist from McGrady). Before that point, you know what he did? 2 turnovers, 1 rejected shot in 5 fourth quarter minutes. What was your point again? You're right .. the Rockets did have a sizaeable lead in the fourth quarter. They led by as many as 9 points. But guess what? That was before McGrady entered the game. When McGrady returned with just under 7 minutes left, our lead was down to 1. We never led by more than 3 points thereafter. That's weak, sorry. The Utah game was a complete choke in the 4th quarter, regardless of them being able to win in the 2nd overtime. Don't tell me it "doesn't count" just because they happened to win after deciding to play through someone else other than Yao. Your claim was that McGrady is the one that makes us choke. By any reasonable standard, our offense "choked" far worse in that Utah game in the 4th quarter, playing mostly through Yao, than it did yesterday. As for New York ... agreed, a choke. Brutal fourth quarter: 7-23 from the field, outscored 30-18. Perhaps our worse 4th quarter on offense since Utah (no McGrady), when we went 3-18 from the field and got outscored 26-16. Right. Just as it was a close game yesterday, after McGrady reentered the game. If you want to claim one was a choke because McGrady didn't deliver, then you have to accept the other was a choke because Yao didn't deliver. See above. Sorry, no.
Sure we won 5 out of 6. You think we can win in the playoffs with that squad minus TMAC? That team won by outscoring opponents on most nights, and when he was benched with smaller, quicker lineups. It was not exactly fundamental playoff basketball. It was a quick fix IMO. It looked great cause we were scoring and winning. As far as Adleman's press conference, he's right. We had no inside-out game last night. That was Yao's fault. (5 TOs)
what you're doing is over overexagerating and magnifying Tmac's poor plays. And when Yao has a bad game, you get on Tmac's ass ever harder, trying to shift the criticism away from Yao or something.. this team won 12 straight last yr w/o Yao and Tmac said they're as good a team with or without Yao is that triggered your hate? plain stupid then, you take it peronsal whenever ppl complain about Yao. you become a man on a mission. I mean, he clearly sucked last night deserves his share of blame. then you started talking about his teammates not feeding him the ball so he couldn't get into a rythmn. For three quarters we played great basketball, agree? and Yao had all but 7 points on 7 shots but who cares, the team was functioning well. There's no doubt that Yao's is our biggest weapon and we'll continue to feeding him down low but if its not there, we do have other options on the floor What Yao needs to do is be a more of a force on D, box his man out better and hold on to the ball and cut his TOs down when he's not scoring. and that'll improve this team tremendously All of your posts are so one sided. if anyone wanted a fair assesment of a Rocket game w/ yao and tmac, he should never never take your posts seriously. you have your freedom to voice your opinion but I would suggest you to go to the yao fansite, where you belong.. there's this dude that talks and thinks exactly like you, his name username is pryuen or something.. you guys can be best buds
I think durvasa makes some good points, but I'm surprised at how hard he is being on Yao, especially since he is such a popcornmachine gameflow guy. http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20090128&game=PHIHOU Yao was plus 7 last night. Tracy was -5. That said, Yao was as much, if not more, to blame for the 4th quarter collapse, as has been noted. His 3 turnovers in his first stint in the fourth, etc. On the other hand, when it was still a winnable game, and Tracy was in and Yao wasn't, it was horrible. Tracy was -3 in his fourth quarter stint, too, including a -4 stint during the couple minutes max that Yao was taken out. Not good. Some lineup issues there, but not good. What's being overlooked, then, obviously, is waht some on here have tried to point out. Defense. Defensive efficiency. Etc. If Tracy is being more efficient than Yao last night, if Tracy is committing fewer turnovers than Yao, especially per touch, etc., than why is Tracy a -5 and Yao a +7. Why was it that at the end of both the 1st and 3rd quarters, the second Yao goes out, the Sixers go on sizeable + runs (they gained 5 points on us at the end of both quarters when Yao goes out). Fact is Yao gets dunked on, and some of his turnovers (his fault or Rafers or whatever entry passer), do lead to easy buckets by the other team, but overall, the team is much better defensively when he is in. The team is better overall when he is in. I'm not a Yao apologist and a Tracy hater. As has also been pointed out, Brooks, Rafer, Artest all also sucked. Landry played decent enough but still struggles so much defensively, and he was -5 in his playing time. Shane didn't seem to play a great game, but he was +6 (second to Yao's +7). I think Shane and Yao play well together (offensively Shane is a good entry passer and a good player for an inside-out system), and Shane focuses on defense. Some take-aways: 1. Defense, Defense, Defense - We should be talking a lot more about defense than offense. Ron Artest has NOT been a boon to our defense, as expected. His defense seems to be as much about going for those 2 steals a game on one on one mode as it is playing sold team defense - as a result, we are stuck with Ron trailing the play defensively more often than not...he gambles too much. That aside, the bench group is horid defensively. Brooks can't play defense. Landry can't play defense. Wafer probably can, but is learning. Hayes obviously can, but is viewed as such a liability offensively when playing with that group, he just doesn't get a lot of PT. I think the team is severely missing a good, defensive minded assistant coach. 2. 4th quarter play - we have no real dominant closers, but neither Tracy or Yao are as bad as often advertised. Yao struggled to start the 4th last night, but was the ONLY bright spot down the stretch, and certain stats has also shown he actually improves his play and is a bright spot in the 4th quarter. Tracy has struggled in 4th quarters recently, but he's also shown he can be very dangerous in the 4th quarter of his career. 3. Lineups - I think Rick is really struggling with lineups. I can't entirely blame him, but in some cases he seems to make stupid decisions. Von Wafer has gone from amazing to not getting enough minutes, imo. He was -1 when on the court last night, but was big time positives in both NY and Detroit...was positive in Indiana, etc. He is, literally, our only perimeter player who can or does take it to the rim with authority. Wafer aside, there's just an overall uncertainty about what Rick's doing with the lineups. How to play Tracy, Ron, Yao and Shane together effectively isn't clear. When to put in Brooks. How Chuck does or doesn't fit in. Etc. Again, this is as much about defense as it is offense. 4. Chemistry - goes with lineups above, but whereas I think lineups is more Rick making bad decisions, chemistry is more just the players not having chemistry, regardless of the decision Rick is making. 5. The Brooks/Landry dilemma - There's shooting slumps and then there's Brooks. At some point it's not a slump anymore, its an indication of how good a shooter you are normally. It's just as likely, at this point, that Brooks was in a shooting anti-slump earlier in the season and he's reverted to what he may always be, a poor shooter. I certainly hope not, but again, just as likely. He's obviously a defensive liability, and, despite the ability to get into the lane at will, even during his shooting slump, his assist numbers and a/to ratio is not good. Landry is a great offensive talent, and brings great athleticism. Unfortunately, he seems to be getting worse defensively. I do think Chuck has been horrible this year, but you have to start wondering if and when Chuck should starting taking Landry's minutes - as opposed to the Landry/Hayes playing together combo Rick seems to like, which I don't think works. I think Brooks is the bigger issue, as we all know we aren't exactly running with Chris Paul out there as a starter. Even with Rafer's recent hot streak (well, hotter), with Brooks horrible play we continue to have one of, if not the worst PG tandem in the league. In today's NBA, that's difficult to get past. Solutions 1. Do nothing and hope for improvements in (i) chemistry, (ii) Ron Artest, and (iii) Brooks. If you get these things, this team wins a championship. If you get 2 of three, it wins some playoff series. 2. Drastic changes. Obviously, this involves trading either Ron, Shane or Tracy. Personally, that's the order I'd pursue, too. Strangely, with Ron, the problem has absolutely nothing to do with his attitude. He's just not fitting in, and worse, not even playing well when not fitting in. It'd be one thing if he was disrupting the team but at least hitting a higher % of his shots and playing killer d...but he isn't doing that, either. I'd trade Tracy last of the three. Trading Yao will never happen, and, besides, as porous as our defense has been this year, and as weak as our 1/2 punch at PF is defensively, and as little PT you can expect from Deke, it's probably not a great idea. I still think Tracy does more than most, even with his half-ass attitude. He pisses me off by loafing around on defense, and not really getting how the offense works best. But he still puts up close to triple-double numbers regularly, is still our best passer, is still our best one on one player, and, imo, will again pick up his game in the playoffs, as he has done every year - it just may mean loafing around during the regular season unfortunately. All that said, if you can get return for him, you consider it, as you can certainly argue at the end of the day the Yao/TMac experiment isn't working. It's easy to forget that we still have yet to see Tracy/Yao/Scola together in the playoffs. While Tracy/Yao/Scola/Artest sounds even better, on paper, Artest really isn't fitting in. If you could get an upgrade at PG and another solid player for him, you do it. Artest's contract also has the beauty of ending this year. Think of how the Lakers got Pau last year. Maybe as the trade deadline nears you can get a lower-tier team to give up a solid player that doesn't fit in exchange for an expiring. Who knows. Artest+Landry for Jamison. Maybe somehow get a Ben Gordon from the Bulls. I don't know, I'm not a trade expert.
^ JayZ750, good call. One of the best posts I've read in a long time. That is exactly right. He did the same thing about a year ago, when we lost at home against Utah. One need only go through the fourth quarter, play by play, actually pay attention, and they'll see that this statement: is a totally unfair criticism of his play yesterday. I've done my fair share of critiquing McGrady this season. Some have even accused me of "hating" on him. But when he plays well, as he did yesterday on offense, I'm going to give him credit. Now, I happened to go through yesterday's game very carefully. Perhaps my disgust over Yao's play was unfair, so I wanted to carefully look at our possessions with him on the floor. What I found is that I WAS unfair. Yao was sloppy with the ball at times, to be sure, but the Rockets did benefit from getting him the ball on a number of occasions as well. Does that mean the blame goes to McGrady, as badgerfan insists? Not at all. McGrady did a lot of good things. A close examination of both players, if one chooses to take the time and do so, will bare this out. I charted Yao's possessions when he got touches on postups. There were 24 such possessions, by my count, where he got post ups. And there were a few more where he was fronted, double teams, or he fell, and so his teammates had to move the ball elsewhere. Off the 24 plays where Yao got a touch in post, the Rockets scored 25 points. Some of those were "hockey assists". Some of them were actual assists. Some were scores by Yao. 3 of the points came in the 1st quarter, when Yao passed out, the ball was swung to McGrady, who penetrated and passed back to Artest in the corner. I also tracked our efficiency on the other plays, when Yao was on the court. By my count, there were 40 such possessions (not including transition opportunities where Yao didn't make it down), on which we scored 36 points. Here's the data, broken down by quarter: Code: [B]qtr Yao poss, points Other poss, points[/B] 1 8, 9 13, 11 2 4, 4 4, 4 3 5, 6 13, 14 4 7, 6 10, 7 I'll also add that on two of those "other possessions" in the third quarter, the Rockets were trying to get the ball to Yao but couldn't (fronting on one play, he fell on another). If we want to assign those possessions to Yao, the Rockets scored 14 points on 11 "other poss" in the 3rd, and 6 points on 7 "Yao poss". So, how about that 4th quarter? Was that collapse Yao's fault? Was it McGrady's fault? Well, first thing I'll do is break it up into phases. phase 1: Yao was on the court with the 2nd unit, McGrady resting phase 2: McGrady returns and joins Yao phase 3: Adelman decides to sit Yao for a few minutes phase 3: Yao returns and joins McGrady Here's the breakdown for each phase in the 4th quarter: Code: [B] phase Yao poss, points Other poss, points[/B] 1 2, 0 5, 2 2 2, 2 2, 5 3 - 3, 0 4 3, 4 3, 0 Again, no McGrady in the first phase. We had 4 transition points, but otherwise only 2 points in the half court. I would say that with this unit (which included Brooks, Wafer, and I think Landry), Yao should have been more involved. Next phase, McGrady returns. I'll spell out exactly what happened. First play with McGrady back, he passes it into Yao in the post, and Yao hits a turnaround. On Yao's other touch in this phase, he also received the ball in the post from McGrady. And he got tied up, and lost the jump ball. The two other possessions in this phase were both scores from passes by McGrady (5 points on 2 possessions). Let's repeat: McGrady returns, and he's not just going one-on-one. He's passing to Yao. He's getting others shots. And the Rockets offense is starting to work again. Ok, next Adelman takes Yao out -- phase 3. Things don't go too well. Ok, now is it McGrady's fault? Nope. First possession, McGrady attacks the basket and he gets blocked at the rim. A strong move. Next possession, again McGrady attacks and he misses short runner in the lane. That's a good shot for him. On the third possession, the Rockets run a PnR with Rafer at the top of the key. He penetrates and misses a layup. Can anyone honestly look at those three possessions, objectively, and say that McGrady lost us the game there? Finally, Yao returns in phase 4. These are Yao's touches: (1) He passes out of the low post to Artest at the top, who dribbles in to about 18 feet and misses the jumper at the top of the key. One could argue that Artest should have reposted Yao, perhaps. (2) Yao gets an entry pass from McGrady, and he's able to convert on a hook shot, (3) Yao gets another entry pass from McGrady, and he's able to hit an And-1. What about the three other plays where Yao didn't get the touch -- McGrady's fault? Here they are: (1) Tracy drives and passes to a wide open Rafer Alston in the corner, who misses, (2) Tracy gets around a screen and receives the ball from out of bounds, missing a 21-footer in the corner. Yao gets the rebound, is fouled, and the ball goes back out of bounds. That didn't cost us anything, because Yao eventually scores. (3) the final possession, McGrady receives the screen from Yao at the top and Dalembert switches. This has been discussed to death. A careful review of the play will show that McGrady had no where to go moving left. His only recourse was to try to dump it into Yao who wasn't quite set, cross over and attempt to attack going right (which he has difficulty doing because of his left knee), or take the pull up jumper which ended up doing. So, after reviewing all of that, was it Yao's fault? Was it Tracy's fault? In my opinion, the offense ran pretty well. We got a lot of open looks, particularly in the fourth, that we just didn't finish. In the first 3 quarters, our offense was solid in my opinion (at least while Yao was in the game). I was mainly focusing on offense here, but more than that the defense let us down in this game.
We lost the double digit lead that we gained when T-Mac was on the bench. He and Scola got us that lead in the third quater, then when they sat down we refused to play any transition defense. We were in the position we were last night because of our bench. They didn't want to play defense and lsot the lead McGrady got for us in teh third.
All these stats and you guys are neglecting one single fact: spacing wasn't good last night. And that can't be measured by stats. Yes, Yao was unusually weak-handed last night, even for his standard. But some of the turnovers are direct result of poor spacing. On one play, Yao dribbles off leg of a second defender, because the players are bunched, he doesn't have good options to pass and repost etc. now discuss on.
You just started to. Take all the turnovers, go through them, and count how many were the result of bad spacing.
Why do you bother to bring up SR610? Marc and Andre have their heads so far up the Texans nether regions they rarely talk about anyhting else. They have Morey on or an NBA guy from time to time and then switch back to Texans radio. The afternnon guys are better, but the morning guys are one dimensional.
If you look back at game 7 vs Utah, here in Houston, Do you remember how Yao kept getting the ball ripped out of his hands. Yao is awesome but at times lets face it, he's not. Tracy is another story, He slows the offense down alot and I think teams are getting use to this and fast breaking back to the basket to see if T-mac will defend his man. My point here is it is probably going to continue to be frustrating because of all the talent we have, WE HAVE NO LEADER on the floor. All the championship teams have or had this and Yao does it alot, but he hasnt been able to do it when It counts. I.E Playoffs. Something has to give and I hope it does so we see consistency and maybe we can start to see the rox close games consistently. And close the sub par teams out too. Wheter we want to face it or not I see alot of similarities between us and phoenix. I could be totally wrong, but this is my opinion. Im not saying Yao is all of our problems like Tracy, But its the little things we need to get sorted out. And a big man who can dunk and block shots.
I retract when I said Yao doesnt do it when it counts, he does many games. But its weird how he cant do it all the time. I guess he is human and thats why he needs a bad A@! back up for him.
This is still a failure on McGrady's part. There's no way that you should be taking a jump shot after the pick when a better, taller shot blocker just switched onto you. We all know what the result was. You're making the logical fallacy of assuming that TO's scale linearly with touches, namely that given X number of touches you can expect Y number of TO's. That's probably true over the long run but in short term situations like a game it should be obvious that there is a substantial amount of local variability--note that Yao had two TO's through three quarters and then three in a quarter. Also, given that Yao only had two TO's through three quarters doesn't that mean by your reasoning that he should have been getting the ball a lot more in those three quarters? And McGrady missed every single shot he made in that quarter. By your logic shouldn't somebody else have had the ball? And how many points did the Rockets score after he came back in? McGrady went back to his old ball stopping habits in the fourth and the offense broke down and died. The Utah game is not a choke job because after flowing the lead the Rockets gutted it out through two tough overtime periods to win. You gut it out through two overtimes, it's not a choke. The Philly game was a choke because the Rockets pissed away a big lead in the fourth quarter and lost. The Utah game wasn't because the Rockets redeemed themselves by playing tough for two overtime periods and eventually getting the win. That's not a very convincing counter-argument. I'm not suggesting that McGrady didn't do an okay job. But that was only through three quarters. Once the pressure's on he does choke because he goes back to what's comfortable to him, and what's comfortable to him is not playing the offense. The real problem with him is a lack of discipline.
It was McGrady's failure that he didn't have an enough explosiveness to cross over and drive right when Dalembert showed wide left. That was where the opening was, but he committed himself to going left and he had to take a tough shot. Agreed. By the same token, it was Yao's failure that he didn't have enough hand-eye coordination or reflexes to follow the flight of the ball, grab it before it hit the floor right in front of him, and dunk it (there certainly was plenty of time on the clock for it). Actually, there was an additional turnover in the first quarter that was given to McGrady, which happened on a post entry feed to Yao. Dalembert tapped the ball away from Yao before he could secure the ball. So, if you want to get technical, that is 3 turnovers that came on possessions in which we fed the ball to Yao in the post in the first 3 quarters. But leaving that aside, you argued that Tracy was about as turnover-prone in this game as Yao, beause he had 4 turnovers while Yao had 5. And since Tracy had more turnovers than, say, Shane Battier, somehow my "reasoning" would suggest that Tracy should have gotten less touches and Shane more. Look, I never once said that Yao received the ball too often, and some of his touches should have gone to Tracy. You're the one criticizing the Rockets for where they put the ball, not me. So the burden is on you to explain why Yao was more deserving of more touches (or his teammates less deserving). As I wrote above, I thought the second unit should have looked to get Yao the ball more in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter when McGrady was sitting. But while McGrady was on the court, he did a fine job looking for Yao in the post. On possessions where the Rockets, as a team, went elsewhere, McGrady generally made good decisions. This is my assessment upon reviewing the game a second time. If you disagree, point to some specific plays where McGrady's selfishness denied Yao, and the Rockets, a good score. And were McGrady and Yao about the same in how sloppy they were with the ball? That can't be captured by looking at turnover totals at the end of the game. You know it, I know it, and anyone who understand the game knows it. The more you handle the ball, the more likely you are to turn it over. That is the basis by which one must assess how "turnover-prone" a player is. Moreover, one must consider the manner in which turnovers occurred. Not all turnovers are equal. Sometimes multiple players have to share blame for a turnover. Sometimes the defense just makes a spectacular play. Sometimes its a spacing issue, as michecon point out. Watch the game, and look at the turnovers each player got credited with. And look at how often those turnovers occurred relative to how often they handled the ball. That will make for a much better comparison than "5 vs 4". Again, I never argued any player in the game should be getting more touches or more shots because of relatively few turnovers. I happen to think the ball movement in the game was fine, the play calls were reasonable, and both Tracy and Yao got an appropriate number of touches in general. That's not why we lost. Ok, so you concede that McGrady wasn't responsible for blowing a big lead (as he didn't have a big lead to blow in the fourth quarter). Now, you say McGrady's "old ball stopping" cost us the game. I challenge you to show even one possession in the fourth quarter in which that happened. I watched the second quarter. I documented above what happened. I can tell you, point blank, that you're dead wrong. If you disagree, point out the possession in which what you describe happened. And now we're back to this again. Let's recap carefully your original point: "This team has a long history of choking in the fourth, usually associated with offensive droughts. Is it any coincidence that it rears its ugly head when T-Mac returns?" -- badgerfan You're saying that McGrady is responsible for our fourth quarter choke, due to an"offensive drought", against Philly. You clarify above that by "choke", you meaning losing a big lead in the fourth and ultimately losing the game. But we've already established that McGrady was not on the floor in the fourth while the Rockets had a big lead. The 9-point lead was "pissed away" while McGrady was on the bench and, you guessed it, Yao Ming was on the floor. By the time McGrady reentered the game, the lead was down to 1. Further, this "oh but if we win, that doesn't count" is utter hogwash. The "ball movement" that you've been preaching about was no where to be found in the fourth quarter or overtime periods in that Utah game. We won by exploiting isolation plays with Ron Artest, not Yao Ming. And Yao entered that Utah game in the fourth quarter with a 9 point lead. Tracy enters the Philly game with a 1 point lead. Hey, maybe if the Rockets had a 9 point lead when Tracy entered the Philly game, we wouldn't have lost that one either. Again, I went through the fourth quarter carefully, documented it above, and you're completely off in your assessment. Tracy did a better job than any other Rocket in getting Yao the ball in the fourth quarter. He never once passed up Yao in the post. He moved the ball. He penetrated. He did exactly what was asked of him. I'm perfectly willing to criticize Tracy's ball stopping and laziness when he deserves it. Yesterday, on offense at least, he did not.
Don't you just hate it when people have to quote ever single sentence to try and get their point across? Seriously? Every sentence needs to be quoted and replied?
I know, it's annoying. badgerfan makes a number of points, I wanted to respond to as many of them as I could. I need to work on being more concise, though.
