"Cuttino (Mobley) missed four in a row, Glen (Rice) missed three in a row. I missed two in a row. We said we're going to live and die with what (Yao) does for us." I hate to beat this end after end especially after a good win against a good team, but what took so long? How many points, good shots and great passes does it take to throw the ball inside? How dominant does a guy need to be before the pg or coach says, lets get the ball inside!!! This is what I'm talking about when I say low basketball iq either from the pg or coach. Please don't give me this lecture about the pacers fronting the post and making it impossible to get him the ball. When Ming is fronted in the post, if the guards quickly swing the ball opposite and Ming rolls and seals, its money in the bank. I beg the Rockets to stop making the game harder than what it is. If a team can go 9 possessions in a close game and everyone but the biggest mismatch can get ball, then something needs to be done about that. Even after that, it was a good win for the Rockets.
i read that quote and wasn't exactly sure if it was accurate. i do remember calvin saying we should not shoot any more 3's and go inside and right then cuttino got a wide open look from 3 so he took it, we got the board and he was wide open again and shot it, then rice was wide open and shot it then i think cat got wide open again and took it (3 diff possessions for those 4 shots) at which point the next time i think we went to ming. i don't think steve literally meant we shot nine consecutive shots before figuring it out (if i'm wrong on that, i'm sure many people will be sure to correct me). it was kinda weird. i mean people always tell shooters to keep shooting if they're wide open and cat and rice were. should they just pass up the wide open look (which is the whole point of offense, wide open looks for good shooters) and basically just start over? at some point, yes. which cuttino did the next time he was open for 3, held it up, then passed into ming. but for the most part, if you're open everyone wants and expects you to shoot so i'm not really sure how cat and rice should have reacted to wide open shots. outside of that, i thought we passed plenty to ming. i know he had 37 touches on espn's touch-tracker with about 5 minutes left, that seems like a good number of touches to me, although i've never tracked it before.
There was a play that really caught my attention that could make people rethink fronting Yao Ming so much. Brad Miller was really fronting Yao Ming leaving a nice baseline seam to the basket. Millers own fronting tactics turned Yao Ming into a screen and gave (was it Cat or Steve?) a free trip to the basket. Easy two points.
Its 2-fold about never stop shooting, but a good shooter or scorer knows when he's in a slump, get a high % shot(15ft and in,layup or trip to the ft line) not a 23,24ft shot. In case it has gone unnoticed, most teams will leave players open past 23ft. Why? Anyway you look at it, its a low % shot. Don't stop shooting, but get a good shot instead of a crappy one. The way Ming was dealing, after all those missed shots, the ball should have went inside,plain and simple.
Just for clarity, I checked the tape. It was NOT 9 possessions in a row. I went right to the point when Calvin made the comment about 3's in the third quarter with all the misses. It was 9 possessions spread out over the entire quarter with Yao shots and post-up's mixed in there. It was probably 9 possessions out of 20. In the fourth, it was apparent that they were going to go to Yao almost exclusively which they did. The difference in the third is that it was probably more like 50/50 going to Yao versus not. So, when Steve said this, he was probably talking about the discussion they had during the timeout between the third and the fourth quarters. Best not to take this stuff so literally.
good, i knew it wasn't 9 in a row. also, from personal experience the decision of when to keep shooting and not is a tough one, especially when the shots are good like cat's were (for someone of cat's shooting caliber, a 3 is a good shot when it's open). i'm 5'5, slow as molasses, and can barely jump over a rope, but i can shoot like few other people can so that's pretty much the only thing i can speak of from experience from my non-illustrious career on the hardwood. now, when you are in an out and out slump, you know it and you wanna slap people who say "just keep shooting" like they know what's happening with you. but sometimes (and this was my impression of cat's game last night) things feel good and you just can't believe the shots are not going in and you're also convinced that eventually they will. in the 4th, they finally did and it was good he kept taking them IMHO. i don't think the pacers intentionally let him have the shots like say teams would let KT (sorry to see you go) have the 20 footer. it was a breakdown we would normally take advantage of and finally did in the 4th. overall, i thought yao got the ball plenty and the team seemed to have no problem handing over the reins to yao in crunch time, which is the ultimate test of whether you trust someone or not.
They just looked out of sorts in the third. They all had fumble hads in the third for an agonizingly long time. ESPN posted the Rocks shooting percentage by quarter and it was about 30 30 30 75. Considering that Yao and Francis shot consistently for the entire game the rest of the guys were just ice cold.
