Someone, anyone please just explain it so I dont keep getting more and more angry....the point of sitting Yao from halfway through the third quarter was what?j 1. He was tired???????? 2. He was playing badly??????? 3. He was lost out there? What god forsaken reason did Rudy chump him in a game he was the ONLY post presence we had? And I mean only. Sit during cruch....ok at least I can kinda understand the thinking there, but not to see another minute when you just scored 10 in 14 mins of action was just asinine.
one question i have, why are we switching on all the pick and rolls? why put Yao in that position? why put glen in that position, trying to guard marbury? Also, Cat has got to be one of the dumbest players i've ever seen. when will he learn from his stupid turnovers? how many tries does he need before he can successfully feed the post to glen rice? He just threw it out of bounds twice. Those really killed our momentum. oh, and another the thing. what the HELL gives amare the right to laugh at Yao like that? the fact that he had 5 points, 1 rebound, and 1 shot stuffed by Yao? How bout Joe Johnson? He cant even get in the freakin game, yet he's dieing from laughter at Yao's fall. punks is what they are.
You have to be kidding me! The only reason the Wizards got away with putting Oakley in there was because Stevenson didn't know how to execute at the end of the game. Other then that Oakley is useless defensively at the end of the game unless you want to gamble on him playing somebody one-on-one. Ming is a shot-blocker, blocked a shot in the game, I would have taken my chance with a shot-blocker on a stop, rookie or not. At least you have someone who is capable of changing a shot. All you have to do is have Ming camp out in the paint, that's it.
That's a nice theory, but if you had watched the whole game you would have noticed that the suns had little trouble scoring on that 7-6 guy. we just disagree, let it lie there. Rudy had his best players out there, marbury made a great shot, houston didn't make theirs, end of story.
i'm not following this at all. you think eddie was supposed to hit that 3 at the end or something. i mean obviously he could have and it would've been great, but rushed 3's with bo outlaw flying at you as the clock runs down aren't exactly gimme's. lobo pointed out the obvious that that shot was not "giving the game away" since it was very low percentage. giving away means you had an easy opportunity and blew it, which makes cuttino's ft's much more applicable. however, if we could have run any sort of offense on those last 4 plays (how did we get 3 off boards in a row, that was amazing) we could've won. also, has anyone ever seen somebody want a clear out as bad as mobley before he got the ft's. he got that ball, saw hardaway on him, and was waving like a madman for everyone to get the F out of his way. and it worked, except of course for the ft's. damn i can't believe he missed those, he's so good on ft's and he's usually clutch. really unfortunate that had to happen.
I really feel sorry for Ming about that ugly fall. Sportscenter will make fun of him for the next whole week. It is very good that China didn't show this game.
We're switching because it's the fundamenally smart thing to do. Why it's not successful has nothing to do with Yao or Rice on Marbury. Really good defensive teams double the dribbler with both defenders and force him out of the drive or to give the ball up. This assumes that the rest of the team is "quick" enough (mentally and physically) to rotate properly. Next time you watch a team the plays good team defense, watch this part of their scheme. IMHO, the Nets, Kings, Sonics and Sixers all do this well.
Rox offense is one of the ugliest among NBA teams. Even Denver ,Golden state have more fluidity ones than ours. Ours is purely dependent upon player's ability. That outght to be due to the coach.
The Suns were going to the basket but they weren't scoring on Ming so much as they were going to the basket and getting 2nd chance shots. Again, all you have to do is tell Ming to swat at the nearest shot. Besides even if they were scoring on Ming, what do you think they were doing to ALL of the big men? If they're going to light up our frontcourt, which they did for the most part, you might as well throw in a 7-6 guy to stop them. It's not like Mo or KT or Griffin were doing any better. Who is easier to shoot over down the stretch a 7-6 guy or a 6-9 guy?
Good post. I was thinking the same things. The Rockets had plenty of chances at the end to put the ball in the basket and couldnt do it. Add the two free throws missed by Cuttino and even Steve's missed free throw after the Langhi flagrant foul and you could've won the game by 5 or 6 points, but this is the NBA and things like this happen all the time. The team just needs to regroup and put it on the Lakers on sunday night.
Not from what I saw...I saw sun after sun take it too him for layups or drawing fouls for a 3 or 4 minute stretch. Ming right now is a defensive liability. besides, he can't grab rebounds. if the suns miss a shot, you might as well have a player in there who can at least get the rebound. final assessment: Rudy made the right choices.
I think the poor D by the rest of our team makes Ming look even worse than he is. Steve will get beat, Yao is forced to step over to help. Then marbury will throw up a high shot and miss, but then the guy Ming was guarding got the rebound every time. Someone has to pick up that man. The reason Yao doesnt get as many boards is because he his out of position after trying to erase the defensive mistakes of others. Another thing i noticed is he just has bad luck defensively. When he runs out on a player shooting a jumper, it just seems like they make it every single time. He just cant catch a break.
F4Pres, You can't look at it that way...I'll tell you why? If your team is struggling and just hanging on to a thread what are you supposed to do when things aren't going your way? Cry? No, you do something about it. So, if the last shot was rushed, then so what!? What else were we to do? Go back in time and redo some mistakes? No. You you play the cards you are given. Did we make some mistakes? Yes. But so did the Suns. They stepped up. We didn't. The game was up for grabs in the last two plays. And WE HAD THE LAST SHOT. What more do you want? A time machine? Sure, I'll take one of those. Do you have one? No. Oh well... Let's move on. Pay back is a beeyatch!!! Jan 15th, 2003.
But you saw Mo, KT, and Griffin and anybody else we ran out there stopping people from going to the lane? Everybody we had in the post was a liability so why not throw a taller guy out there? Who out there was rebounding!? Mo had 2 rebounds, Griffin 4, KT played the entire game and barely got 6 rebounds. How much better were they at rebounding then Ming!? I mean Ming can't rebound, he has 2 rebounds, so put somebody in there like Mo who had the same amount of rebounds, or guys who had over twice as much playing time as Ming yet only grabbed 2 to 4 more rebounds then him? Meanwhile you're looking for blocks, there were only 3 blocks in the game, guess who made the blocks? Francis, Hawkins and Ming.
You are really biased against Yao. I do respect honest opinions, but not your though. What do you expect a rookie center to do , if his own guards keep losing their men, and he has this freaking roadrunner running at him, or a 6' 9" jumping at him in full speed. 9 of 10 time, he would get the rookie call against him. By the way , did you really watch the game. Why would a 7' 6" center ended up guarding a 6' 2" guard for at least 5 seconds, and none of his teammates come over to help. It was bad defense of the whole team. Dont blame it on Yao. You are just a Yao basher. At least , others have the guts or integrity to admit it. You just try to hide it with your neo- analysis.
As for Ming's rebounding, something I liked, Ming may have had 2 rebounds, but he had abour 3 or 4 situations where if he couldn't get the rebound because he was surrounded he tipped it to his teammates, and that is also the sign of a good rebounder. Barkley did that, Rodman loved doing that, Moses Malone does that. In theory Ming had about 5 or 6 rebounds because there were times he kept the ball alive so that his teammates could get the rebound.
James C., Sports (or life, for that matter) isn't static like that. It's dynamic. Don't you think you (both teams) would react differently if you were down (or up) by 4 rather than 1? So, just saying that if we hit this shot or that shot in the past quarters doesn't mean that the Sun's wouldn't have reacted to being down by more, and did something about it. Let's say that Steve hit his free throw. Then Mobley hit both his. We'd be up by 4. But because of that the Suns would have reacted differently; shot a three instead of a 2. And if they made it, then we're back in the same place. Up by one. You react to the situation at hand. That's why teams give away large leads; they relax because they are up by 15 or 20. If you were up by only 2, then you act differently.
Follow this guys: When kenny Thomas makes at least 50% of his shots, we can sneak him into playing minutes. The minute he starts hitting below 50%, all he's doing is killing the flow of the game. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with KT. I thought he'd, at least, play well for a contract. I'll go out on a limb and say it: Had KT not made the trip, this win would be ours. I HATE, DESPISE his style in scoring. It's everything the Rockets don't want and don't need. I've said it a thousand thousand thousand times. Get rid of KT. If MoT can play 20 minutes, Griffin can play 28. We'll balance the minutes out as Mo regains his fitness. With Ming beginning to look like he knows the system, and MoT shaking off some serious rust tonight, it's time for KT to go. I can honestly say we're better out his contract than putting him on the IR. Because you know he'll start whining about it.
