Simple question! I feel the team lost their defensive nature recently. Although we are short of hands, we did pretty well at the beginning of the season, simply by the signatuer hustling. Now the team can score a lot, but I feel the players lost the energy. And players like Scola who never stop hustling on the court, is always benched at the fourth quarter. What happened to the team?
Right now the Rockets aren't a defensive team, and they aren't an offensive team. They are a bad team.
Scola was benched b/c he was struggling offensively and couldn't guard West or Okafor. I agreed with that decision. His lateral movement is non-existent.
Speaking of defense, AB/Martin is as bad a backcourt as you can get. Lowry/AB or Lowry/Martin would be better. Another reason to start Lowry next year.
Only if we rehire Van Gundy. The ease that the opposing teams score on us these days makes me sick. Of course without an inside defensive presence it is really hard to shut the other teams down.
Absolutely at the SF position they're STACKED with defenders. But the whole carry over of the "Van Gundy principles" has been long over.
We don't have Yao at the beginning of season either. And we never have a center who can block for the whole season. But we were not this bad defensively for the firsst several months. Look at how many scores we have given up recently, even in the games we won.
When you lose two 7'2" centers in Yao and Mutombo and replace it with Andesen and Hayes, the defense will suffer.
