I stayed over in Houston for two extra days so that I might see a second game.What I saw was quite a shock. I was not able to see any effect of JVG's coaching, infact I saw 'Rudy Ball' A Guard Dominated Team, A selfish 'I' first Team. The Guards had limited ability passing the ball to the Center,infact their passing is at a level considered 'poor', there was no evidence of the inside outside Game. Its a complete waste of time having Yoa Ming play at Center. If this is JVGs way of developing the Team arround Yao Ming I wont be making the long treck to Toyota Center again as the Rockers were playing at last years level.If they continue this type of Game I can't see the playoffs in their future.The one hope that I have in the back of my mind is that Piatowski might open the Game up and our poor passing might become effective.Yao Ming was not agressive and unwilling to use his hips to gain position in the paint.
Excellent post! The best way to help a key player in our favoriate team is pointing out his cons and help him to overcome it. Juse forward your post to, http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/sports/soundingboardform.html A place to speak out fan's idea and feeling, hopefully your good points will be reached to Yao and JVG.
tannersearl 78. A very good post and I agree with 99% of it. If Yao Ming is going to be effective and play with power and determination, which we all would like to see then JVG must demand that of him and the Guards must agree into this direction. They will do this by improving their poor passing and start playing the Team Game. I still see no future in the Francis, Mobley, Moochie combination, two of these will need to play on other Teams.
Munco, I don't agree with the thread starter's title, but do support the criticism directed at Yao. I thought I had made that clear.
I don't think Omega watched this game at all. If he did, I don't know how much he knows basketball. Or simply too biased to look at the facts. It is so easy to blame a loss on your best player on the court; but that is also an easy way to guarantee a lottery pick.
I think that Yao has picked up some very bad habits from playing against Asian players. He did not have to play quick, physical guys like those he now sees night in and night out. In Asia, his height gave him such an advantage that he was never forced to work very hard going for a rebound which is why you see him reaching out for rebounds instead of getting in position for them. I noticed last year that Yao was consistently surprised by guys in the 6' 7' to 6' 10' range. Their strength and speed often caught him flatfooted when fighting for rebounds. Now consider what will happen all this season as JVG starts making him the focal point of their offense. Yao will find himself literally swarmed by these guys playing zones as the opposing coaches dare the rest of the team to beat them. In retrospect, this was very easy to see coming because the Rockets really don't have anyone to play alongside Yao on that front line. And this was before EG melted down. Aside from Yao, no other forward playing for the Rockets will cause opposing coaches to lose much sleep at night. One thing about Yao that concerns me besides his stamina is his passivity. He simply needs to be much more assertive and selfish on the floor. This will be the biggest hurdle he'll face in the NBA. I see him struggling with this for a long time because he's coming out of a social system that has trained him to behave otherwise.
You all need to chill!! Just remember this is ONE game. We have some new players, a new coach.. give them some time guys!! We are like 0.02% through the season.
What the hell is wrong with you people. It was ONE FRIGGING GAME. Stop with this hatin' BS, cuz it's just plain silly. Geezus, you'd think the Rox stole your lunch money. These types of threads and the morons that post in them just to hate on other peeps for no reason other than to say "Yao'Lover" "Francis-Lover" etc. are just stupid and have no place here. Damn man, serisouly, one frigging game, ya'll make a big deal out of frigging nothing.
very well said. best ever post i've ever read. i have posted it on yao ming's official BBS site which yao visists from time to time and many fans there love it and are trying to translate it into chinese. hope he can see it. great job tannersearle78!
yao, be PHYSICAL when posting up and closing off your defender. if you get called with a foul… so be it. eventually the refs will give you the benefit of the doubt and will let you be that way on a regular basis (a la shaq). WORK FOR THE BALL. DON’T MAKE YOUR TEAMMATES HAVE TO WORK TO GET YOU THE BALL. if you can’t at the very least put forth the effort to establish your position, then at least learn how to SOMEWHAT DRIBBLE THE BALL. that way you can work your way into the post or possibly face up your opponent (hakeem, barkley, mourning…) yao, IT’S YOUR FAULT! by the way, why does vg keep taylor and yao in the game at the same time? they both like the deep left post position. it clogs up the left side of the court and runs down the clock. it seems taylor wants the ball every time he gets in position there. I'm sorry man, even though you are a Transformer, I must disagree??? What game were you watching? 3 guards in the game and they can't get up the court? 24 turnovers? Moochie, Steve, Cutino looked like downright DORKS out there trying to bring the ball up agains Outlaw and company, post entry passes??? Hello can we make one? Nobody on the team played "Great" but I have to put most of the oness on the guards, they're supposed to be such great dribblers/ballhandlers but yet that's the one thing they couldn't do??? When you're backcourt doesn't function and take care of the ball, the whole team is discombobulated and looks and lacks poise. That's why the Utah Jazz always looked so darn smooth, J.Stockton was always in Control. Press him, no matter, we get pressed, what to do what to do???. I learned in Junior High as a guard to keep the ball in the middle of the floor, and pass it, not yo-yo it up the sidleline with my head down. Duh. Yao, MoTaylor, Cato, J.Jackson none of those guys can flow if the backcourt doesn't take control of the game. That's the point guards responsibility Mr. Team Captain Francis Franchise and backcourt brother Mobley.
I hate people like you DO NOT GET IT. Are your trying to say that we are so elementary that we do not know it is one game. Yeah it is one game but same disease that has been plaguing us for years. DO YOU GET IT NOW?
I love how people jump on players after 1 game. The previous 5 games before this everyone was praising the rockets saying how good we were playing how the guards were not being so selfish and how yao was getting more touches, then after 1 bad game everyone gets looked at for being imperfect. The obvious reason we lost the game isnt because of one player alone its because of the 24 turnovers, missed layups/easy buckets, along with Memphis and their full court press. This was the main reason for our turnovers and our guards playing bad. It threw us off our offense by limiting our time to set up a play (getting the ball into yao) so it forced our backcourt to make bad decisions with the limited time. Enough of this blaming one player for the loss especially when yao had a good game. We lost as a team
After being on the road for 5 weeks, i finally got the chance to see the Rockets play. Personally, i still think the makeup of this team needs to be altered a some before this team becomes a serious threat now and in the future. I think this team really blew it with the Rice contract. I think they had a real chance of getting sf help using Rice's expiring contract along with Griffin, or Norris to get some real help at the 3 spot. How much better would this team be if it had tried to trade Rice and Mobley for say J.Rose. How about a lineup of Francis,Jackson or Pike,Rose,Cato and Ming with Taylor,and whoever is left coming off the bench. This team is still missing that effecient 3rd scorer to take the pressure off or help with the scoring. Ming not getting the ball can't all be directed towards the guards, but how often ,just like last yr did this happen when teams fronted Ming. Ming needs to do a better job sealing his man and the team has to do a better job of swinging the ball. If you're going to be a good team, you have to beat the Grizzlies.
yeah so no matter how much yall whine about how much yao sucks, didnt produce, etc, youre just gonna have to deal with it. the rockets are gonna live and die by what yao does, so we might as well support him.
Hey Codell, I definitely got your point. I wasn't saying that you were only calling out Yao. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I think we already had our back and forth on the chat. Heh, heh. To the rest of the board, We're in for a long, long year if we're going to be placing the majority of the blame on Yao (as the title of this thread suggest) because there'll be nights when he plays worse than this. We're on pace to have a Yao needs to be more aggressive thread after every game. Awesome.
U sound like you did not watch the game nor know anything about BB. How do you suggest for Yao to position better and seal off his man? What the heck does sealing off a man mean? You can not prevent a defender to come around, to overplay you to one side or to front you. When Yao's man play behind him, feeding the post is easy. All you do is to make a concious effort to do so like in the Denver's game. When a team front Yao, feeding the post is a team problem. It requires: 1) The positioning of the post man. 2) The positioning and angle of the entry passer. 3) The positioning of the weak side. 4) and most importantly, timing. Against Memphis, a Grizzlie either fronted or overplayed to Yao's hi side. a) Yao posted as lo as he could but still needed to stay outside the lane. On team with better timing, a center could afford to get lower in the paint and seal his man outside but he only has 2 seconds to do so. Yao tried that several times and ran out of time and he had to step out of the paint. When the post man is fronted, we need a quick lob which we did not do often enough. One or twice when it was thrown, we had no timing. Yao did not release from his man to step in and catch. (If you know basketball at all, you should know that you can not push/ hold position against the other man and can still jump to catch the ball) b) Memphis did not allow us to comfortably feed the post. Our entry passer was harrassed the whole time. A good number of times, he could not get close enough nor was he at the right angle to feed the post. We turned the ball over trying to throw the ball from the top (close to FT circle), not the wing , or from the wing but from further out while jumping up or falling backward with hand in the face. c) Our weak side did try to clear out most of the time in order to prevent Memphis to send help on the lob. Trouble is Memphis's weak side did not cooperate and moved away from the basket. They lingered around the weak side (the ref could call illegal defense a couple times but they didn't) or moved over to double teamed Yao out right. They effectively guarded our 2 men on the weak side with 1 of theirs. d) Memphis pressed full court and overplayed the wing. We crossed half-court with 14, 16 secs left. We could not get the ball to a good position on the wing until 10, 12 secs left. We only had 1 chance and a couple of secs to feed the post. We never attacked the press except for 1 time. We worked hard to get the ball cross half court then reset the play which allowed Memphis to get back into position. Their gamble was never punished. We simply need to work on this as a team.
