The fact that Van Gundy preaches team defense is what worries me. Cato, Francis, Mobley, and Taylor have all played with each other for several seasons. Yao had a season of experience with them prior to last season. The only significant addition last season was JJ. It’s much easier to get a team to play together on defense when they’re used to each other and are more in sync with one another. It was kind of the same situation in New York, when Van Gundy inherited the team, the players had all played together for several seasons. Now you have a team that is completely new team with players that have never played together. I think it’s going to take at least one season of playing together before everybody is on the same page on the defensive end.
I have confidence in JVG and our players. They are professionals. Also Yao and JJ played together last year, so did TMac and Howard. They will be ok. Remember Spurs changed 2 out 5 of their starting line-up last year.
Yao's responbility is protect the basket. I think Cato should be the guy to chase the so-called mobile center on the perimeter.
How many perfect games did Marcus Camby have against us? Troy Murphy? That's a problem, but as long as they're not getting any work done inside he'll be fine.
What happens when you have two guys that can shoot in the frontcourt, ala Memphis with Gasol and Wright, or Sacramento with Webber and Miller, or even Denver who had Camby and Nene hitting outside shots? AT TIMES Cato was a defensive liability. That's your point, right? Well, AT TIMES Yao was a defensive liability. Neither of them have a lot of defensive versatility. They clog the paint well and discourage penetration. That's about it.
actually Cato's best role was back up center. I'm fine with Howard and Taylor chasing mobile 4's around. It is the physical 4 who can post up- Webber, Stoudemire, Duncan, Randolph, Brand, Martin, Nene, KG (he can do it all) and others that we need to defend inside. I think we are going to at least get a back up center who can help keep Yao out of foul trouble. Our concerns in the paint this season will be resting Yao and keeping him out of foul trouble. So we do need another banger in the middle. Unless you think J Howard is going to get tough in the paint. I guess he could. I have always seen him play more facing up than physical. He's more talented MoTay, seems to rebound better. I just know that we need more than Yao to go up against the strong inside players out there.
I think losing Cato will hurt more defensively than people expect. Even so, it is a team defensive scheme so I think the falloff may be buffered somewhat. But I'm not worried about defense. We could drop a few pegs and still be good enough. My real fear is that Van Gundy won't be able to take advantage of the offensive talent we picked up.
I agree with you on that. I think last year, jvg could have made the game a little faster at some points during the game. I remember he was criticised about that by many commentators on national TV like Kenny "the jet" Smith, and Sean Elliott among others.
I don't think you've seen any of the rocket games. Let me ask you a question. I will give you an example to clear up your head. If you poll government professors around the country and ask them who's the 3 greatest president ever. If only 6 or 7 professors out of 100 say George W Bush is one of the best presidents, does that mean he's a great president based on your logic? Think about it.
And niether have them coaches, right? Or Jeff Van Gundy who praised him for his defense, he didn't see what you saw, right? Please, I saw ALL of them and only saw Francis get rocked by dudes like Sam Cassell, Mike Bibby, Steve Nash, but those dudes are elite PGs and are supposed to play like that. I also saw him disrupt the flow of plenty of teams, and during the stretch run he had games where he was a killer on defense. I refuse to speak politics, HA!
The defense will be better than last year. Cato couldn't defend if the forward could shoot. Howard will do a little better than Cato. Howard is also significantly smarter. JJ is JJ. Here I will differ with most of you - Tmac will be much much better than Cuttino. He is bigger and a better athele, and he will get great coaching. Lue is passable, reasonably coachable, and Francis was terrible. We will trade or get another point that can certainly defend better. I'd expect the philosophy will remain the same. Pack it in, and dare them to shoot. IF we get another point that can play and use Tmac's size and length to harry his assignment, the Rockets should be a very frustrating defense, with good perimeter coverage, and a very nasty problem in the post.
What did Arroyo and Lopez do that was SO special? Did they ever score 20 points on the Rockets? COMBINED? Did Rinour ever score double digits? Did he ever play more than 10 minutes? Parker? Well, I don't remember him scoring too much, however he did cause trouble elsewhere. Damon Jones or Stoudamire? Either way neither of them did anything memorable against the Rockets especially not when it mattered. Again, the only dudes who really worked Francis over were Cassell, Bibby, Nash, maybe Davis to although he did most of his work in garbage time.
Well, if we ignore the PGs that you mentioned, I'd have to guess that they are refering to games like these: Nov 21 ------ Francis 4pts (2-9), 7ast, 7 reb Stoudamire 23pts (8-13),7ast, 5 reb Dec 3 ------ Francis 19pts (4-10), 4ast, 2 reb Lopez 16pts (5-7), 9 ast, 5 reb Jan 25 ------ Francis 7pts (3-11), 3 reb, 4 ast Lue 12pts(5-10), 6 reb, 6 ast Jan 26 ------ Francis 9pts (2-9), 3 ast, 3 reb Alston 15pts (6-12),8 ast, 2 reb Feb 25 ------- Francis 8pts (2-11), 7 ast, 3 reb McInnis 17pts(7-15), 10ast, 2 reb March 15 -------- Francis 12pts (3-15), 5 ast, 5 reb Barbosa 14pts (5-11), 5 ast, 6 reb April 2 -------- Francis 9pts (3-9), 6 ast, 5 reb A. Miller 14pts (5-11),9 ast, 5 reb E. Boykins 12pts (5-11), 2 ast, 2 reb April 10 --------- Francis 5pts, 6TO Arroyo 13pts, 1 TO
so true no doubt we traded some great defense players of cato and cuttino, but we got a defensive player that can BECOME a premiere defender, and in toronto he was one of the bettr ones..but will be better...lue can be a player that will harass the other teams pg, for 15min of a game..he will make it tough for pgs to bring the ball up, and/or for them to pass, just play the lanes ..just frustrate them..at the PF spot we lack a ton of D, but thats why we are going after a hardnosed pf/c...but otherwise boki's D has improved, the game where we clinched against denver..it was boki's D that stopped White..in those 12 secs..it was nice to see JVG turn to him, with 12 sec remaining and if we win , we made it to the playoffs..it a suprise for him to turn to Boki..about our defense..I think we will make the other teams PF play a whole lot more defense than they think..we dont have the greatest PFs in the league, but we have 2 solid ones that can get on a roll and have range...so the other teams PF will have to play D...we have a good pf rotation of juwan/mo it can do a lot more damage to the other team, than we think
