I wonder if someone can find out the ratio of Yao getting a touch in the post to him actually attempting a shot. Yes, he only shot the ball like 12 times (and efficiently made 8 of them), but it seemed to me he received the ball a lot more times. This would be a key indicator of his aggressiveness. He needs to receive the ball in the post (as low as possible), and like a quarterback in the pocket, look at the spacing on the floor QUICKLY (NOT SLOWLY) and decide whether to turn around and shoot, drive to the basket, or pass it out. His decision making is costing him and the team shots and is creating turnovers. It was only one game. We don't need to panic. The most glaring negative was the lack or rebounds and freethrows. I'm sure JVG and the assistant coaches will be working on boxing out and and hustle plays with our team this week. We will NOT shoot under .640 as a team from the charity stripe. Last year we shot a .759. We'll convert those additional rebounds into additional possessions and additional free throws into additional points. Hopefully we'll come out a winner more often.
This would be interesting. Of course, you'd also like to know how many "touches" everyone else gets, how many of those "touches" are from rebounds, etc., etc., etc. Who even knows what a good shot/touch ratio would be for Yao, and this team. I'm sure Yao would benefit enormously from having you as his personal coach...or not. Turnovers aside (4, which is too many), Yao is not hurting his team offensively. He had 2 assists and a number of other pass outs to open men who swung the ball. He shot efficiently. He had plays where he made fast, quick decisions, and he has plays where he takes his time...all great players do this, not just post-players and not just Yao. Sometimes Tracy holds the ball and will make a quick decision, sometimes he'll come off a screen and dribble around somemore. Kobe does it. MJ did it. Shaq does/did it. Quick decisions work sometimes. Sometimes it's better to wait until you get your defender off balance, or until the help defense starts "going to sleep" on the play. Now you're contradicting yourself. You are right. The problem isn't Yao, and when he holds the ball or does a quick baseline spin. The problem isn't even offensively. We had plenty of FT attempts, and we just missed them. And we played bad defense. Rebounding certainly wasn't good. But we were only outrebounded by 1 offensive board. This means that the reason we were outrebounded by 11 overall was because even though both teams shot the ball 74 times, we had 7 more misses. And we missed more of our second FT attempts, leading to easy rebounds. So there were two key problems last night: 1. FT %. Make 6 or 7 more, and the game changes completely, not just by those 6 or 7 extra points. 2. Defense. It is really really really hard to let the other team shoot 53%, when you're on the road, and missing FT's, and win. That defense last night was like a sieve. And it all obviously started on Boozer. Though the Jazz played amazingly well. Not just Boozer. CJ Miles was pulling shots out of his ass, and then pretending like he was MJ. Derek Fisher was being Derek Fisher (clutch), but even then, 5-7...this guy is a 40% career shooter...he's only shot over 40% in 5 of his 10 seasons. So, yes, it would be interesting to see how many touches Yao had. But it'd be more interesting to see if there is any way to fix the horrendous defense they played last night.
I sent in a request to 82games.com that "touches" be counted. They responded that there is just not that kind of manpower in any stat-tracking group. They might do a case study on it, studying the effect of a touch by a particular player to possession success, but it's too much to measure for every game.
After watching the game my calculations are as follows... Yao touched the ball 108 times against Utah. That's 58 dribbles 23 caught passes, 9 rebounds, 7 free throws, 5 tips including the opening tip, 3 blocks 1 he didn't get credit for, 2 throw ins, 1 incidental (ball bounced off his head) Yao needs to increase his touches by a minimum of 66% to reach the level necessary. SO yao needs 70.4 more touches per game and should see his scoring rise to 34 points per game if this happens.
You missed the deflection bouncing off Yao's knee although one touch could be confusing the ball with the sorry ass head of derek Fisher bouncing off Yao's crouch. On a more serious note, how can that first steal by Fisher not be a foul. The idiot charged into Yao and touched the ball and then tackled him. If that is not a foul then what is. Idiot refs.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, i'm leaning towards yes. But by "touch", I mean a ball on the offensive side either thrown to Yao from a teammate intended for him to score or pass, or an offensive rebound where he has to make the same decision. I didn't know if there was a stat on this to be found online. I guess not. But you probably knew what I was talking about and was just trying to be "smart." (unless you really counted, which would make your life quite sad)
My life is very sad because I have time to read every stupid new thread on this board. Seriously you don't need to count the touches just watch the game. If you can't see the Rockets are better when Yao touches the ball and Yao needs more touches than you are blind. Yes Sloan figured out a way to defend Yao having fisher charge him but that was just 2 plays. Yao is by far the best option on the team and that is with Tmac playing better than he did last night. Yao will have to adjust to small guards charging at him especially now that everyone in the league will be watching that tape. But anytime a player commands a double team it creates weaknesses in the defense and commands more attention than any oher player on our team. This is basketball 101 and even Jeff has said as much in the preseason. The problem is Van Gundy's players didn't execute very well and too many times they deferred to others beside Yao. They just can't seem to get the ball inside to Yao. Tmac was better than most. Alston kind of sucks at it and noone else realy tried consistently. I said in the preseason I thought Vspan was the best at it but noone listened, they're still not listening now perhaps they never will. And perhaps this team was never meant for one so beautiful as Yao... Starry starry night.
Rock, I said this before" you're one of my favorite posters", I took it back...YOU ARE MY FAVORITE POSTER!
