Chron: Confidence is shaken, not stirred

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3172428

By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

DALLAS — Jeff Van Gundy leaned on the faith that his team had in him as much as the Rockets leaned on the confidence Van Gundy always showed them.

This was a Rockets team of balance, confidence and unselfishness, but it was a delicate balance.

Its strength was confidence — not self-confidence, but in each other. The wonder of it was that it came together so quickly. The beauty was not in watching two stars show their greatness, but the complementary parts doing everything to make Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady greater.

And then it was all gone. The Rockets lost their balance and they all had a great fall, 116-76.

The one thing Van Gundy never had to worry about or try to piece together, the one thing he never needed to game-plan like some kind of gadget defense against Dirk Nowitzki was this team's seemingly unshakable confidence. Then it was shaken.

Beginning of the end

Somewhere between Van Gundy's rant about officiating and somewhat of a fool's gold win in Game 6, the Rockets became a disjointed, uneven, two-man show destined to fail.

The Rockets might have been humiliated in the worst way in Game 7 on Saturday night, but they lost the series when the fragile nature of their makeup began to crack.

The first signs of that flagging confidence and things falling apart probably can be traced to Van Gundy's $100,000 rant after Game 4. When Mavs owner Mark Cuban complained to the league about what he thought were illegal screens by Yao, Van Gundy responded with the dreaded "B" word — bias.

Commissioner David Stern fumed.

The Rockets went on to Dallas for Game 5 and allowed a chance to turn the series back in their favor slip away at the free-throw line.

Nowitzki put together his best game — 23 points and 13 rebounds.

It's not all on Yao

The Rockets' defense that had been looking a step slow for the first time appeared unsure of itself. In each other.

Yao came home for Game 6 and played sluggishly, then sloppily. But don't get confused.

Losing this series was not Yao's fault. His missed passes, missed shots and tentative play defensively, getting into foul trouble and not challenging shots merely was one brick that fell.

Dallas guards started flying past Rockets defenders more often, even in the Rockets' Game 6 victory, which came only because Jon Barry could not miss and Dikembe Mutombo could not remember he was 38.

Rebounding flagged. Point production from role players slipped. Sure, Mutombo filled in nicely for Yao, but there was no way the Rockets could win this series without Yao returning to his confident self on both ends of the floor. The defense had to regain its edge, too, and McGrady could not try to do too much.

This was a team that always needed everything to fit just so.

It was what made McGrady more dominant, allowing him to penetrate, pull up for jump shots and confidently pass to the open man offensively. Defensively, he could make the occasional gamble and come away with a steal, with Yao behind him and hustling teammates everywhere else.

It was all about that delicate balance.

Too many times in Games 5 and 6 you could see it slipping. Then Saturday night, the crash was as obvious as the box score.

Yao and McGrady accounted for 34 of the Rockets' 44 points in the first half, when the Mavs bolted to as much as a 21-point lead. For the game, they scored 60 of their team's 76 points.

This was not the same Rockets team by any stretch. If Van Gundy had wanted two players dominating the offense, he would have kept Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley.

By the dismal end, the Rockets were outrebounded (52-33), out-shot (51.3 to 35.4 percent) and embarrassed in every way. The vaunted bench accounted for just six points on 3-of-16 shooting.

McGrady, clearly not confident in anyone but himself, showed selfishness and uncertainty in the same players who had helped him reach another level.

McGrady took 19 shots in the first half alone and finished 10-of-26. He hesitated getting the ball to Yao, particularly after Yao had two passes slip through his hands in the first half. McGrady forced things on too many possessions and went just 1-of-7 from 3-point range.

All the things that Van Gundy envisioned working, all the things that indeed had worked, unraveled.

At the start of this series, putting Ryan Bowen then McGrady on Nowitzki worked only because the Rockets believed it would work. The Mavs' explosive speed was matched by smart defensive rotations, only because everyone helped each other and slid into the lane to cut off drives.

No one ever worried about who scored. They only worried about whom they could help. Maybe it would be Barry stepping off the bench and into a key role. Maybe it would be Scott Padgett or Mike James or Mutombo.

"When you don't have a third guy every night that you count on ... that third guy can be any one of a number of guys," Van Gundy said. "I have liked very much their acceptance of that. I really do believe that if our chemistry hadn't been as strong as it developed into, we would have had a lot less of a year."

Now, the year is over. And it is because the chemistry project that worked so well blew up in Van Gundy's face at the worst possible time.

john.lopez@chron.com