Your analysis is flawed in a MAJOR way. The big one is and I'm sure the Rockets staff cover this stuff is the team mates. Lets consider two things, spacing and double teams. Mcgrady in 2007-2008 had no reliable team mate (Scola was not the same player he was) outside of Yao who then got injured and out for the season. Our second best player then became Rafer Alston. I'd propose every shot Mcgrady took was probably contested or double teamed. We all saw the Utah series, the guy was being doubled with no punishment from his team mates. Doubling Brandon Roy means you have to leave the following people open, Fernandez, Blake, Outlaw, Batum not to mention possibly a guy named LaMarcus Aldridge who can hit the mid range consistently. His going to get better quality shots on the perimeter then T-mac does. Its just a gurantee. The way Portland is built you can't double team Roy that much, in fact we single coveraged him ALOT with just Artest or Battier. Look honestly I'm sure cool heads will preval but Tracy Mcgrady stepped it up in the playoffs. You can blame him all you like but the fact of the matter is the majority of the supporting crew never stepped up their game to the same level Mcgrady does in the playoffs, Yao Ming included. The mismatches in the Dallas and Utah series were, well honestly ridiculous. I've think we've mentioned before we had Ryan Bowen on Dirk, Yao on Boozer and Rafer on Deron. I'd argue it was a case of bad matchups and our bench/starters not really stepping up. You can blame Mcgrady, he should have finished that game 7 in Utah he should have driven the ball more, he should have given the ball to Yao more, he should have imposed his will on the game and yes it was on him. But you cannot lay it all down at him. Mcgrady is not the reason why Yao got into ridiculous foul trouble or was getting continuously schooled by Boozer. Mcgrady is not why Luther Head became the guy from the street and couldn't show up in the playoffs. Mcgrady is not the reason why Rafer Alston shot some STUPID %. Mcgrady is not the reason why Okur is hitting all these long threes on us.
Tracy dominated the ball too much as a Rocket, and it made the team too predictable. He never embraced Rick Adelman's offense, and publicly complained about him not getting enough "touches".... The reason the team is better without him is because they all are committed to running the offense and sharing the ball. There is no doubt if Tmac was committed to this the team would be better off, but like most things....Tmac lacks the commitment. The Rockets are better sharing the ball, and not having one guy dominate it...ala Tmac..... It is what it is... DD
let's be honest, Ron doesn't NEED the ball in his hands. the rockets can win games without him getting a bunch of touches. and for all the talk about him "embracing" adelman's system...let's be honest again...ron doesn't exactly move without the ball. tmac is just superflous if ron is on the court...because they both wanna do the same thing. a healthy tmac and yao would have this team out of the first round, as well.
Come on man. Look at this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?...FJFx7j578Yp5pHA Generally speaking, a newcomer usually has poor data. Exceptions happen when the guy is particularly consistent with the whole system, like Ron and Bobby Jackson. Let's be honest. Ron is perfect for this Rocket, especially for Yao. He is the starter of our offense outside and he is also our best 3p-shooter.
The link above is invalid. Use the following: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pnOAnancFJFx7j578Yp5pHA
Max, That is not what I am talking about, I mean he LIKES to have the ball in his hands....that is what I mean by NEED...not from a team angle but from a players style of game angle. Ron and Tmac both NEED the ball to be successful.....in their own personal games. Ron can play off the ball, and does move...sometimes.....remember those cuts to the basket the last game? More of that please. DD
he did that THIS YEAR, when he was injured and people questioning his ability. last yr after he was injured, he sat down and saw the team played well and he came back and just "fit in."
I applaud the Rockets for taking care of business vs. the Portland Trailblazers, BUT, like JVG predicted, it was somewhat of a cake walk. We were heavily favored to win after Game 1. We had a much deeper team and more experienced. We were supposed to win. The same cannot be said about the Rocket's past playoffs. In 2005, it was a miracle that series went to 7 games and that the Rockets stole the first 2 on the road home. But that Dallas team was BY FAR superior to the Rockets, and that prevailed. All we had was a great Tmac and an improving Yao. In 2007, the Rockets were favored ONLY because we had home court advantage, not because we were more talented that Utah. Once again, they had more depth than us, and the Rockets had even less 3point shooting than in 2005. Yao was better, but he was coming back from a knee injury, and he clearly wasn't right as far as his mobility. Tmac became a better all around palyer, racking up many assists and still getting his points, but it still wasn't enough. Yao had no chance of guarding Boozer or Okur, Deron killed Rafer and Head, and our bench disappeared (Game 3, only 4 players scored in that game!) Somehow, we pushed it to a game 7, and we unfortunately lost by 4. There wasn't much more Yao and Tmac could've done. 29 pts 13 assists and 29 pts 10 reb. Last year, without Yao and Rafer, and Tmac and Battier both hurt, there was not way in hell we should've won 2 games, including one in Utah, but we did. The only player who was consisten to help Tmac was Scola. Rafer was out 2.5 games, Battier was limited, Deke and Hayes can't score, and Bobby Jackson and AB both had major flaws at the point guard. Tmac did what he could vs. double and triple teams. So honestly, did Tmac ever really have a great chance at winning, the way the Rockets did this year. I mean, I didn't even mind that we didn't have Home court vs. Portland this year. That's how confident we were in our team this year. Our team has also improved since last year and we got a good, solid player in Artest to try to make up for Tmac's offense. I'm just saying, if you add Tmac to this team, we would give the Lakers a run for their money, and would be title contenders. I just think Tmac gets WAY TOO much heat for not getting out of the Playoffs. I know stats don't tell you everything, but you can't ignore his. Dream went through this for 5 years in the late 80's, early 90's when he couldn't get out of the first round. The fans put all he blame on him, while he was the only guy who produced consistently. You couldn't ignore his stats, and the same applies to Tmac. I am only talking about this, because this is the topic of the thread. Don't blame me for talking about...obviously it was worthy enough to be written about in the Chronicle and obviously people wanted to talk about it on here.
Easy, friend. Easy. I'm on your side. It isn't about the other Rockets on this team. Not where Tracy McGrady is concerned. I'm sure you recognize that. The team improves (small forward, point guard and power forward), and that immediately gets translated into: "See! I told you McGrady stinks!", or "See! I told you McGrady doesn't want to win!" You don't have to beat a dead horse trying to defend McGrady anymore than anybody else has to in order to "tell it like it is" about McGrady. That's what happens when you let how you feel personally about someone or something get in the way of paying attention to what's happening on the court. People are going to draw the wrong conclusion with the Rockets' success—mainly that McGrady kept the team from improving. This is an athletic competition. These are team games where scores are kept, and the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. It's not rocket science. It's not brain surgery. It's certainly not a session in a psychiatrist's chair. Yao did a lot of other things to help the Rockets beat the Blazers, like rebounding and defending the bucket. The Blazers didn't take away Yao's offense as much as they gave those points to somebody else. That's what happens when you double-team a player in this league. Somebody else is supposed to get that shot, and beat you over the head with it. Nobody's going to see that that wasn't the case with McGrady because McGrady's a rotten human being. Not to mention an awful competitor. And his mascara runs too much. You were dead right when you said that the Rockets looked better losing in 6 games to Utah last season than they did losing in 7 to them in 2007. Big thing in 2007 wasn't so much the home court as it was the tempo of most of the games. Jeff Van Gundy's approach was to keep the game in the half court. Van Gundy wanted to manage EVERY offensive possession. He wanted Yao or McGrady to either score or get their teammates open shots. Because the Rockets were an excellent defensive team (and they're still pretty good), they could keep a lot of games close enough to where Yao or McGrady should have been able to make a difference. So when people think that Yao or McGrady didn't do enough to close out the series, that's what they mean. They don't understand it, of course, but that's another matter... But the more versatile team won. Utah could score in transition and on fast breaks. The didn't have to see Houston's half court defense every trip. Yao and McGrady were playing two-or-three-on-five just about every time. You look at the bench players on the team now, and they say to a man that their job is to change the tempo. Play with energy. Get up and down the court and score whenever you have a chance. Versatility. A TEAM attack. No one-or two-man shows. McGrady's said and done some things in his time here that aren't as bad as they're made out to be when the dust settles, but anybody that's bothered with it or tired of it has the right to be. McGrady doesn't have a likable personality, especially according to people who only see him on television or at the stadium. It's the same thing when people would say that Yao's not Shaquille O'Neal, or that Yao plays too soft or he gets pushed around too much. My favorite is that he's Chinese, so his culture holds him back. It's always been easier to point out what's wrong with something than to fix it. Doesn't take a genius to point out a broken window. Might take something more than that to get that window fixed, though...
Come on, DD. You're a smart guy. You know better than that. If McGrady had trouble adjusting to what Rick Adelman wanted to do, he'd gotten over it by the time that the Rockets had gotten started on that winning streak of theirs. Yao was just as responsible for getting the Rockets started on that streak as McGrady and everybody else was for keeping it going when the big guy went down. When Yao got hurt, Adelman had to adjust his approach. He just had a 7'6" hole in his lineup he had to fill. He had to up the offensive tempo. Get easier scoring chances. Lean on McGrady a little more. Not to mention Luis Scola and Carl Landry and Aaron Brooks making BIG splashes as ROOKIES. That can't be missed. A lot of guys stepped up. Just like they were supposed to.
mrdrowe, I respectively disagree as I think you have it flipped upside down here. I actually think it's RA who had to adjust to what T-Mac wanted to do and not how T-Mac adapted to RA. And that as a testament to RA, it's his ability as a player's coach to have worked with what he had, hobbled T-mac and all and made the best of it. So to your follow up comments about how Yao was just as responsible for our success, I totally agree. And that adaptability in strategy starts with RA imho. If you think about the posts/threads from one year ago, and even into the beginning of this year when T-Mac was still playing, A LOT, and I mean A LOT of posters were remarking about "where is the RA offense from, say, Sacremento? Where are the assists? Where is the ball motion?" And even with the personnel retooling, particularly with the bench, we were still very much in the mold of the JVG, we've got Yao but T-Mac is our superstar years. Yet once T-Mac went down, it wasn't long after that we traded Rafer, and all of sudden the team re-adapted to the new mix. And readapt well it did. Credit: RA. I don't discount that T-Mac did what RA asked him to do. I just think RA, since arriving in H-town, has been very mindful of the egos on this team and managing them accordingly. Heck, RA has the full RESPECT of Artest!!!! Think about for a sec about how what it takes to earn that. Posters here, sometimes, remark on how RA should be taking a tighter leash on Artest and not be letting him jack up dumb shots. But RA let's players find their own way, and tries to accomodate their styles. I believe the same is/was true of T-Mac when T-Mac was still playing. Did they clash like JVG and Bonzi? No I doubt it. But that's not to say they never fully embraced one another's style. For matters of keeping the peace and making it all work, I think it was RA who deferred to T-Mac and not the other way around. Respectfully, theSAGE
Tmac was whining about touches and the offense both last year and this year.... Last year he got hurt, Adelman said screw it, we are gonna run my stuff..the team took off, Tmac came back and didn't rock the boat for a while..thus the 22 game win streak, then reverted back by the playoffs. And this year, he was whining again about it, and complaining about not being used properly and missing his touches. You can ostrich it all you like, but Tmac is the problem here, his lack of adjusting is a MAJOR issue.... If he can't adjust the team is better off moving him. He complained LAST year before the knee bump too....he is a whiner overall. DD
Long story short When T-Mac is not playing . . . Its the Rockets When T-Mac is playing . . . . It is T-Mac and the Rockets The habits TMac are numerous . . primarily EGO Practically rane Mike James out the 1st time for having the GALL to wave him off His infamous heat checks Throwing Teammates under the bus [his apologist to this on a constant] Half*ssing on Defense He reminds me of a more likable Scottie Pippen [It was Barkley's fault that he dribbled the ball off his foot in the playoffs] [It was Coaches' fault for giving the game winning shot to Toni Kukoc] Rocket River
Wow. That's three-for-three for me. You are absolutely correct, good person... ...almost (you knew I was going to argue, didn't you?). Rick Adelman is exactly that. A player's coach. He played in the NBA. He knows what it takes to be a player in the NBA. He understands that people come to watch the PLAYERS, not the coaches. And most importantly, he knows that you let good players do what they do. You make sure that they understand what you want from them, and let them go and handle their business. Phil Jackson has mastered this. Sure, he had Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. But he also had a ton of role players playing with them that he expected just as much from. Nobody's status in the league changed what Jackson expects from them. And that's the way it should be. But at the end of the day, the head coach is the head coach for a reason. he's got to set the tone and make the rules. If the team is going off-track, the coach has to get a handle on it. If there are one or two disruptive forces working against the team, the coach has to weed those people out. I was mentioning to somebody on here that I think Rick Adelman was the guy most responsible for the whole episode with McGrady earlier in the year. Adelman's the head coach. McGrady comes into camp, and for whatever reason he's not ready to go (ANOTHER nice sidebar that gave people a reason to focus on McGrady and not the team), Adelman decides that a hobbling Tracy McGrady is better than no Tracy McGrady at all. Briefly, there's no reason for Adelman to let McGrady run around the court if he wasn't healthy. Adelman, again, is a player's coach. He listened to McGrady tell him he was ready to go, or that he'd try to play. He'd let McGrady's game-time status degenerate into a "deal-or-no-deal" proposition. Maybe Adelman was trying to believe what doctors were saying about McGrady not damaging the knee any further by playing on it. Maybe Adelman was trying to get people to see McGrady the way he saw him—as a guy that wants to win and is a good teammate, by and large, in spite of his behavior from time to time. Maybe Adelman felt that any chance that the Rockets had at winning big rested on McGrady getting on the court at any cost. Maybe Adelman was trying to show everybody something most of us had already guessed...McGrady is a self-serving cancer who'll do anything to save his own backside, including torpedo his own team. I don't know. But that's where Adelman's approach to his players can be problematic. Whatever decision he made or didn't make relating to McGrady was HIS to make. Not McGrady's. Not a doctor's. Not a rabid fan base. ABC had a game in San Antonio where Gregg Popovich wore a mic, and they hear him pull Tim Duncan off the court and say to Duncan that he couldn't give him what the team needed. Popovich didn't want Duncan limping around the court trying to be a hero. If he wasn't healthy, he couldn't play. But as soon as I expect our head coach to take the same tack here, this clown decides I'm a McGrady apologist or something equally ridiculous. Rick Adelman is one of the best coaches in league history for a reason. He knows what he's doing. But his responsibility is to his TEAM first, and players SECOND. He wasn't helping McGrady letting him play injured. He wasn't helping the team forcing a hurt guy on them that they couldn't rely on, or who could rely on himself. It was an honest mistake, and nothing I hold against him. But it was part of getting rid of the "JVG" mindset instilled in some of these players. Adelman even said that alot of the young guys weren't bound to past playoff failure. And he was dead on. Adelman can coach anyway he sees fit. It's his job, not mine. And as long as he coaches his team first, he's proven he'll win.
Adelman was following doctors orders, they said his knee would improve with playing time, and the organization did not trust Tmac to do the rehab, so they tried to let him strengthen it by playing. Tmac had 4 doctors say the pain would lesson and go away if he strengthened his knee, he found one that said...microfracture...Tmac chose the Microfracture. In truth, it is his choice....and Rick Adelman and Morey could have been more forthright with him when he was quitting on the team in Toronto. Whatever, it is never Tracy's fault....in anything...I mean if he played with Shaq or Garnett or ...well.....anyone but Yao and company, right? I am tired of his act, I hope his body gets well so he has some trade value for my beloved Rockets, because all Tmac is, and ever will be...is a loser..... Get him out of town on the next Greyhound...stat. DD
Please, DD. I NEVER SAID THAT MCGRADY COMING INTO CAMP NOT READY TO PLAY WAS SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT. I said that Adelman should have taken McGrady off the floor if he wasn't ready to play. The reasons why are, again, a sidebar for people who've got an axe to grind against McGrady. McGrady's situation was going to hurt the team no matter what. Whether McGrady tried to do it or not. Whether McGrady "proved" he's a loser or not is McGrady's business and not the rest of the Rockets. If the guy can't play for you FOR WHATEVER REASON (he's hurt, he's not hurt, he's faking, he's quitting...WHATEVER), then he doesn't play for you. Period.
The doctors told Adelman to play him and that he would improve. What do you expect him to do? He was thinking about the long term success...and willing to let him struggle a bit to get in shape. I generally agree with your point about Adelman not being quick enough with the hook etc....but if doctors said....play him, he will improve, Adelman probably thought it was best to let him struggle a bit and hope by mid season he would be in shape. Again, TMac is a problem and the sooner he is gone the better for the Rockets and this board. DD PS. Where did I even mention him coming into camp out of shape in that post? But he did and it was his fault, we both agree there.
I understand, DD. I never said that McGrady was out of shape when he came to camp, either. I just said that he wasn't ready to play. If it was his knee or his diet or his ego, it boils down to the same thing.
