[Chron] Rockets finding their rythmn

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This is the key, when they get comfortable enough in the offense to be able to react when option A or B is shut down.

Glad to hear they put in the post ups and PnRs too.....gonna be fun.

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By JONATHAN FEIGEN
The Rockets felt the beat, moved with the rhythms of their new offense from the start. In the opening days of training camp, they marched in step nicely.

But the art in their radically revised offense is in the improvisation, the ability to take off from its structure in varied and unpredictable ways. It is not designed to be a metronome offense. It is creative and volatile, orchestrated at first but allowed to flow.

That, they have learned, will come only with time, and it has not yet.

With the regular season to begin against the Lakers on Tuesday in Los Angeles, the Rockets can run their offense, but don't perform naturally and instinctively.

"To get to that point is going to take us a while," coach Rick Adelman said. "I think we've done enough and we've cleaned up enough things we should be OK starting the games. We're hoping we're going to get much better at it."

The Rockets will look to make their flowing, motion-based offense work. There will be times center Yao Ming will position himself on the perimeter, or power forwards Luis Scola and Chuck Hayes will look to find guards cutting toward the rim. But increasingly, when opposing teams take away the first options of that offense or the Rockets have not shot well, they have found themselves not ready to react smoothly.

"It takes a while," forward Shane Battier said. "When you're making shots, it's easy to make the offense work. What really good offensive teams in this league do is learn how to still stay efficient and effective when they are having a poor shooting night.

"We've had open shots, so it is not as if we have a bad offense. But when we start missing shots, we have to find ways to manufacture points."


A traditional look
The growth, they said, will come naturally, with time. But Adelman was not going to wait. In recent days, he has put in traditional NBA plays, post-ups and pick-and-rolls, to allow the Rockets to shift into familiar options.

Some will begin with different movement than in the past, but Yao will find himself on the low blocks; Tracy McGrady will be able to maneuver around high screens.

"I think the key thing is really once we get to playing games and guys get familiar with what the rotation is going to be and when they're going to be in there, we'll know this is what's good for this group, this is what's good for that group," Adelman said. "We start really simplifying it then. Then it becomes instinctive.

"We put in post-ups and we put in stuff in the past few days, some different-looking sets but going into ... plays that are simple for the players to go into. We also need to execute the stuff we've done. We got away from it those last three games we had."

Some of the Rockets' issues offensively seemed to come from playing a deep, ever-changing rotation. Rather than determine what would work with any particular group, the Rockets ran through the basics of their offense with each group, rather than adjust it to players' strengths as they will now.

Still, since the start of training camp, the Rockets have been drawn to the siren call of a flowing offense. The question is how long it will take to flow naturally.


The great question
"That's the part I think about every day," said guard Rafer Alston, "when we can just come down and everybody is in flow, in sync, you just pass the ball, watch where one guy goes and you already know what we're doing, instead of having to call a play. I think that's where Rick wants us to get. That's the part he's probably wondering when we're going to get to, too.

"We have a veteran ballclub. I don't think we're that far off. It would be nice to be in that situation right before we go to L.A. for the first game."

That sounds good, but more than they expect.

"It's going to take some time," McGrady said. "At times, we showed how great we can be as far as running it fluidly. At other times, we can be pretty bad, out of sync. The timing isn't there. It is going to come."
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DD