http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bk/bkn/6218475.html While Yao Ming was the perfect shooting machine, the rest of the Rockets’ offense moved as precisely as the inner workings of a Swiss watch. If you leaned in close enough, you could almost hear the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick as the ball flashed around the Toyota Center court, usually one step ahead of the Miami Heat defense. “Ball movement is what we always talk about,” said Shane Battier. “It’s no accident that when we get ball movement, we shoot a high percentage. That’s the way you’re supposed to play the game.” While Yao’s seamless 12-for-12 certainly bumped the numbers up, the fact is that of the nine players who played Saturday night, only Aaron Brooks (1-for-7) didn’t make at least half his shots. Moving the ball All that came against a Miami defense that was working on a franchise record of holding opponents below 50 percent shooting for 35 consecutive games. The Rockets finished at a sizzling 56.5. It was workmanlike, nothing fancy. It was simply a matter of following the blueprint of Rick Adelman’s offense, which has been pursued as fervidly — and often as vainly — as the Holy Grail over the past 1½ seasons. “We’ve won a lot of games with this offense,” Rafer Alston said. “But we just haven’t been able to go out there on the floor and stay with it all the time, run it consistently, always moving the ball. For some reason, in the first half of the season, we’ve felt the need to hold it, taken on the burden sometimes on our own. “But we’ve got to get back to understanding what worked last year for us when we won 22 in a row and had a successful second half of the regular season. That was ball movement and body movement.” Stability in the lineup Perhaps it is no coincidence that the ball movement has returned at the same time the Rockets have been able to put the same starting lineup out on the floor for three straight games, a rarity in this injury-plagued season. “That goes a long way,” Battier said. “We knew what we were getting from our guys. We knew when Von (Wafer) got the ball, he was going to set the tone with his aggressive play. Aaron came into the game in the second quarter and set the tempo. “Continuity is an amazing thing. We haven’t had it too much this year. So when you have it — two or three games — it’s almost shocking.” Maybe it is also no coincidence that the ball movement has resurfaced as a staple of the Rockets’ diet at the same time Tracy McGrady (knee) and Ron Artest (ankle) are sidelined by injuries. There is less of an inclination to rely on their one-on-one ability to bail the team out of every situation. There is less feeding the need of great players to constantly make great plays. “It’s a combination of things, but there’s no doubt that without Ron and Tracy, there are no ‘isos’ being called,” said Chuck Hayes. “You have to plan in advance according to your personnel, and you have to take the best advantage of the players we have.” Playing as a team A glimpse back to last season reminds that the Rockets first began to jell during a similar stretch from late December to mid-January when McGrady missed 12 games due to his balky left knee. That was when the offense began to germinate, which later led to the full bloom of the historic win streak. “To be honest, it’s simpler to play this way, without worrying about stars and who needs what,” Alston said. “That’s what basketball is all about, collectively going out there and sharing the burden instead of doing it one-on-one. “You can see where all that led us last year. We won 22 in a row and felt like nobody could beat us. I’m not promising we’re gonna win 22 in a row again. But if we can keep playing like this — moving the ball, sharing the ball — we can still accomplish all the things we want.”
This does sound like deja vu from last season. Let's hope we get similar results, performance-wise rather than record-wise, since it's more important that we get T-Mac and Artest on the same page as the rest of the team and in tune with how we should be playing rather than getting bent over not being the 2 seed or 1 seed or whatever. We're in the same position as the Jazz essentially; whatever team we will be in the playoffs will be entirely different from that team that is currently playing.
You know honestly dude, I guarantee that the forums of other teams are just as loaded with ref this and ref that so we cant use that as an excuse, both teams will feel regardless of us being biased or not. It was our def plain and simple.
I highly doubt the Lakers board had any complaints about the refs in our game. If the damn game was called right down the middle we would have won that game. Hard to play 8v5 against the best West team.
That's the big question. We're playing well now maybe because the two biggest ball stoppers are out. Have you noticed that our shooting percentage goes way way up without TSlack and Testy?
Except that they shot THREE TIMES as many free throws. Most of those foul calls were legit (most, not all) and often you can say that the more aggresive teams get the calls but...We scored 50 (FIFTY!) in the paint. Don't freaking tell me we weren't aggresive and weren't getting fouled. **** those refs.
When you can say this there is a problem: If the Lakers only shot TWICE as many free throws as us, we win teh game.
