Chron:Rockets want Yao to have ball at right time and place

Rockets want Yao to have ball at right time and place
By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Rudy Tomjanovich was talking about low-post play, answering questions for one of those death-of-the-big-man stories that occasionally come his way as Hakeem Olajuwon's former coach. Tomjanovich was deep into his beloved X's and O's, even positioning sportswriters around the court to make his point when he called Rockets guard Cuttino Mobley to attention.

"Cuttino," Tomjanovich said to Mobley, who was minding his own business and whose business at the time was leaving, "remember all the time we used to spend working on our low-post offense? Remember how many hours we spent on that?"

Mobley rolled his eyes and shot back a look of exasperation as if he had been asked to recall all the joys of root-canal surgery.

"Those were some long practices, Coach," he said with a gallows-humor smile, as if unsure what Tomjanovich wanted him to say. But Tomjanovich looked satisfied.

"There's so much that goes into it," Tomjanovich said. "So much."

Months later, Steve Francis came back from the NBA draft lottery with the first pick. Five weeks later, the Rockets would take 7-5 center Yao Ming, and the painstaking work of building a low-post game would begin again.

But by now, for all the Rockets' inconsistencies, all their struggles to find and define themselves, at least one thing is clear:

"He's a big-time player. He's the man," Rockets forward Maurice Taylor said after Yao's late-game heroics in Toronto on Wednesday. "We got to get the ball to him. We got to let him go to work. And we've got to stick with him. He's the man."


The irony of most good offenses is that when all the work comes together, they look easy and uncomplicated as if there was no work needed at all.

"We spent so much time working to get Dream the ball in the right place," said Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson, then an assistant coach. "We're going through that right now with Yao Ming. You have to figure out how to get the ball where he wants it, and that's the hardest thing to do.

"The biggest thing about defense in this league is not (waiting to) guard them once they get the ball. Not too many people can guard somebody in this league once they get the ball where they want it. So the defenses really work to keep the ball away from where you want it. The coaches are working constantly to get the ball in deeper to him. With his lower-body strength, he'll be able to get it pretty deep. It takes time, but it is working and it will keep getting better."

To Olajuwon, basketball was at its roots simple. "You must get the ball to the big man," he would say without seeming the least bit self-conscious that he was the big man in question.

"That's just basketball," he explained. "That's not me. That's the position."

Then Olajuwon went to Toronto and a team that didn't get the ball to its big man and really couldn't. The Raptors would not spend those hours in practice working on a part of an offense that, when done well, seems simple. They had an offense built around Vince Carter and were not about to retool it for a center on his way to retirement.

But the Raptors were like most teams. The hours spent working on a low-post offense were not worth the trouble. Rules had changed to make it more difficult. Only teams with the most dominant of big men -- roughly every team to include Shaquille O'Neal or Tim Duncan -- really would build their offense around them in the low post.

"With the rules and the athletic ability of the big players, it's hard to get the ball in," Tomjanovich said. "Before, it was common practice. The guy goes down. You play behind him. They throw it in. You might double, you might not.

"People don't play like that anymore. Guys have to go off the box. They're getting it five, 10 feet further out. You see guys really excel under that. At the end of Dream's career (in Houston), it was frustrating for him and the team. People we're fronting. Boy I'm telling you, it takes hours and hours and hours of work to be efficient with that. And that was with the old rules."

But when you have a 7-5 center with graceful footwork and a delicate shooting touch, you find a way to get the ball to him where he wants it.

Had they forgotten, however, the Rockets have been reminded it is not as simple as having Yao stand in the low block and call for the ball.

"Teams don't want him to catch the ball down low," Mobley said. "It's a mismatch with everybody. When you see he's free, you try to deliver it as fast as possible. But sometimes it's hard. There's a lot of pulling, grabbing, holding.

"Hakeem had that experience. This is (Yao's) first year. It's experience with each other, too. It's being patient with the guy with the ball and with Yao. It takes time, but it will come."

The Rockets do not consider getting the ball to Yao in the low post a problem. But it is not the strength they expect it to become.

The primary improvement they expect will be with Yao himself as he gets stronger and learns more about freeing himself from the variety of defensive tactics designed to stop him.

Olajuwon could wait until just the right moment before taking a quick step to change his position on a defender and then use his sledgehammer hands and forearms to subtly lower a defender's reach. Charles Barkley would plant a defender behind him and use his strength to hold him off. O'Neal can bang or just lean with his enormous bulk until a defender is too off-balance.

The Rockets expect Yao to get stronger. But even if he never matches Olajuwon's footwork and hands, Barkley's backside or O'Neal's bulk, he has his own strengths.

"Shaq is just stronger than everybody else," Rockets assistant coach Larry Smith said. "Dream was ... so quick and strong he could get the ball pretty much wherever he wanted it. Charles could, too. He could even step off the blocks and go back there. (Kareem Abdul) Jabbar didn't have to get deep. With the skyhook, we couldn't get to it, anyway. He didn't have to bang people.

"Dream was so strong for his size, but I think Yao will be more that way once he develops more upper-body strength. And once he gets a feel for everyone, he's going to adjust. He has to get used to being in there and getting a lot meaner. Right now I consider him a nice guy in the post. He's going to get tougher in the post.

"As Yao gets older and stronger, he's going to be one of those guys because he's so big, and once he catches he's so effective."

But while the Rockets work on Yao's talents for hand-to-hand, low-post combat, they also must work on getting him the ball. In many ways, the rule changes have made that more difficult than in Olajuwon's prime. More than ever, making the pass to the low post has become a matter of timing, rather than willingness.

"That's part on him, part on the whole team," Tomjanovich said. "It takes a lot of work to find that split second when you're open. There's a subtlety to it. You wait until the ball is ready, then you just turn on him late."

As with any other pass, teammates' feel for one another becomes crucial. The question is not just getting open in the low post, it is getting open at the time the pass can be delivered. And it is not enough to look for Yao inside. The Rockets must know when to look and to be in position to deliver the pass.

"You can't just say my timing. The timing of the entire team is important," Yao said. "It's everybody's first year together. There are a lot of new things.

"Of course, the closer to the basket the better. That's the biggest issue."

That became obvious when Yao posted up in the closing minutes against the New York Knicks last week. Because he did not get the ball deep enough, Latrell Sprewell could sneak in defensively. And because of rule changes to eliminate most illegal defense rules, Sprewell did not have as far to go to poke the ball away from Yao's grasp.

"What people overlook is how different the rules are," former Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy said. "The rule changes make it difficult to post up effectively. It's much tougher. Yao off the dribble got stripped by Sprewell. That's a byproduct of him learning how to face double teams and the rules that have constricted his space.

"The coordination of the post up, the pass, the catch and you're cutting game ... is much more complex than just get the ball to Yao on the left block. People forget because ... Yao because of his size will appear to be open. The pass is the hardest thing. If you have a team applying good ball pressure or is around (Yao) in front with good weakside help, the entry pass is tough.

"With the new rules in the NBA, it's much more difficult to play the post-up game. But when I see him every game, he's a little bit better. That goes to his upbringing, his culture and his demeanor. He has enough humility to say, `I don't know everything. I can get better.' That's why he's going to be an absolute star. His combination of humility, humor and competitiveness, it's remarkable. I love the guy."


By now, the book on defending Yao is clear. Though teams do many different things -- from the Celtics' triple teams to the Knicks' willingness to play behind him to the Heat's and Pistons' front and mug defense -- every team has learned to defend him as early as possible.

"This guy is 7-foot-5," Washington Wizards coach Doug Collins said. "If he catches the ball in the lane -- he's so big, his footwork is so good, he turns and he's got a great shooting touch -- he'll just turn and shoot the basketball."

But with cameras focused on him rolling constantly, the Rockets have been caught at times when Yao has looked open and did not get the ball. Early in the season especially, the Rockets often seemed to ignore the gold waiting to be mined.

Lately, however, they insist the split seconds that Yao has seemed open and was not rewarded with a pass show how much more complicated getting the ball inside has become than a simple "go down there and call for the ball."

"Who's totally covered out on the floor the whole time?" Dawson said. "Everybody is open sometimes, most of the time. You can take anybody on any team and point out when they're open and don't get the ball. Rudy and the coaching staff are trying to get him 30 touches a game, and they've been pretty successful.

"But whether he gets the touches or not, he facilitates shots for other people like Dream did and Steve does because of what the defense does. You can take something away, but it's going to open something up."

But in the end, after Yao has won his low-post battle, timed his move, teammates have gotten in position to deliver the pass when he can be ready to catch it and defenders have been forced to stay with their own man, perhaps then it still can be simple.

The trick is getting to that moment.

"Everybody's got to make a concerted effort," former Knicks center Patrick Ewing said. "But then, if a guy's open, you have to pass to him. Open is open. Simple."



Finally, some coaching! Everyone on this board knows that dumping to Yao in the left block isn't the best play we're capable of.