Chron: Van Gundy's commandments must be obeyed tonight

For Rockets, five easy pieces

With elimination a game away, Van Gundy's words must be taken to heart

By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/2535719

LOS ANGELES -- They are Jeff Van Gundy's five commandments of winning basketball and every Rockets player knows them, even if they do occasionally sin.

Belief. Intensity. Concentration. Discipline. Poise.

Extrapolate those into "Thou shalts" and you pretty much know the basketball qualities Van Gundy values most. They are also -- not coincidentally or unexpectedly -- the attributes the Rockets will need most, facing the Lakers tonight in a 3-1 hole and one loss from elimination from the Western Conference playoffs.

In the 150 best-of-seven playoff series in which teams have taken 3-1 leads, all but seven have won the series. Only two teams -- the 1968 Celtics and 1995 Rockets -- have gone on the road with a 3-1 deficit and advanced to the next round.

Knowing that, for all the times the Rockets have heard about qualities their coach cherishes, they would seem never to have been more irreplaceable.

"All season," center Yao Ming said of how often the Rockets have heard Van Gundy preach the virtues of his favorite starting five. "All the time."

Belief. Intensity. Concentration. Discipline. Poise.

No strategy, no adjustment can carry the Rockets as far.

"Oh, yeah, obviously. You can't do the strategy right if you don't have those qualities," Van Gundy said. "People say, `You were right there,' but that's the difference between teams. You have to win those games. If we're going to win this series, we're going to have to make the type of plays we're not making late."

That would fall under the discipline and poise categories. But to get there, the Rockets much first bring the belief. The Rockets are in a hole from which few teams have escaped, so their faith understandably could be shaken.

The biggest mismatch of the series has been in the Rockets' playoff experience and past success compared to the bejeweled Lakers'. But the Rockets have seemed certain they can compete with the Lakers' collection of future Hall of Famers and mystique.

"We're confident," Van Gundy said. "If you're a true competitor, you're going to compete even harder. If not, you lose belief and some heart.

"When you get down 3-1, it can change your belief. You're down, you hear there are only two teams to do it down two with two road games. You can get caught up in that or not worry about it.

"I've been up 3-1 and lost because we got in a fight (between the Knicks and Heat in which Van Gundy so famously ended up wrapped around Alonzo Mourning's leg). I've been down 3-1, too. History means nothing. It's about playing a great road game and winning the game."

But history aside, Rockets players said they will not let probability change them, even using the doubts that others have as additional motivation.

"It's been done before," forward Maurice Taylor said. "It's not impossible. You can understand what people are saying. If I was a betting man, I would go to Vegas and put my money on the Lakers, too. But we're not really worried about what everybody else is saying or looking in the papers and they're already saying the Lakers are playing San Antonio. We just worry about the game we have to play."

Said Cuttino Mobley, "I think we can (come back). You've got to believe it though. The more you believe it, the more it will come true. If you have doubts in your mind, then it kind of carries over."

If the belief is there, the Rockets can move on to intensity and concentration.

This gets stickier, but with the exception of the Game 2 collapse late in the third quarter and into the fourth, the Rockets have been far more consistent in those areas than during the regular season.

"We haven't relaxed at all," Yao said. "We set our resolve to play every minute of the game and keep going."

"It's not about the effort," Taylor said. "I think we've brought the effort in every game and every quarter except the third quarter of the second game. It's just the last two or three minutes that's killing us. We've got to be able to get a rebound or get a basket in the final minutes and seconds of the game that could possibly give us the game. And that's not what we're doing right now."

That's the rub. Discipline and poise. The Rockets lost Game 1 when they failed to grab a defensive rebound or foul Shaquille O'Neal before he could slam in the game-winner. They lost Game 4 with a two-minute breakdown in overtime.

"Some nights good, some nights, we could do better," Van Gundy said of the postseason progress. "I think our poise down the stretch of (Game 4) obviously could have been better."

Poise will be tougher in Staples Center. For the Rockets, discipline sounds more like a punishment than a characteristic. Still, the Rockets insist they have shown they can send the series back to Houston.

They were defending NBA champions when they came back from a similar deficit to beat the Suns in seven games in 1995. This version has won one playoff game.

But the Rockets did not seem to need to convince themselves of their ability.

"We've proven we can play with this team," Rockets guard Steve Francis said. "We've proven that we have the capability of beating this team. I still believe in our team and I'm not going to say let's go to LA, and wrap it up because coach told us at the beginning in order for us to win this series, we'll have to win two on the road. Here we are with a chance to win two on the road and hopefully take the series."

With the Lakers closing for the kill, such passionate faith might be required -- as long as it comes with five other qualities.

"Emotion and passion are good," Van Gundy said. "When we get emotionally drunk, it's bad. In general what's more important than emotion is belief, intensity, concentration, discipline and poise. The game is an emotional game. We could have the right type of emotion along with the right amount of the five things."