ClutchCity.net Game Thread: Rockets @ Timberwolves 12/21/2002

I've felt really sick all day today just thinking that such a great talent like Yao is being cheated. The Gift from God deserves better than rudy the r****d as his mentor. How sad for basketball.

 

pippen, the Minnesota announcers suggested Olajuwon to be the mentor of Yao.

 

Now this I agree with absolutely. Someone asked in another thread are the Rockets still trying to come up with plays. This would be an example of an answer. They have to find ways to get Yao the ball 12 feet and in. Defenses are starting to gear towards stopping that right now, so Rudy and Co. have to adapt. Yao also has to recognize the double-team quickly and react quickly. His teammates have to scream at him that he has a point guard coming up behind him to rip the ball away from him.

The only thing I'm worried about is that the counter to some of this will rely on outside shooting and ... yeah, that's frighteningly inconsistent right now.

 

Hamachi, post of the day! Great analysis. And DoD, I particularly agreed with what you said about the Rockets shooting "frighteningly inconsistenet". I think a solid 3pt threat may easily solve 50% of the problem the Rox have now. I don't think Posey trade was intended for this purpose. If the Rox could have a guy like BBarry, they could have won 75% of the games easily.

 

If someone is going to constantly shoot three pointers, or long range 2's, why not develop Nachbar for this pupose? At least get him into the system, so that if Rice or Mobley or whoever isn't shooting well, we can give Nachbar a try. SOMEONE has to be able to hit a few open jumpers. If we have to resort to jumpers, which we need to try not to, especially from the 3 point range, then we need to be able to find the hot hand, which could be anybody on any given night.

 

I guess heech's point is there were times when Yao was
finally in good position after a good deal fight, his teammate(s)
chose to make a throw definately going nowhere but pass
him the ball.

The game was aired in some areas of China. Nobody who
watched the game can say Yao was short of touches out there, but there were still times when he was in better position but couldn't see the ball coming. I don't think this is due to mental thing (which opens question to the state of mind of other Rox players). Though I see it as a decision making thing.

From what I saw in the game, I must say the 1st quater was
pretty annoying. Rox played almost no D while in the offense
end the poor FG% didn't improve much. What's worse was
Rox didn't shoot poorly suddenly or once every 5 games. They did it from time to time. Even when we won Pacers, we still shot ugly.
Fortunately Pacers shot even uglier. So my
only thought after the game was "the Rockets definately
should take some shooting class".

The chinese annoucer, a former bball couch, said the problem
was: 1) Rockets played sort of "weak" (now I know they were tired); 2).Yao's upper body was not strong enough against players like Garnett; 3).Garnett's long arms made Yao's height advantage margin shrink; 4).when Yao's being double teamed opened opportunities for outside easy shooting, Rockets couldn't take them; 5). Sometimes Yao should force some shots and play tougher against his opponents; 6). During the last a few games, Rockets always shot poorly in the 3rd quarter (maybe dut to the poor concentration).

All of all I think the difference between the exciting win and depressing lose maybe is just a leader. Dind't see one in our team in this game.

 

They need to be ready to shoot when they got the pass. A couple of time when Steve got the ball wide open at the 3 point line, he decide to dribble closer and pass the ball. Those are good shot that they need to take. Even if they miss it's OK because it is the right shot. Just like Mobley went 0 for 11 initially against the Pacers. Some of those shot that he missed were wide open shot so I have no problem with that. Only the one that they force up early in the shot clock hurt the team. Also one thing that I notice is that the Rocket tend waste time initially before they got into their play set. A lot of time when they throw it down to Yao the shot clock already at 9 or 10 seconds left. And when Yao was double team and he had to passed out there is not much time left to swing the ball around to the open man. As a result they end up with a bad shot. I agree with Bill Walton's assessment (in the Pacer game) that they should go down to Ming early in the shot clock for him to direct the offense. I think they should dribble less initially and went into their set as quickly as possible. They tend to kind of playing around with the ball before running their set play. They need to work on their clock management to become more efficient in their offense.

 

You got the point.
That's why we need chemistry.
Timing is the most important thing.
There are two decisions: right or wrong.
It's SF's task to decide.

 

That is exactly the point. And the Rockets need to do it early and stop playing catch-up games