ClutchFans Game Thread: Celtics @ Rockets 1/11/2004

which gaurd? Francis doesnt miss many wide open shots? today he only had one wide open three and made it...

 

Hmm it seems when Francis' shot is starting to come around, Mobley's isn't. Mobley has 8 assists but forced some bad shots and bad passes as a last second resort because he couldn't shoot it. I don't like it when Mobley tries to split the defense after a pick is set. He loses the ball too much doing that. I didn't think they went to JJ enough. The man was on fire. It would of been nice to see them have JJ throw passes into Yao, and force the Celts to either double team Yao or risk JJ's hot shooting tonight burning them. They also should of ran more high picks for JJ instead of through Mobley tonight. That would of produced more buckets guaranteed the way JJ was stroking it. The team frustrated me tonight to the point where I turned it off 3 minutes into the game. After Pierce made that 3 at the baseline, I knew it was over, and could tell this team was just going to try and play catchup in hopes of a dramatic comeback. They just never seemed like they were ready to push themselves over the top with a lead and had a ton of mental lapses on defense leaving wide open Celts shooters open around the perimeter. Not to mention the turnovers, and the forced shorts after they'd cut the lead to 3. I was also disgusted when they had a 2 on 1 fastbreak in the 3rd they couldn't convert. It was Francis and Pike. Francis actually made a good pass to Pike for a layup, but Pike pussied out and tried a wrap around pass back to Francis that resulted in Francis having to wait on the team to get in a halfcourt set. What made it worse was they didn't convert on that botched fastbreak layup. I'm convinced this team is good enough to compete everynight, but they're not mentally strong enough to do it.

 

his sub 40% shooting this season (7-17 tonight is 41%), 6 TO, and other problems that don't show up in stat. If you don't see what is wrong with him incapable of leading the team to beat opponents when playing 4-on-3, you are blind. It is not only tonight. He hasn't progressed much in this season, or in the past 4 years. He gets the ball on every posession so he has the chance to improve. He got the max contract so he must improve and we have the right to demend better than what he is giving now.

 

Wrong ream for Yao Ming,Steve ang JVG.
Let Yao go to other team for both him and Rockets.
Steve will be only great in Rickets not in other team.

 

I caught the latter part of the 2nd quarter on. I swear by reading the other posts that I saw a pretty different game. I didn't see Yao try to post up 1 time. He was in the high post and setting picks and flashing under the basket. The only pass I saw to him was the one by Padgett under the basket where he was fouled.

It really seemed like he was open for bounce passes off the pick and for quick passes in the lane. I assume though that the celts must have been playing the passing lanes to Yao and that's why he seemed open underneath.

Sure did look like Yao was trying really hard to get open and was open a few times waving his arms for the ball. He rebounded and defended on the ball pretty well from what I saw.

Was he really bad in the 1st quarter?

 

Agree.

 

Typically when you play 4-on-3, you should get many open shots. If you don't, you are not moving the ball well. SF's 7-17 is not hot shooting either. Lousy shooting is not only SF's problem.

 

Count the shots they take when you count the points. Idiot!

 

I think he had 6 points in the 1st quarter. Maybe Yao's fatigued, but I didn't understand why he was getting benched so much. There were times where I thought he had good enough position to receive a pass and make a move towards the bucket, but they opted not to go to him. Instead it was a lot of high picks to Mobley and Francis that resulted in the Celts big men to push those two about midway to halfcourt before they could make a kick out pass around the perimeter to dump it inside, which they didn't even do often. Instead it was a lot of forced jumpers with a hand in their face. JJ really was the only guy that was hot tonight and he should of gotten a lot more touches then he did.

 

get in the houston chronicle

"Again, we played with zero team energy to win," coach Jeff Van Gundy said. "I think pretty much until the fourth (we had no energy). But anybody can get desperate in the fourth. The Rockets tried to overcome three quarters of bad play with an energized fourth quarter.

pretty good recap on the game i liked very much in my oppinion
is what i see in the game

 

im talking about tonights 4th quarter streach!!!!!!! What did he do tonght in the 4th that really hurt the team??

 

Why was Yao playing so few minutes tonight and taking so few shots? I didn't watch the game and i don't understand why. I mean it's obvious everytime Yao didn't play well and didn't get enough shots, the Rox is going to lose. Why can't they understand this and do something about it. Why bench him??? I just don't understand.

 

You do realize that Mihm drove to the basket due to Maurice's matador defense, right?

 

I've been a proponent of this for quite some time. Many more will jump on board before the season is done. However, I allow for the possibility of a legit passer coming to the team somehow from somewhere in order to bring the pieces of the puzzle together.

 

you got to play 4 quarters in a game, and 82 games a season.

 

Maybe San Antonio can trade for Yao. Imagine Tim Duncan and Yao in the paint. San Antonio's defensive field goal percentage is 2nd only to Houston. They would jump to #1 with Yao and Duncan in the paint. I might have to get league pass just to watch that combo. How bout Yao and Garnett? How bout Yao and Shaq?

 

I wonder why the Rocket guards have an extremily HARD time passing the ball to Yao on a PNR plays.

Jiri basically a rookie for the Celts this year and he made those passes look so effortless.


Looks how simple it was for Jiri to lay the ball neatly into Mihm's palm on a PNR for a posterized dunk on Yao.

The Celtic centers and forwards love playing the PNR with Jiri because they have been getting so many easy baskets and posterized dunks from him.

 

Well I have to say watching the recap on ESPN sucked. They kept showing that posterization by Mihm over our "big" Yao.

Sheesh, Yao must be in the dog house or something. They said he didn't have a single fourth quarter minute of playing time. Was he in foul trouble? Or is JVG tired of his passive/weak play? Yao was doing pretty damn good at the begining of the season. He was averaging 10+ rebounds and points.

Stevie shot badly again, but he did hit some HUGE shots. His clutch shots are what kept us in this one in the fourth.

Jackson had a terrific game. Too bad the rest of the team wasn't there to help back him up. All that great play by him gone to waste. That sucks.

Well heres to a win in our next game.

Our 5 game winning streak against the Celtics has come to an end. Our 6 game home winning streak against the Celtics has come to an end. How sad it is.

 

When your best players/leaders do not "bring it," ...Houston, we've got a problem.

Witness:

** Franchise with 6, yes 6, first half turnovers and dribbled incessantly. I counted and he often dribbles 10-14 seconds off the clock before getting into the offense - allowing the doubleteam to be effective. Walks the ball up court despite JVG's telling him to speed things up.

** Yao was successfuly fronted - Celts just outplayed and "outwanted" us. Given his inability to establish position against quick defenders, and given our teams ineptitude in taking advantage of fronting by quickly swinging, the ball, Yao was basically taken out of the game.

So the Celts reduced us to a perimeter team..........something we're not very good at. Combine that with a lack of desire and poor defensive intensity, simply stated we sucked.

Yao isn't going anywhere - GM's everywhere would line up to take him off our hands, cheap. A true playmaker could begin to solve a lot of our problems. JVG is really frustrated with the lack of desire, smarts, and uncoachability of certain players, esp. SF, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a major move before trading deadline.

D R

 

The fact that Padgett had more FGA than Yao tells you all you need to know.