I haven't seen the game and it's obvious we missed Yao but one thing i can't understand: * WHY THE HELL didn't RA use the Mount Mutombo ???? As i understand it (also from reading what the Jazz players stated) they drove many times to the basket because there was no shot blocker / intimidator present. So again i ask, why doesn't RA use him. At least to keep people from penetrating that easy. Every game i hope when Yao goes out Mutombo comes in but no, we go to our PFs. Against some teams you can do that but obviously the Jazz is a hard team to beat and this is not the only team we needed a big guy to keep mf-ers out the paint. Please RA: Use Mutombo. * Then there's McGrady's three point shooting. He's average at best and we know he can shoot from way out and hits an occasional three but 7 is too much for him. * McGrady with 9 assists is good but outside of Scola only 1 assist per player ?? Brooks and Rafer, didn't they get the ball ?? Was it JVG Ball again, McGrady Iso on top of the key with no movement ? Please answer this for me because i don't know * Rafer 4/13 ? * FT 9/19 ? McGrady 0/3 ?? * Novak can't play defence, how come ?? This comes down to they can't do without Yao and McGrady can't lead a team. Here are some positives i see from the stats: + Novak can shoot + Battier can shoot + Landry rebounded + Scola can start, Boozer only 4/14 +
but you can deny novak the ball fairly easily, even by a poor defender who is shorter. You will have to run him off a few screens and such to get him open and even that isnt a guarantee.
True, but if you tried to run him off screens it opens up so much for everyone else too.....just have one of the screeners slip the screen for a weakside opportunity. DD
...didn't get to see the game(forgot to DVR it) but from the ESPN highlights I get that for some bizarre reason Novak was playing crunch time minutes in the 4th and couldn't guard anyone(hence 37 4th quarter points). I mean did anyone else notice that Novak was scored in for all put one of the highlights? In one highlight Kirlenko bumped him out of the way to grab an offensive board, then dove out of bounds in front of Novak(who was trying to passively let the ball go out of bounds ) to get the second offensive board and then got the wide open layup over Novak who spent two or three seconds completely out of the play over on the baseline. Again I didn't see the game but I can bet it went a little something like this in the 4th - Derron Williams pick & roll with Novak's man and/or a little three man game forcing Novak to make switches and recover quickly. Reminds me of the time I went to a Charlotte/Boston game last year and the whole strategy for the Cs was to isolate whomever Adam Morrison was guarding. He made Wally Sczerbiak look like Jordan... Can someone who saw the game confirm? By the way, why is RA all of a sudden going with Novak anyway? Are they giving him some playing time to showcase him for another team who might be interested?
also true. Just dont think adelman was ready to run "set" plays for novak...for better or worse. Either way I can understand why. but after those shots by novak the interior defense did spread out some to extend to him. Thats about as much as you hope for with novak. he still needs to work on defense though. he got burned a few times, although did have a nice charging call
Wow some of you should move to Dallas or San Antonio. Half of the people on this forum that are bashing the Rockets are the same people that say we have terrible fans. YOU are the bad fan. Did anyone pay attention to stats or did you just see the final score, log on, and start posting like an idiot? How can you flame Mcgrady for this loss to the Jazz? The guy had 21 points, 6 boards, and 9 assists. So I am still confused as to how people are saying Mcgrady is not "playing team ball" or not "creating shots for other players". This is the NBA friends, you are going to lose games... ESPECIALLY when your 7-6 center is out of the game. As for our problem at PG... its simple. Bench Alston because he's just bad. If there were an award for most turnovers in a game/season, Rafer would win both. Aaron Brooks should start for the Rockets hands down with Franchise coming off the bench. Brooks is quicker walking on his hands than Rafer is on his feet. Have a sense of pride in your team.
\ Great post and agree on everything but there are some problems with the team and T-mac is one of them. I personally don't blame him for this loss and nobody can so you're right about that. To me some changes are needed and you got it right on the money: Start Brooks at PG and get Franchise off the bench (when he's healthy). I can't wait for Stevie to come back and for Brooks to get a chance to start. Rafer had a good run a while back but he's back to streaky again and can't play the PG too well.
Novak was the main reason we were still in the game in the 4th but that said his defense is porous along with everyone else. Everyone underestimates the importance of Yao Ming. He hides alot of bad defense.
The Rockets were playing well and then the Jazz hit a barrage of 3 pointers and it was over. The Rockets had to honor the arc and the middle was ripe for the picking. In retrospect bringing in Mutumbo and guarding the 3 would have helped but again up until that point the Rocket were very much in the game.
The 37pts in the 4th quarter really hurt us... but so did the awful start. We were shooting around 29% until Novak and McGrady got it going midway through the 3rd quarter. I'm glad T-Mac is back, but here's another quote from him that lends more credibility to Jonathan Feigen's blog awhile back about T-Mac being a bit 'too honest' in his answers: "You got to understand the game," said McGrady, who led the Rockets with 21 points, nine assists and six rebounds. "Without Yao in the lineup in the first half, I was trying to get these guys going. It doesn't make sense for me to go out there and try to score all the points. Then, when I do pass the ball, these guys have no rhythm. "I was trying to get these guys the ball, get them confidence, because down the stretch of the game, you're going to need your teammates. I was trusting my teammates. "That's what I was doing in the first half. I saw we were down six at half, and I wanted to come out in the second half and be more assertive on the offensive end." He shot 1-8 in the first half... it's not his teammates fault that he had a bad shooting 1st half. Also, I disagree with his take on the first half. For anyone who watched the game, was there quality RA-system-style ball movement in the 1st half...b/c I certainly didn't see it. When the Rockets made their run in the 3rd quarter it was all from pick and rolls and Novak shooting the lights out, not from running the RA offense. Does anyone else agree with my POV here? When T-Mac was out and Yao was in, you could tell that their was a concerted effort on everyone's part to run the system. Now that T-Macs back it seems like some players have forgotten that [i.e. Rafer - he hasn't been driving to the whole near as much now that T-Mac is back... it seemed he had that floater down a little bit better a few wks ago and didn't need to consistently and only jack up his 30% 3pt shot], which was magnified especially so last night. In the 3rd quarter T-Mac hit some jumpers but also started to take it to the hole opening up things for other people... he did NOT do that in the 1st half. So, if you're going to attempt to get your teammates involved, do it in a way that's effective for them which is dishing on a drive, not palming the ball at the top of the key or on the wing for 5 seconds and then passing out of that for someone to create their own shot [who usually can't] with limited tiume on the shot clock. The ball did not move last night like it has in weeks past... and if we aren't going to play defense at least we can try to play good offense. Doing poorly at both will never get us quality wins. The other thing that bugged me [sorry... total b-tchfest here - don't mean to sound this way] was the article about how our players can't shoot in the Toyota center. WTF??? If this is the case, can't RA schedule some time there for shootarounds so they can get used to evironment? Isn't a non-shooter friendly gym generally because of weird lighting or the shooter's perception of the basket in relation to the architectural layout of the seats/stands in the background being a distraction or something? And shouldn't you get used to this over time so that becomes an advantage for you over teams that play their once in a blue moon versus the home team?
Relax we're not asking that he be traded. He had 21 points on 10 or 24 shooting (anyone can get 21 points if they shoot 24 times), in the last five minutes of the game he got absolutely nothing going to the basket and settled for long jumpers, and not coming off the pass he just jacked up shots off the dribble. He was trying to hit the home run himself when both Novak and Scola we're having good shooting nights (he didn't look for his teamates so that's why we're questioning his team play). That's a worthwhile criticism its not a flame. It was pretty frustrating to watch the Jazz continue to build a lead and then T-mac continues to sqander possesions, that does not make us disloyal fans. BTW You're final assertion is laughable, you can call us disloyal but at least we're well informed. Rafer actually has a good assist to turnover ratio, his shooting is terrible but criticizing his ball handling is just wrong. Brooks will be good but he's not ready, and Francis is injured, so what you're suggesting isn't even doable.
Well said. The reaction of some of the posters in this thread is the reason why I often try to avoid reading the forum after a loss.
Tmac + Brooks > Tmac + Rafer Rafer is not a good shooter. When Tmac handles the ball, Rafer is close to useless.
Before you evaluate the performance of a player, you should learn a parameter: (pts from FGA+pts from FT)/shots. When a team shoots 44%, and no fts, it will be a perfect loss. For a good player, it should be more than 1.3, that for a superstar should be more than 1.45. in average. Yao's number is 1.406, not good enough(in recent 5 games, Yao's number is more than 1.6), that of Tmac is only 1.146 this season. His apg is 6.4, but at the cost of neutralizing Rafer, contributes nothing to the team as the whole. Howard's number is more than 1.65, maybe the best in the league.
That is because Rafer is not a good shooter. Manu + Parker work well because both of them can pass and shot the ball well.
All right. I am a rookie by definition on here and I am about to rant. I went to the Jazz game last night. Only my second game of the year to attend. Our crowd sucks and the Rowdies are awesome. We still have to find ways to get the crowd louder.If it weren't for Novak's shooting last night, it would have been wicked quiet in the TC for the whole night. It's hard for the Rowdies to lead the entire stadium in chants.It may pick up for a second but that is a small group in compared to the rest of the crowd. When did our announcer quit leading chants w/ a 'Defense, Defense!' or a 'lets go Rockets'. maybe i missed it or maybe it was just really infrequent. And i am not sure if we should cheer in the national anthem after the line: and the Rockets red glare. It was cool back in the day when they would send actual rockets and other pyrotechnics from the backboards but not it kinda seems weird. As for the team, it's kinda nice that Coach RA is developing our rookies, and Novak. Hopefully Novak can begin to contribute a little here and there.I do not expect him to be Coach RA's Peja but maybe a Hedo(the version of him that played as a King and not as this new good version w/ the MAgic). I am a fan of T-Mac, but the plays he takes off kill us. It may not happen that often, maybe just a couple a game, but he will start jacking up shots or not playing defence.I think he and Bonzi are good defenders when they want to be but that seems to not happen that often anymore. OH how i wish Bonzi was more motivated. I love his game when he is aggressive on both sides of the ball.Now he does not try on either side. T-Mac really brought us back into the game but I knew we could not win that way. Just because we are scoring w/ him dominating the ball and the shots, does not mean we are getting better. Kobe finally learned this concept. He sets up his teammates and let them create their own shots now. This has given them confidencec and just made them better players. The Lakers, individually, are a very bad team but they are playing awesome together. T-Mac must find a way to keep the ball moving, helping his teammates score.This, in turn, will help him get really easy shots and we won't have to rely on him as much and he,hopefully, will not get injured as often. And we need some shooters on this team. Having said all of that, I love the Rockets.I love this team. No need for any major changes. Let's just start winning a couple of more games.
How did you get that idea? Do you know that, for FGA (field goal attempt), Tmac is 19.2, Kobe is 20.8. For assists, Tmac is 5.2, Kobe is 5.1. In fact, Tmac had 9 assists last night.
