ClutchFans Game Thread: Mavericks @ Rockets 3/7/2004

Some postgame quotes:

http://www.nba.com/mavericks/news/postgame_quotes_march_7_vs_houston.html

Mavericks Head Coach Don Nelson
I thought we missed too many baskets around the rim that we normally convert. We must have had 7 or 8 missed lay ups tonight. That really hurt us, you can’t do that against a good defensive team. When you get the ball there you have to score. Maybe Ming (Yao) had something to do with that, I’m not sure. Anyway, we had too many misses around the goal.

Maybe we’ll do it next time. We have another game at the end of the year. We played mostly zone the second half. Actually, for three quarters. But you have to mix it up. If you play mostly zone, they get used to playing against the zone. We had a record number of steals. Too bad we had these franchise records and not able to win the game. But we were really active with our hands. And they laid them out there for us a few time, they had way too many turnovers.

On Najera’s play vs. Yao:
I thought Eddie did a lot better job on Yao than our other big men.

Mavericks Guard Steve Nash
On the free throw that he attempted to miss:
It’s over with now. There was no guarantee what would have happened if the violation wasn’t called, but it was very frustrating.

On Dallas’ play:
We competed today. That was the good thing. That hunger and desire are important factors for this team. We made some key mistakes and maybe we didn’t deserve it (the win).

On Yao Ming:
He is a great player. He can do so many things on the court and he’s improving every day. It doesn’t look good for the rest of the league. He is becoming a dominant player.

Mavericks Forward Dirk Nowitzki
On Dallas’ road play:
It was a tough road trip for us and we were right there and now we have to recover. We are not playing that well on the road. If we want to do anything in the playoffs, we have to start winning on the road.

On Yao Ming:
Yao ate us alive when we started the game in a man to man. Eddie (Najera) did a nice job coming off the bench. Yao won the game for Houston and he is becoming rapidly a great player.

Rockets Forward-Guard Jim Jackson
On beating the Mavericks for the first time this year"
It feels good because they beat us two times in Dallas rather handily. We just came off a big win against Minnesota and we had to follow it up with another big win. It’s important for us (to win) especially while we are at home to beat the teams we need to beat.

On his steal of the inbounds pass in the last minute of the game:
We were going to switch everything and I saw Steve (Francis) underneath Steve Nash and I knew he was going off the flat. Luckily, I made the switch and stepped out and got it because if they didn’t throw that pass that way, Dirk (Nowitzki) could have sprang open for the three on the opposite wing. I’m glad they threw the pass but I read the play when I saw Steve Nash going down and cutting off the flat

On his play today:
I think I played a pretty good game. I had some turnovers I shouldn’t have made, but for me it was just a matter of trying to get the team to win the basketball game and also to prepare ourselves to get into the playoffs.

Rockets Forward Yao Ming
On the key to the Rocket’s withstanding Dallas’ fourth quarter run:
The past couple of losses, they’ve all been thrown away in the fourth quarter. With that experience we don’t want to repeat that experience.

On Dallas’ rotating different defenders throughout the game:
I think we had the advantage in some areas of this game and my teammates were full of energy and they were able to carry me through it. We had great morale towards the end and we just kept it up. It wasn’t that bad."

 

"Yao ate us alive when we started the game in man-to-man," Nowitzki said. "Yao won the game for Houston and he is rapidly becoming a great player."

Less and less team will try man-to-man on Rockets...

 

We all know Sam Fisher loves Steve. Let her do it.

 

Just for laugh...

 

Funny. Go back to your Yao blow up doll.

 

Actually, it was much worse than that. He said(even after Yao's 30 against Dallas last year) that Shawn Bradley could do anything that Yao could. He went on to say something along the lines of, "Yao will never be a dominant player."

 

yao: hey mike, larry this one is for you guys. no look, one handed, off finleys head, bounce up and off the moon, back down through the hoop, nothing but net.

 

Who said Spoon can't dunk. What a nice put back dunk by spoon! Spoon is a tremendous pick up for the team.

Francis playing with lots of heart and hustle. I though Yao was going to break 50 today when he scored at will at 1st half, then second half Najara pushing and shoving Yao to limit his effectiveness. Hopefully no other team pick up on this, because Mavs are pretty good in limiting Yao. We need to practice more of those lob passes to Yao when smaller quicker guys try to front all the time.

 

Would people just stop quoting SamFisher's posts? It's making the ignore function pointless.

 

I think that hand was from a Rocket. Oops, may be not. I dont recall any of our white dudes playing in this game.

 

Anyone have a pic of Cuban sulking?

 

Nice post!

D R

 

Thanks.
Hey, Rox fans, show some forgiveness to Cuban, that was a year ago

 

haha sam fisher is acting a fool

 

Yes, I agree.

 

nba.com are given us some love

 

It's really too bad that there aren't enough slots on mine for all the YOF's such as yourself; In any event, I'll be happy if you and your brethren ignore me for the future; morons who accuse me of being a racist for saying that Yao wasn't open generally don't merit too much consideration in basketball or in life.

sayonara...

 

There are four issues pertinent to praising or criticizing a player, imo:

1. His performance in an individual play
2. His performance in a specific game.
3. His performance over the course of a longer period of time.
4. His ability (present, and I guess, future).

I have no problem with praising someone for a nice play even on one of their bad days. I have no problem when someone praises a player having a crappy season for doing something nice in an individual game.

Unfortunately, people here tend to conflate #'s 1 and 2 with #'s 3 and 4 far too often for my taste. Having a good play means almost nothing over the course of the season. Neither does having a good game. Yet because people get passionate about sports, get attached to players, and it's a BBS... they take specific evidence and apply it to prove something that it simply cannot.

It's all about understanding levels of abstraction and understanding how evidence "proves" certain claims.

Francis has had a pretty terrible season. I think most of us can agree with that. Producing evidence of a single play or game, and arguing that it creates a good "season" is illogical and meaningless. It's that logical leap that infuriates me.

Of course, the reverse is true as well. One bad play by Francis doesn't make him a terrible player. But I think that the statistics are pretty clear: on the balance of the season, he hasn't been that great. Stats aren't really that great in basketball. But on balance, they're probably more indicative of how a season has gone for a player than someone's biased memory.

I mostly have attacked Francis this year because of the fact that some people are so obviously distorting and ignoring the evidence in order to maintain the fiction that Francis is the team's MVP. The season's results just don't back that up. It's easy to become emotionally invested in a player - but you have to stay objective.