ClutchFans Game Thread: Pistons @ Rockets 12/12/2007

defense only will not win many games, td/manu/parker or billups/rip/prince/sheed are very good offense players too.

 

He was suppose to bring this new high powered offense that has yet to be seen. I guess we have to wait 2-3 years before the system kicks in.

 

thats what I was thinking as well. The team is what it is. Its not a running team and wont be, at least to the extent people want for "entertainment" purposes. BUt I think this teams best chance of winning is a basic offense of feeding the post, spreading the floor with spot up shooters (battier, luther, rafer, MJ), and running PnRs with tmac.



It was nice to see yao get the ball in the post early and often. I also don't think its a coincidence that the rockets won when that happened

 

McGrady's dunk at the end of the first half...NASTY!

 

You are absolutely right. We should play this kind ball against the eastern conference team with Yao dominance in the paint. However, the victory over the Sun convinced me that Rick made the improvement over JVG.
90% JVG + 10% RA = better Rox team.

 

sometimes you have to see a thing in its entirety to grasp it.

i see little downside to adding more wrinkles to this offense.

 

Truth is, that for all of RA's stumbling in the middle of this 20-something game start, he is trying things Gundy would never dreamed of on offense...

Gundy ball brought the Rockets as far as they were going to go with that style, because being a solid defensive team is not enough in the playoffs if you can't score, and if you're all worn down from 82 games of scrambling defense. RA is supposed to fix the offensive part, and he said it wouldn't happen overnight, which it hasn't. We've seen flashes of it, but all the road games have left the team little time to work on things in practice.

Actually, we could have a much worse record than we do, all things considered. Hopefully we just hit the early-season road-traveling wall against TO and PHIL and that's the worst part of it.

It's just a matter of the Rockets finding their way into RA's integrated offenses, and keeping the best parts of Gundy-ball - which I think are primarily rebounding (the rebounding deficiencies were part of the major problem that killed us vs. PHIL and TO the last times out - too many 2nd chance points).

And, I never thought I'd miss Rafer, but he has shown he can hold the team together on both ends better than the other PGs, and when he's hitting his shots, we're a pretty good team, FT's notwithstanding.

 

...like?

"that style"...you mean the same style that spurs use? it was much more of a personnel problem than a "style" one

 

Good win

I was at the game, Tmac looked very good, Bonzi looked good, Yao looked pretty weak untill the 4th quarter

I thought all the missed free throws were actually pretty funny

 

Scrambling D will leave you depleted; the teams needs to find a balance between energy given to Offense and Defense. Yao 'showing' on the high pick and roll to cover a PG was ridiculous.

 

To put a postive spin on things going forward, if we beat Dallas on Saturday we will have wins against all the top teams in the league, except Boston. We've beat the Spurs, Suns, Pistons, and Utah. This team is equipped to beat good teams. The lapses against the Sixers, Lakers and the Griz (I actually consider Toronto to be a pretty solid team, a team we should beat, but solid nonetheless) looked terrible. Another thing I'll say for Van Gundy: he never let his team play down to the competition, if we played a team with a losing record you could practically pencil in the win. So I think we've gotten spoiled on that, the Rudy teams had these lapses where they would loose to terrible teams, remember when we went on the 0'fer against the Canadian teams for like three seasons after the expansion?

So the overall outlook for the season, to me, is still pretty good. The one thing is that we haven't done is just outright dominated a team. I'll take this scappy type win for now, but we have to show dominance at some point if we're serious about a championship.

 

The team runs well with Rafer at the point. The other point guard position is now occupied by T-Mac or Bonzi. I think that if SF gets playing time, it should be at the shooting guard position and move T-Mac to the 3. Not sure if we have seen this lineup before. Rafer at the point, Francis at the 2, T-Mac at the 3, Scola at the 4, and Yao at the 5.

 

The team runs well with Rafer. . . because of a comfort level
Question: Do they TRY AS HARD with SF and MJ?
Trust has to be built. . . it cannot be built when folx sitting on the bench

Rocket River

 

i wish we would've lost last night, because now you have people running around here thinking everything is okay...........another loss would've really focused the attention on the problems of this team....once again they closed out miserably last night, and were fortunate that Detroit played so bad..........

 

All this Wafer makes the team run better makes me respect how much of a magician that Tmac really is. He got his wish, all the attention on him and Yao only. Steve and MJ are out!

 

detroit lost much more than we won. our character flaws persist! it's not like we closed this game, the just couldn't close it either.

although, it was very exciting to watch it person. proof that high scoring does NOT equal high entertainment.

 

We wern't fortunate they played bad.There is no excuses you either win or you lose.The raptors were fortunate we played a bad second half, the sixers are fortunate that we didn't show up to play that game. The NBA is all about back to backs and excuses of fatigue don't apply,you either bring it or you don't. We played hard,we defended,we had a large lead and we didn't make our free throws which would have made our lead larger. But it's no excuses you either come to play or you don't.



We beat the suns on the road
We beat utah on the road
We beat the spurs soundly on our own floor,we darn near pulled off a second victory against them on their floor without T-mac.
We should have beat the mavericks in both games,second game we blow that huge lead going into the 4th quarter.
We blew the nuggets out by 30
We beat the lakers on the road and should have won the second game on our floor without T-mac.




We are only 2 games behind dallas in the loss box and 3 games behind the hornets.We gave the last 2 games away and several others due to our new system,new players,new coach,new philosophy. We match well with all the so called mega teams,The spurs don't want to see us and the mavericks it's all mental, the suns we should beat them down inside and we proved when we beat them on their floor that we can compete. We just need some consistency and more positivity and optimism and we should be fine come playoff time.

 

I want steve to suceed as well but steve had trouble bringing the ball up the floor when they pressed him full court.He couldn't bring the ball up the floor he looked like he was struggling physically to dribble and when he was on defense he seemed like he couldn't bend his knees and slide his feet. He seemed like he wa playing injured.

 

Good post.

This team is still an elite team in the NBA an will do well, in my opinion. We have beat teams this year in situations that we would NOT have won in the last two years. They just need to become more consistent.

 

yes we were.....poor freethrow shooting and poor play down the stretch killed us and we are lucky the pistons didn't beat us................you can't keep making those kind of mistakes and expect to win.........