ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Blazers 11/21/2003

True about Damon. The irony once again is how guards always torched us to an extreme. It would have been fine about Damon had Francis gotten his averagew. When the opposing guard dominates like tonight and your own guard only puts up 2 points, except for garbage 2 at the end, that is the story of the game.

Damon v Francis was the main card in this game. Both teams could have played better for sure. But, this is just one of those games where one player matched up against the other and one came out on top.

 

After Francis made the first shot of the game, I thought to myself he was going to be on a streak today....

 

I know they played like total dog sh*t last night, but those refs sucked azz and didn't help...

Boki threw up bricks and we were actually in it...

My boy Franchise almost opened up a can of whoop azz after the game and I loved to see MoT streaking in getting ready to strum on some azz...

They should regroup and win the next four...

 

Man, no wonder we lost. Cato was our only bright spot with a line like this?

27 0-5 0-0 4-6 5 11 2 2 0 1 4 4

 

I thought the production at the 4 last night was atrocious.

Cato just looked way off on offense. He blew countless point blank shots, dunks, and lay-ups. Randolph was killing him on offense. How many offensive rebounds did the Rockets allow Portland to have? Cato’s one responsibility is to rebound and he didn’t get the job done. Sure, he got 11 rebounds but most of those were rebounds off his own blown lay-ups.

Maurice Taylor was just awful. As soon as he entered the game, the momentum quickly shifted to Portland side. Mo is turning into another Mooch. He holds on to the ball far too long. He makes bad decisions with the ball and either turns it over or takes a terrible shot. He’s blowing wide open lay-ups. I hope this is not another repeat of last season where it took practically the entire season before Taylor finally shook off his rust.

 

LOL it doesn't surprise me you still don't undestand me. Here's my repost from the previous page:

OMG I literally have to spell everything out for some of these posters.

OK. On-several-possesions-the-rockets-gave-up-one-or-two-offensive-rebounds-to-the-blazers. Which-means-the-blazers-were-shooting-the-ball-three-to-four-times-every-time-down-the-court. If-you-watched-the-game-you-would-understand-without-me-having-to-spell-it-out-for-you. Everyone-else-understands-the-whole-offensive-rebound-issue-but-not-you-that's-how-I-know-you-didn't-watch-the-game. My-advice-is-pay-the-damn-money-and-get-ESPN-so-I-don't-gotta-do-this-every-time-for-you.

 

I cannot believe how stupid you are. Oh, 4 posts, now I understand.

 

this year steve isnt aggressive like he usually was in the past seasons. Hes not pentertating. not frawing fouls. MAN!! This guy averaged like 8 freethrow attemptps per game, almost leading the league. THis year hes lucky if he gets to the line once!!!! Steve!!! Be agressive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Let's say we had won this game. There would be fifteen pages of nonsense about how great our team is and how we deserve to be #1 in the all-so-important "Power Rankings." We'd be musing whether it's too early to start promoting Yao as a candidate for MVP.

We lost. And yes, it's a tough, tough loss. Last night I was screaming at my TV so loud I was worried the neighbors might call in the police with some kind of violation for disturbing the peace.

But let's keep things in perspective. The Rox are still a works in progress. Before the season started, most of us thought it take until mid-season before they really gelled. We're ahead of schedule. Far ahead of schedule. For evey game we've lost, we've won two. Extrapolate that ratio and you get 54 Wins, 28 Losses. I'll take that.

I don't expect to win every game on the road. I expect to win maybe half of them. If we go 0-5 on this road trip, then maybe I'll join those who say the Sky is Falling. Until then, I'm sticking to my mantra:

We don't need trades. We need to relax.

 

That being said, it is a touch disappointing to see the Trailblazers of all teams (The Trailblazers!!!) out-class us at the end of a game.

 

Horrible game. Very frustrated, and I know that our players are also frustrated. Steve couldn't hit water off of a side of a boat, Cuttino and Moochie couldn't run a simple 2-1 break.
Didn't block out well, too many TO's.

Just signs from the team from the last 4 years.

 

Unbelievable! I called it:

That's spot on...

Some thoughts:

I just felt that the rockets are not mature enough as a TEAM and often plays inefficient basketball to be a contending team.

We shouldn't put the blame on any individual player last night. They fought hard and lost the game as a team. What killed 'em was the inability to get defensive rebounds and the usual high turn overs. You simply couldn't win on a consistent basis while giving the oppossing team 15-20 extra fg attempts.

There are two positives I saw from last night:

They put forth a hard nosed defense effort and almost came back from a 10pt deficit in the 4th quarter.

All the bench players were standing and cheering for their players on the court ... now... that's the sign of a great team.

Two glaring problems:

Yao has bad sense of positioning for defensive rebounds. I thought he's too close under the basket many times to get the boards. He also tries too hard to box out his man and loses rebounding positions to his team mates and to players on the other team.

Our guards have tendency to lower their heads while dribbling around the court and often they fail to spot the open man for easy baskets near the hoop. I love to have lebron as a point guard for our team and even Gilbert Arenas would be huge boost to our championship aspiration.

 

I have only 1 posts but watched a lot of posts here. And how many do you have? 155? I thought you had like 15000 posts already!

You are just some stupid cheap moron. Only you can pay for ESPN? This board is about discussion of Basketball, not to bash each other's stupidity. Why don't you follow your ID to shut up?

Yao is not like Shaq/Hakeem.... because he is not born to play NBA, he didn't experience NCAA and the american culture. He is getting there. You just don't understand a single thing about all these. Never mind, forget about it.

As to the Steve/Cat bashing, I think it is a little bit overracted, but they deserve some of the complaints. They played too much AMERICAN style basketball, hitting tough shots, beats defenders 1on1 or 1onMANY. This is a team sports and you need to help teammate ALL THE TIME. And I think Yao is doing a pretty good job.

 

Jeff summed it up nicely:
"We played a great first quarter and a very poor last three. You held a team on the road to 34 percent, you should win the game," Houston coach Jeff Van Gundy said. "But we had eight or nine more turnovers, gave up 17 second shots, and fouled recklessly so they shoot 11 more free throws.

"You're going to lose. That is a recipe for a road loss."

 

Very true. We could have won, but we were working uphill the whole game (well, for 3 quaters anyway)....

We know our offense can suffer at time. That's a given. JVG is working on that. We kept giving the Blazers two or three shots everytime down court.

Now, under those circumstances, what kind of affect do think that has on a players' (the teams) psyche?

That's why the shooting just kept getting worse. I mean, it's already a known problem. Why exaxerbate the problem with giving the *OTHER TEAM* more shots than you get? This offensive "problem" we are having was feeding on itself because we kept giving the other team *extra* shots!

If there's one thing I've learned about the team after watching this game: Cato doesn't know how to layup a shot. He has a 15ft shot, and a dunk. But nothing in the middle. Strange...he even missed his only dunk! The guy has little offensive *skill* inside. Sure, he can get the rebound. But he doesn't know what to do with the ball once he gets it. Plus, he always brings the ball down to his waist before he goes up. Bad technique.

We need inside presence. Someone active that can score and rebound. A Griffin replacement. Someone like Hunter of Orlando, or Bosh of Toronto.

 

WTF are you talking about? there have been PLENTY of Yao bashing threads around that maybe you just refuse to see. Yao's agressiveness, rebounding, stamina, etc have been critisized time and time again here!! and there're a LOT of so-called ROCKET fans that have come out to defend francis and cat when they get bashed at the expense of critisizing Yao. yet when Yao gets bashed, you don't see these same ROCKET fans to come out and defend him and Yao is a ROCKET last time I checked! the bashing every single Rocket received on this board is well-proportioned, imo. STOP OVERDRAMATIZING!!!

 

I think you are right about Mo. The crispness on offense definitely went away when he checked in for Yao at the end of the first quarter. The ball movement slowed drastically. Mo was getting the ball and dribbling with it, too much time with the rock in his hand. From there it was all downhill. They never got back to Yao when Portland was playing man on man and then Portland went to the zone and we stunk it up. Until this team learns ball movement, they'll keep lousing it up against the zone. All that dribble drive stuff don't work against the zone. By the time the Rockets figured out that they had to play the passing game with Yao, Mo, and Steve there was 2 minutes left in the 4th quarter.

Yao couldn've had 35 last night if they had continue to pound the ball down low to him. He could've had Rasheed, Randolph, and Dale Davis all in foul trouble early. He was establishing better positioning down low in the block.

Mo's problem is his ego. He is not at the same level on the block as Yao. He comes in and replaces Yao and figures he is gonna go down low and do the same damage Yao was doing. He is gonna have trouble on the block against longer defenders like Wallace and active defenders like Randolph. He should've realized that after 2 offensive sets and moved away from the basket. It's a question of playing to your strength. The last couple minutes of the game, they finally figured out that Yao needed to be on the block and Mo outside feeding Yao down low and working open for the 17 footer. Too late. Game over.

Poor Cato. Dude had wide open 1 footers and can't put it down. It's unfortunate that his offensive skills are so limited. If he just had mediocre offensive skills, he could put up 15 ppg, just on the junk and a couple set plays.

Cat, Cat, Cat, Cat, Cat, Cat, Cat........will you ever get it?

Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve......lead, lead, lead, lead, lead.

Yao, Yao, Yao, Yao, Yao........Vlad Stephania getting to the offensive glass?????????????????? Vlad who???? Who??? Who??? Vlad O'neal?????? Shaquille Stephania????? Huh????

Somebody, puhlease teach Cato how to make a 5 foot post up turn around jumper.

Ugh!

Jim Jackson, man has a sweet shot, good entry pass, and plays tough D. No complaints.

Boki, soso, I think he works better with Yao in the game.

I wished we'd go back to that lineup of Steve, JJ, Boki, Cato, and Yao to start games like we had in preseason. JJ and Boki, they feed the post, consistently. Then let Mo and Cat do their one on one dribble drive, dribble back down post ups with Moochie dribbling around and throwing them the ball and Braggs cleaning up the mess on the 2nd team.

One thing I don't understand about JVG. Why does he stick with players so long that ain't getting it done? It was so obvious the momentum shift when Yao left and Mo came in. Either get Mo out or tell him he can't hold the ball for more than 3 seconds before he gets rid of it. Maybe all this happened. I don't know.

No, we ain't going 78-4 either.

 

Continuing my quest for silver lining . . .

Yao's stamina seems to be less of an issue. In the last 5 games, Yao is average 39 minutes a night. Not once in that stretch has he played less than 35 minutes. Only once has he played less than 37 minutes. (In those 5 games, he's averaging 19.4 points and 12.0 boards)

Looking at the big picture, assessing the long-term health of the franchise, this is almost more important than a single win or loss. Remember, a few weeks ago we were worried that there was something seriously wrong with Yao, that with all the summer-shenanigans, he'd never be able to give us beefy starter's minutes.

I agree with those upset with Yao's rebounding. It's baffling. If they kept a stat for "Rebounds per Inch" of height, Yao would have the lowest stats in the league. That being said . . . it's very encouraging that he got such goot positioning throughout the game. And he seemed to be demanding the ball. All this bodes well for our team.

Just to clarify . . . I'm not a Yao-Only fan. And to be more explicit: if the two were mutually exclusive, I'd rather see the Rockets win than Yao succeed. But at this very early stage in the season, I'm more focused on trends that will affect our ballclub for many, many games, and in fact many seasons.

Steve played one of the worst games of his life. And we STILL almost snuck away with a W. Yes, this one stings. But think big picture: Yao's developing, our defense is vise-like (with occasional lapses), and our offense will only improve as the team gets more familiar with the system.

Maybe I'm wearing rose-colored glasses. Maybe it's that I got a new roommate today--a random person off the internet (craigslist)--and she turned out to be this 22-year old blonde bombshell who is newly-single and heartbroken. Maybe it's this new dark-roasted coffee I'm drinking this morning--delicious. But whatever it is . . . I'm really not that down about the loss. Ugly, yes, but long-term we'll be okay.

Go Rox. Okay, I'm going to go hang with the new roomie.

 

First of all, I'm having trouble figuring out what your point is.

On the second paragraph. Regarding the long shot, long rebound...
Explain to me how their CENTERS and PFs are able to get the same rebounds you talk about (regarding the so-called: balls that bounced far away from our centers/pf).

We gave away too many offensive rebound, considering that we have two guys in the paint that are over 7 foot tall. Plus, our small forwards got out rebounded too by the Blazers SF. It was just a bad game plan. Our centers and forwards just forgot to block out which in turn gave guys like Quintell Woods, Zach Randolph, Vladimir Stepania, and Ruben Patterson to get extra shot, after extra shot.

 

I think he's hamstrung. Lack of options. At least until the off-season. That's when he'll start getting rid of the dead weight (MoT, Moochie, and Cato). Maybe Cato will be kept, but come off the bench. But nevertheless, he still might be traded for a player that we *need*. And that's a PF that can give us scoring/defense and rebounding. Not just defense/rebounding. And yes, we do need "scoring" at the PF spot. I mean, what do we have there? Cato that can't make a layup to save his life. And MoT that wants to be a guard and shoot jumpers all day, and can't rebound.