Christ almighty, boy, do you understand the vagaries of the past tense? Glen Rice as a Rocket, in 2003....WAS better than Eric Piatkowski as a Rocket in 2004. That's the performance I was evaluating, because that's the one that matters. I could not care less about what they did with the Clippers. This is not Clipsfans.net or Clippercity.com. I imagine on those message boards (if they exist) they wax romantically about the days of yore with Pike and lament the days of Rice. However, I don't root for the Clippers so I don't really care. I know you have a bone to pick with me, attributable to the fact that Jim Jackson had an awful shooting night, which is illogical, but come on. Pike has sucked this year. Do you not agree?
1) Yao didn't play particularly strong. Grant did. He was pushing Yao the whole time. Grant either fronted him or overplayed to Yao's top side. 2) The Heat (especially the 1st half) dropped a guy back to double before Yao got the ball. (mostly with a guard from the opposite corner, sometimes from the opposite wing, sometimes with the PF). 3) Yao's teamamates did not reverse the ball quick. The hi-lo pass was not there because: -They mostly doubled Yao with a guard. - Cato played with Yao quite a bit. - When MoT played, he missed a couple of shots from the FT line so he could not make the defense pay. 4) For this kind of double team, we threw the ball from the wing cross-court to the opposite corner a few times for open shots but we missed. Yao didn't play great, he didn't play badly. If he'd stayed in the game, he'd probably get a few more shots. He didn't have the chance. The Heat was quick. They played inspired. They moved the ball. They hit the open shots or faked us out of our boots to get to the basket. They were just the better team last night.
Not sure what's going on with Pike. He seems scared to miss now. Maybe JVG yelled at him, and he's nervous now. I wonder if being on a better team has put more presure on Pike. In LA he never really had pressure to win (not really). He was just free stroking it. Come on Pike. We NEED SHOOTERS! Man, I miss Bullard!
