For only the second game of the season, this one was quite positive overall. But I think Adelman will be questioning the starting PG position. In a nutshell... this game was about attitude. The starters didn't quite have one but Mike James sure did. He came in and reset the tone of the game for the Rockets when the starters were struggling. That enabled Tmac to get himself righted and have the game he did. Attitude is half the game -- skills the other half. Without the attitude, the skills won't carry you in a tough game. This is why Francis needs to do whatever is necessary to get himself into the rotation. The players that have grit and fire in the belly are: James, Hayes, Battier, Scola and Francis... I guess Bonzi has attitude, too. Tmac has wonderful skills but can be too influenced by the tone of the game. He draws his confidence from other players as much as his own performance. Jazz fans may not think the team is upgraded from last year but the attitude injected by James, Scola, Bonzi (and Francis if he'll figure out what he needs to do instead of expecting he gets to start by default) will help them to recover from their tendancy for slow starts. I also think Rafer might lose his starting position if Francis can wake up and get motivated. If he can get up to speed then James takes more of Rafer's minutes with Francis providing the off-the-bench spark. Rafer is a little like "fools gold". He looked like he was the man in preseason but he may be faltering... certainly didn't have a good game tonight. Too much like Rafer of last year -- too many bad passes, not enough points for the director of the offense. Yao?? It's not bashing to say he does struggle against the Jazz. Defensively, he is in a difficult position trying to play Boozer. Boozer has such a good mid-range jumper that he can score all day with Yao on him because Yao doesn't come out to challenge the shots, or Boozer will then just drive by him and get layups or got the line. But I don't know why he struggles offensively so much. He missed several passes, bobbled the ball too much and played relatively meek around the basket. I don't know if playing the high post is causing him to feel confused but he did not play with the attitude that Hakeem tried to impress on him last summer. The problem is inside his head and the answer is also inside his head. Once he gets that sorted out he can stop feeling so unsure. Whether he's playing high post or low post he'll be confident in what he's supposed to do and just do it. Lastly: Come on Steve, you can have a real impact here. A lot of people here are pulling for you.
I think the reason that it changed was because Scola's game is so different than Yao's. Yao's game is mainly a slower power game in the low block with an occasional Shanghai Shake, while Scola brings a speedier PF game to the center position. The Jazz prepaired for Yao's game, but weren't ready for Scola when he played center. I have to admitt that I thought we would lose this game, since it was in Utah. This is great though. We have opened on the road against 2 playoff teams and WON BOTH while learning a new system with new teammates. This bodes well for the season!!
I hope Rafer didn't play too much. Seeing him play really pisses me off sometimes. Like that game vs Lakers.. he took a 3 on Tmac territory (5 feet behind the arc) and of course, misses. Stuff like this really upset me. But yeah.. after ready the MJ thread, I can't wait to dl R2K's vid!!
Man, I really liked how Coach Adelman made his substitution for the entire game. That was more impressive to me than T-Mac's 47 points.
This was a good win. Definitely see this team heading in a positive direction. Scola is going to be money for us come midseason.
As of Nov 1, according to NBA standing, we are #1 in the league. And it will remain as such when the season ends. Woot http://www.nba.com/standings/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Div.html
you can't really criticize yao for not being able to guard boozer, it's a complete mismatch. it'd be just like the jazz putting boozer on yao on the other end. yao would eat him up. we still have a long long ways to go to where we look more comfortable, but this talent might be able to push us through this first month.
boozer did guard yao a few times tonight, and more often than not, yao wasn't able to capitalize, that is a head scratcher there, i don't know what it is, but yao doesn't look comfortable on either ends of the floor against the jazz, going back to last season
I'll just point out that Yao was again matched up against Boozer. People complaining in the offseason that we needed to acquire a PF to defend Boozer are simply clueless. It's not happening, because no coach in his right mind would stick Yao on Okur. He'd get destroyed on kick outs and pick and pops all game.
Like I said during the summer, Coach Adelman is a bad coach for Yao Ming. Yao Ming will miss JVG badly. Yao is being turned into a Brad Miller, and this is not a good thing. I doubt if he averages 25 points 10 rebounds this year. Maybe he'll even average < 20 points this year. So Coach Adelman is sacrificing Yao's inside game to free up T-Macs game. I know it's only the second game but this is the pattern I see.
Eh... you know we were running JVG plays to get Yao the ball in the post right? Yao just sucked it up tonight against single coverage and his timing was completely off. It was almost as if he was scared.
With all due respect, you need glasses. Yao is going to be just fine under Adelman. If he stays healthy, I look for him to have the best year of his career.
Please take your head out of your a$$. Obviously, you don't know much about basketball or stats, but just to educate you, here are some PER stats from Yao last year: Player Efficiency Rating Dwyane Wade - 28.9 Dirk Nowitzki - 27.6 Yao Ming - 26.5 Tim Duncan - 26.1 Kobe Bryant - 26.1 LeBron James - 24.5 Pau Gasol - 24.1 Manu Ginobili - 24.1 Kevin Garnett - 24.1 Carlos Boozer - 24.1 Source: Link If you don't know what PER entails, educate yourself: PER Wiki
I'm thinking Yao on Okur might work if you tell him to just chase Okur off his 3 pt jumpers and not worry about the drive. Okur can drive past him, but you gotta take your chances with one of the four other guys being able to swipe the ball away from a 7 footer driving in from the 3 pt line.
