ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Spurs 10/26/2007 (PRESEASON)

They can "slip the chair". They can tap the ball away from him while maintaining their position behind him. And, in general, they can be nuisance by constantly moving and not letting Yao get comfortable. Yao doesn't have great hands, and he definitely struggles establishing position against quicker defenders.

Before Yao's injuries, he put up nice stats. 27 ppg, very good scoring efficiency (61 TS%). He also averaged 4 turnovers per game. But, more importantly, what about the team's offense?

Well, consider that before Yao got injured (11/1 - 12/22), the Rockets had a 105.1 offensive efficiency. And while Yao was injured (12/23 - 3/3), the offensive efficiency of the team increased to 106.7. More specifically, the eFG% of the team hardly changed (49.9% to 49.7%), while the TO% dropped from 17.5% to 14.1%. You may say that T-Mac and others stepped up their offensive game when Yao went out. And you'd be right! Even though Yao was a considerable individual offense force, continually trying to pound the ball to him didn't necessarily translate to maximal offensive efficiency at the team level. If Yao is such a great offensive player, and JVG was using him appropriately, how can you explain an improvement in team offense over a nearly 3 month period while he was gone and the replacement player was Dikembe Mutombo?

 

Lol just ignore him from now on........ even though he gets so annoying its kinda hard to

 

we need yao when we play the teams like spurs/heat/detroit who have good frontlines.

 

Our current D is at best questionable. Coach never has been a coach with impressive defensive set. He's more offsenseively oriented. To say our D WILL be on top of the league is not well grounded. Ralfer had never been a good defensive player. Even under JVG's reign, he still can't guard strong guard like Deron and Baron. This actually is our main reason to look for another PG. TMac has all the talents to be a great defender. But he never has been one in a consistant basis. I don't blame this to him since he has to take the major offsensive load. Yao is big but he is more odten the deffensive liability due to his slowness. Our only defensive experts are Shane and Chuck, but Chuck is way too unsersized for his position. I still remember how he got bullied by Carlos Boozer just because of his size. When we look at our bench, excpet maybe Scola, none of the rest is known for their defense. MJ, SF3, Bonzi are all good at scoreing but not D.

Grantedly, they played a couple of good first-quarter defensive with this starting lineup. But I doubt it's all because of the JVG's defense momentom. They know each other well in the defensive end and kudo should go to JVG. Even so, this test is not that convincing because they were facing really bad teams. Coach A is never featured as one with good D. So I will keep my figure crossed to see how will it go after JVG's heritage has faded away with time passing by.

In the past a few games, Yao did get some low post touches, but I have to say Yao was not in his comfortable zone in a major fraction of these positions. Even with the preseason level defense, Yao could hardly get his patern move. The problem is not get Yao have touch in low post, instead it should be make Yao have touch more easily in his comfortable zone.

Play Yao as the axis of Princeton offsense can only be the alternative option for this team. When Yao go out, obviously the lane will be more open for cut or penetrate. This will be good for Tracy and we can possibly get a more balanced offense. But to sacrifice Yao's low post power game to get that offsense going is not a smart idea at all. Hopefully, coach A can realize this soon.

The biggest question mark to me is still our defense. It's embarrassing and painful to watch everybody in Spurs can get wide open shot even it's only a preseason game.

 

A lot of those open jumpers were caused because our bigs (namely Yao, Scola, and Mutombo) didn't step out and contest them well enough. That was an issue with our defense last year as well.

 

I blame it to the bad rotation. I belive you will agree with me if you watch the game video closely.

We did have problems in guarding P/R in the last season simply because of Yao's slownesss. But the problem is almost unavoidable for any team with a powerful big man. Shark's teams have always met that problem too. When you get something special, you got to sacrifice sometime. As long as the tradeoff is worthwile, everybody will be fine with it.

The thing I saw yesterday is far more severe that we used to have. The bad rotation is not only on our big man. It's for everybody. So when Spurs were moving the ball, it's like 6 against 5. Why? Because somebody must be lazy (or don't know how to do) in the rotation, so even some others tried, after one or two more passes, someone in Spurs would be always wide open.

What made me more concerned is loose D and center in high post had always been part of coach A's game. It's never changed no mater where he was. Admittedly he never had a dominant center before so he might adjust for that and will find a way to play out Yao's full strength. But out defense under the kind of playoff intensity probably will be a problem. We all know it's a tradeoff between JVG and coach A. But we truly don't know how much we have given up to dump JVG out.

 

I said something similar in the Hilltopper thread about SF3, but i REALLY think Rafer is going to stink it up like he did last night for an extended stretch of games, and voila!: Steve welcome to the rotation.

C'mon I think most of us would at least like the see SF3 out there with Yao and Mac in a game that means something before we say, "Oh well, you suck now Francis. Bye."

 

The idea of playing Yao at high post is to try to allow Yao to a "point center" and creating for the teammates.

But that so far is nothing but a failure. Yao probably average 1 assist a game in preseason. Some would argue that by Yao pulling back to high post opens up for TMac, well, you might as well let Deke be that decoy.

What's worse is that TMac's assists also went down!

This whole "experiement" seems to add more confusion than improve the team.

 

I hope that what you said is true. The Rockets need Yao to dominate in the low post, not play out in the high post too much or diddle with the ball in the backcourt like what Ralph Sampson did.

 

i actually really like how tmac is used right now. he's gonna dominate and explode VERY VERY often playing how he is right now in the spots adelman is using him.

but yes i agree w/ u the high post seems unlikely for yao right now. i thought he would adjust a lil bit but he just looks so awful out there. i believe adelman is seeing what we all are seeing and that's yao struggling from the high post.

he knows yao is our matchup advantage on the frontline EVERY single night and he won't waste that.

but i do like that sometimes yao goes out for a few possessions b/c that just opens up SO MUCH space for tracy. but tracy can score anywhere so we can sacrifice that. we need to get yao going.

 

Doublehh03: I do not agree with your accessment on coach A being a "very good to potentially great defense". If I remember correctly, he was criticized by his boss at Kings for his team's defense. Kings was a entertaining team to watch in regular season, just like Sun. They are not contender for championships, never. This is the reason I am not very optimistic about Rockets this year. I am sure we will manage to get into post season. But I am not sure how far we can go. With the way the team has played defensively, we would loose to Jazz again, actually in less than 7 games.

In short, I think Rockets made a lot of smart player's decisions this summer. However, I think they made a huge mistake in coach's decision. They let go of JVG, and picked Coach A. We are goind to suffer for that, in the next a few years.

 

Sacramento under Coach A was always a championship contender, and most argue that if it weren't for some bad calls against the Lakers they would've won a couple championships

 

t-mac's assists are not going down because of yao's high post
also, if deke were to stay in the high post, his defender would back off of him.. deke's inability/unwillingness to shoot at a high pct from back there is obvious

 

Adelman's teams have consistently in the top 10 for opposing FG%. After 2 or 3 seasons with his teams, they would be top 5 in defense. . He did have bad defensive seasons. The 2 seasons in Golden State, and the 3 seasons when Weber's knees were shot, aging Christie and Divac were over-the-hill.

 

i don't think so. JVG was SO STUBBORN and we would never totally win b/c tmac was not maximized in his abilities. yao was utilized correctly under JVG but not tmac. he was put w/ too much pressure. i mean, how the hell do u let a guy who just got back from an injury (a fairly severe injury since he was courted out the last time we saw him in 05-06) and let him have the highest usage rate in the L. that's just stupid to me. i don't see kobe ever doing that w/ shaq. i don't see wade does it w/ shaq. i mean, yes they have responsibilities, but tmac had more LAST YEAR despite not being in shape to handle all of them.

yes i think JVG would do well w/ this team too. we have a lot of talent and JVG is a very good. people think i bash JVG but i respect him a lot. he worked his arse off when yao was out and motivated deke/howard. i truly respect him as a man and a coach. he's one of the best defensive coaches i have EVER seen.

but he's so stubborn offensively. he does not want balance. whenever we lose when it's OBVIOUSLY due to our inept offense at times. AND YET HE STILL BLAMES DEFENSE. i remember many games where we allow 87-88 pts and we score 80-82 and he would blame the defense. he's too involved w/ the D and not put some effort on the offense.

let's be real. we have a player in tracy mcgrady who arguably has the best overall offensive package outside of kobe bryant. why would u run him through the pick and roll 95% of the time? JVG never put tmac in the position to finish which adelman is doing now. yes, u say sure he has more talent now. but i see TMAC finishing w/ the first unit: basically the same starting lineup.

and defensively, if you have noticed the blazers in the last 3 years, the kings in their last 3 yrs, they have ALWAYS been in top 5 in defensive efficiency. why do i think that's good? his offense is always top notch. but that defensive stat tells me he does not neglect defense. and in fact after the spurs game, he criticizes out defense AND our offense. when has JVG does that? when has he ever criticize our offense AND defense?

that's why i think we'll be better. we have a coach that emphasizes strongly both sides of the ball. works hard to put in plays on offense just as much as implementing defensive strategies (and most likely listening to players to keeping JVG's tactics since their purpose is still shutting down the paint. we were just too slow to close out last night. if u actually watch, our interior defense was EXCELLENT.)

so relax. i'm actually EXTREMELY optimistic. tmac will REALLY explode this year and put himself back on the map. yao will be utilized better (so don't worry as i have seen a lot of fans on here) b/c nobody can ignore where his true dominance is. we have depth. we have versatility. we have scorers. and most importantly, we have people who know the URGENCY of winning after so many failures.

this is a unique group b/c most of our best players have never advanced past the first round. they have the same collective goal of GETTING RESPECT. tmac/yao/battier all want to win.

 

they would. they lost a very UNLUCKY game 4 where the ball just bounced the wrong way. they lost a poorly officiated game 7 where EVERYONE knew the refs were calling it for the lakers.

they should have advanced to the finals that yr horry made the shot. everyone believed so. lakers, yes, got lucky.

i don't mind being lucky either but c'mon guys. this guy has taken the blazers to the finals and would have won if it was not for MJ, who stopped MANY guys from winning the ring.

he made the kings not only into one of the most exciting but best defensive teams. i think most people on here mistaken them for the suns. no. their D was horrific when they had jwill running as white chocolate. when they acquired DOUG CHRISTIE (+ his crazy wife), their D went to another level.

i've lived in LA. there's a reason the kings were their main rivals and they hated them. adelman's kings were the best challenge to the lakers during their heyday.

 

The poorly offciated game was game 6 of that series. Lakers did convincingly beat that Kings in game 7 on their own home court. Last season, when Rox lost game 7 at home just because of a careless TO from Ralfer and a couple of lucky bounce favoring Jazz, everybody was upset and JVG even cost his career here. Everybody all agreed that Rox were just not good enough and Utah were the better team in that series. Really, it's hard to argue you are the better team in a series after you lose the game 7 at home. Lakers deserved to win that series.