ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Spurs 11/16/2007

It's not going to happen soon. When a report asked Coach A about Steve, he asked back which player who played tonight Steve should have replaced.

 

Do you still hope Yao can improve drastically at this stage of his career? He is a mismatch for any team, but not so terribly difficult to handle. His TO/stamina/lack of athletic shortcut his offense. These recent losses echo his performance in playoffs. it's sad, but he is non-dominating.

 

I'm complaining because I don't think Adelman adequately gameplanned and prepared his team to beat the front. JVG had it figured out last year, you should have noticed that only rarely would teams do it even when McGrady was out. Yao was forced to create baskets from outside the three point line. Now every team is going to do it until Adelman figures out a way to free up Yao.

It doesn't help that the guards have seemingly forgotten how to throw a lob pass, and that Yao is commanded by Adelman to pass the ball out when double teamed, where he probably has a better shot at scoring even when doubled than any guard. Yao is not as good as he was last year and it's not the fault of health nor is it the fault of his effort. He might just be playing poorly but Adelman has a huge hand in it. Yao looks out of sorts at times on the court.

I wish JVG were still our coach.

 

It seems Yao is not effective when fronted by his opponent. This happens to be the case all the time when teams like Phoenix or Golden State play this type of defense on him. I wonder why other teams does not play Yao the same way? Maybe other teams have not figure this out yet. Sooner other teams will and we have to figure out a way to combat this.

 

Obviously, you don't like Yao. You lost your credibility righ there when you mentioned his lack of stamina. Do you know how many minutes he plays a game? It is sad that you are so biased.

 

We lost to a better team, if we have Tmac, we win...come on people....they are the world champs.

If anything it shows how close we are to them......especially now that Scola is figuring it out.

DD

 

i don't think that's the case. adelman said after the dallas game yao should shoot if he's not straight up double teamed. he did that the following games. but tonight he passed how even when he got single coverage at times in the first. please don't blame everything on adelman. u don't think adelman wants yao to shoot.

the fronting, i don't agree with you. last year, whenever yao was fronted, everyone was clamoring for JVG to be fired or beheaded b/c yao couldn't get the ball enough and he ended up shooting 9-10 shots only in those games => and we basically called yao ineffective in those games b/c he barely got the ball. i don't know which games u were watching.

adelman beat the fronting by going to the tmac-yao pick and roll v. the bobcats. tmac was just not there tonight. whenever they fronted yao, they generally had another guy in the back to prevent the lob so that's not an option if they defend like that.

we played very well. we shot 51%. for us to shoot 51%, i don't know why you are complaining. yao shot 43%.

be glad the role player took advantage of the fronting defenses on yao, which they didn't do before. now when tmac returns, he has A TON of options if the role players can play like this to dissect the defenses if they double yao or him.

 

Rafer Alston 4 from 10 from the field, 1 from 5 from 3 point range..

Im not a begger for Steve Francis, but seriously RA, you have to do something?

Its not as if this was a one off, if it wasnt for T-mac and Yao we'd be 0-9 with these friggin guards..Do something man?

 

Even Duncan fronted Yao. They only stopped fronting the last 5 minutes of the game. He was even fronted in the high post. The backside help/sagging defense was pretty consistently there. Apparently Popovich really did not want Yao to touch the ball.

When Yao has his position, gets fronted, and the backside help is not there, the lob pass must be IMMEDIATELY made. There were several opportunities of this type missed. If there is backside help, it is on the coach to draw up some plays to free him up; the cross-pick in the middle of the lane thing has stopped working. The first play of the second half was good and Hubie showed us how it worked, but we never ran it again. Meanwhile when Yao was fronted we seemingly would give up on him and go to someone else. The lack of a gameplan to consistently beat the front and the lack of a commitment to feeding Yao is ALL on Adelman.

 

your teams need to be pretty quick and athletic to be able to carry out an effective fronting defense. most teams are not quick/athletic like the suns/spurs/warriors

but u can bet more teams will try.

 

Yeah, but Yao should be good enough to get the lob and do something with it whether it be to take the shot or find the open man.

If they played it like they should have in the triangle set, they would have been able to make a quick pass back to the point and then down to the post even though they were coming with the back side double team which was usually the other forward that's why Scola had so many open looks. What actually happened most of the time was that the guard in the corner had the ball, but they were too far down so when they passed it back up to the point, there was no clear angle to pass it in.

To get Yao open they usually try to set a simple weak side screen, but when the defender is switching and fronting him, they could easily get around that. That was childs play when they tried to front Hakeem, but as someone posted in another thread, he made sure you knew he was the "alpha dog" so you better learn how to get him the ball no matter what or you would hear about it. Yao doesn't have that personality, but it shouldn't matter, being able to pass around stuff like that is basic and the Rocket guards should know that.

 

exactly. bill walton, who rarely praises the rox, said that was an impressive showing by the team.

again, we're STILL LEARNING the offense. our players were never used to moving without the ball so it's taking longer than expected.

 

Yes he play heavy minutes recently but the results are not beautiful lately right? Let's see how his performance pans out two month later. I will be very happy if I am wrong. I respect yao and appreciate his professionalism.

 

again, you need a tmac/magic johnson/nash type of guard. please don't have high expectations and look down our roster.

and yes, snce there is no tmac to do the pick and roll, his adjustment was to go to scola (b/c he was freakin wide open from the fronting defenses) or put yao at the high post to do some playmaking. yao was still involved.

yao does not have to score for us to do well offensively today and it showed. we lost b/c we didn't have our closer at the last 3 minutes.

u do know we stayed with them until the last 3 minutes. with tmac, we win EASY or we'll put him on the same side as yao and they would NEVER double yao w/ tmac on the same side.

so relax. yao didn't get his touches, but we learned a lot from the role players.

adelman will learn more on how to get yao the ball.

but right now, our biggest downfall remains our role players. but they stepped up tonight in a huge national TV game.

if all you care is for yao to get his touches (which we will find more ways to do, along w/ tmac to get him touches), you're crazy.

our 2 stars WILL benefit more if the role players develop to a consistent group => LESS FRONTING, less double teams... b/c they will hesitate and think twice before doing that if our role players perform.

 

we dont care who lead this team,what we need is all our players to do their best to help our team.like today,they try their best .so i have no pity for our lost to a championship team who has the best D in the league except some bad crucil decisions our PGs made.

We can see that YAO has done his best to help us to win.He has tried to show his agreesive and passion and he did it,he hit some clutch shots!

T-mac still cannt lead our team to pass first round.can you say he is soft?
so you shouldnt blame for YAO is soft.thats no excuse!

Please notice your words!As a rox fan,you should say that!

as you can see nobody before in this board speak as the way you speak!

you can be aware of that you are not a real fan of rox!

you shouldnt be here!out!

 

Yeah, either he's on the decline or traditional center like him are replacing with more athletic center like Dwight Howard. So far he look slow and out of rhythm. Add to that new offensive scheme under RA is going away from him to make ball flow. Statistically, I think he's getting less touch compared to last year. But I think his mentality and adjustment to defense is problematic. Maybe he's too nice to dominate considering his background.

 

Didn't you guys see how quickly the ref called Scola a faul when he tried to front ducan? If Yao had got the same call, he could have fouled out two spurs players in the first half.

Ref pretty much let spurs do anything to Yao. They just suck.

 

Very True

 

Uh, did you not see Oberto almost foul out?