If the Rockets stay with Steve Francis at the point guard being the primary ball handler, they won't get the max money player they were expecting whey they gave him the contract. Steve should not be thinking. Steve's thinking is killing his aggressiveness when he should be scoring.
Biggest problem tonight: Marbury has managed to get himself stuck deep in Stevie's brain. I'll bet Steve's been thinking about this game for a week, planning how he was going to finally show Marbury who's the real stud. You could see it all over Steve's game -- he was hesitant all night, his shot was off, he made MANY bad choices, etc. And then there's the foul, where you could see Steve thinking, "I'm gonna be all over him. Ain't no way he's gonna get a shot off ov-- D'OH!!!" He needs to quit worrying about how his game looks and start focusing more on whether or not his team wins.
The 24-second violations were terrible ... I think there were at least three or four in the game. But let's not blame them all on Steve. On one of them, Cat had the ball and didn't even look like he was going to attempt a shot. Pike caused one when he passed up a shot and tried to penetrate, which was a dumb move. I believe we were only down by two at that point, which makes it even worse. RE: Steve's foul on Stephon. The replay looked like he got his arm. Even if there was negligible contact, when the defender swings his arm and makes a forceful downward hack at the ball, it's almost always gonna be called a foul, regardless of how much time is on the shot clock. I think Steve couldn't bear the thought of Marbury sticking a prayer three in his face so he went hard for swat. But he should've just left his arms up and made Me-bury attempt an badly off-balance three over him. The refs overall called some questionable fouls, but on both sides. The late-reaction charging call on Jahidi White was a joke and Voskuhl got some extremely ticky-tack calls as well. The Suns deserved to win, they played with more energy in the 4th quarter and got the crowd into it. Too many turnovers and Yao's foul trouble did the Rockets in. It's one game.
Mo Taylor is becoming the Houston version of Larry Johnson (minus the prayer three pointers), who JVG absolutely loved in New York. LJ on the Knicks was an absolute black hole in the post with his back down, dribble, back down, dribble, head fake, pump fake, shot routine.
Cato played extremely well tonight but I still think he's the biggest problem for the rockets right now. Today the Matrix played out of position and got to the hoop at will when guarded by Cato. The worse thing is JVG couldn't use this mismatch for our advantage. Cato can't even post up Earl Boykins! MoT got burned by the Matrix also. But he had a shot to use his size at the offensive end. Unfortuntely his shots didn't fall.
Stephon talks some trash. I think Stephon has got Steve's number. Stephon also plays some serious defense. I saw him lockdown Steve when Yao was just trying to get Steve the ball. There was absolutely no separation. It was like Deion Sanders defending some receiver.
what is that saying? dont blame the refs? blame yourselves? rockets problems aside, for the people who didn't watch, the officiating was horrible...i was damn near gonna throw out my tv... you know, this is the nba, when you have two professional teams go at it, officiating can be the difference, a poster mentioned the jahidi white charge, yeah, yao had a heal on the line, but the spirit of the call was correct...jahidi who is not known as a scorer buries his head like a bull and just charges into Yao, Yao has position, Yao is a star, and they made the right call, heal notwithstanding... but this one call hardly makes up for all the other crappy calls against Yao, the refs literally benched Yao in the first half, man those were bad calls... but you know what did us in? rockets just didn't make shots, duh... jim jax, mobes, you got to shoot better, a couple of baskets in and that would be the difference... a note about piatkowski, i am not impressed with you this season...i thought you were money when you are open, yet you brick when you open sometimes, not a quality of a sharpshooter... so thats the difference in tonites game for people who didn't watch... you can only bash steve, yao and cuttino so much - it gets old, and really that triumverate was not so responsible tonite sans cat, its these role players that have to make wide open shots...i am not even hating on steve for that very costly tech episode, bad officiating to begin with, just horrible... jax and pike...come on guys
What the hell are you saying? JJ and Pike are role players. JJ is expected to come in and lock down his man which mostly he does. Pike is there to hit open shots which except tonight he does. Anything on top is gravy. Whether the team wins or loses ultimately falls on the big 2 + 1, Yao Steve + maybe Cat. When 2 of the 3 plays absolutely lousy and the other get called for BS fouls you don't blame the role players.
Yet before that, Yao had fouled out two of the three Suns centers and was obviously getting foul calls in his favor, not to mention in the limited minutes he had received was scoring close to a point a minute. He had 5 points in 5 minutes in the first half. Had 7 in the 9 minutes he played closing out the 3rd quarter, and I believe 6 points in the 4th in the limited amount of possessions he was given. And when he wasn't taking shots, he wasn't a turnover liability since the refs were calling handchecking on the Suns centers that were defending Yao. He still had a bigger height advantage than MoT had on Marion, and Marion actually got 4 points off turnovers in the 4th quarter that lead to his 10 points total in the 4th. MoT didn't dish the ball around the perimeter wisely when he was obviously outmatched upon receiving the double team, and it's not as though he was being really effective tonight. Especially not anymore then Yao was who was better rested given he was playing limited minutes because of foul trouble earlier on in the game. Adding all those things together, it was a very bad coaching decision to dump the ball into MoT.
I agree. Yao fouled out two Sun centres in a short span of time. But from thence on, the ball did not go to Yao. If that was JVG's call, I am upset with that. If that was our guards', I am not surprised.
Your observation is all correct. but I still think the MoT-Marion matchup is something we can take advantage of. I would blame on MoT's poor execution. Marion played excellent defense tonigh though.
Piat and JJ bricked it hard tonight. There's only so many shots that need to be missed before the opposing defense realizes that they are off that night. They start to cheat off them to make sure the other guys aren't going to do anything. Mobley was a zero. Piatkowski got some really open shots, and he missed. JJ got open shots all night.
Also, I'm sure keep bashing YOF fans, will make them feel really welcome. I'm a YOF, I want to trade Yao to Lakers and Spurs. Homers can still cheer for the ISO games, I will enjoy watching the new team. Peace.
Part of the problem in the 4th quarter was, after Yao fouled out their centres, they doubled team him. That was fine because kicked it out to wide open teammate like Pike. But they all missed wide open shots. That basically drew double and triple against Yao the rest of the game. Our coach or our guard so decided not to go to Yao any more. Our lead did not take long to turn into 10 points behind. Man.
The turning point of this game was the 4-point play with 2:30 left in the game. SF fouled Marbury when Stephon was throwing up a prayer. After that play, we were 10 points down and all bets were off. SF and Cat went into their typical panic mode and that was your ball game right there.
JJ and Pike aren't the only ones bricking the shots tonight. Like I said, when the only guy hitting shots is on the bench with foul trouble and the other 2 aren't shooting any better, what do you do? Quite frankly lately I'm becoming far more with JJ and Pike bricking shots than Steve Francis bricking them. It is not to say that they are better shooters but I cringe just about every time Steve touches the ball. Not only does he have shot selection problems he's a turnover liability. I'd rather see JJ and Pike do a semi well executed play and bricks (therefore at least give us a fighting chance) than Steve dribbles up court and bricks.
Btw, I didn't include Cato because you really can't count on him consistently on offence. He shot better tonight because all but one of his shots were dunks and the only one that wasn't he bricked.
