During this win streak, certain players have stepped up, and we've been arguing nonstop on this board about who deserves credit. Omited from most of this discussion have been quite possibly the two most important "players" in the whole win streak: Adleman and Morey. Morey has proven to be a great evaluator of talent and a shrewd GM. Carl Landry looks like a 2nd round steal, Aaron Brooks is loaded with potential, and Luis Scola has been HUGE for us. All three are rotaton players on a team 13 games over 500...as rookies. Of course, some moves--like trading for James and picking up Francis--have been busts, but the mark of a good GM is that they give the coach as many weapons as possible in case one misfires. Compare this offseason and the avalanche of talent it brought to the two years past when we considered first Stromile and then Bonzi to be our lone savior, and you'll see just one way that Morey is a BIG improvement Morey is over Dawson. Adleman took on huge expectations, maintained control through a bad start, and earned a huge amount of respect from his players. He did what any coach would do and gave the veterans (James, Chuck) a chance at the begining of the season. When that failed, he wasn't afraid to blow it up. All the while, he preached 48 minutes of intensity. He preached ball movement. He preached people movement. Now it looks like he's preaching to the choir. Unafraid to tweak things, he's found a rotation that works, including 3(!) rookies. He's gone with the hot hand or the particular matchups of a game, and while he sometimes sticks with one player a bit long, we can't argue with the results. Everyone is scoring now. We're not a two man show anymore-- We're a team. It takes a good coach to make that happen. Tonights game is evidence of both Morey's and Adleman's contributions. Our stars, Yao and T-Mac, shot a combined 9-38(for those of you playing at home, thats less than 25%, which is....ummm....gross), but we still pulled off a win against a defending NBA finalist. How? We had more weapons, thanks to Morey. Scola was huge (15 pts, 8 reb, 1 ast, 1 stl, 1 blk) and Landy gave us a big boost (8 pts, 6 reb, 1 stl, 1 blk, and 1 citation for attempted rim murder). We moved the ball well, thanks to Adleman. 23 assists on 32 made baskets is a spectacular indication of that. Combine that with only 12 turnovers, and it's clear that Adleman has this team in tune. This thread isn't meant to disparage anyones efforts, i just thought giving a little love to people who probably deserve it is more interesting than arguing about who is/may be/used to be/is not soft. Thoughts are appreciated. Htown.
Yo how about some praise for Rafer? Man is balling these couple of months! Ever since T-mac went out he's really stepped up!
adelman is the one who impresses. he's a very talented coach when it comes to making adjustments he made a LOT of mistakes early in the season, including the wrong rotation, and even bad subs/lack of subs in games which robbed the team of momentum. there were a couple of games where he kept yao and/or tmac on the bench too long which allowed teams to close our leads in the 4th quarter and cost us a number of games during the first losing streak since then, every game he's been making adjustments and the things that set this team apart this season: chemistry, rookies stepping up, are in large part due to coach. he's also handled tmac and yao very well... for the first time they seem to have true confidence that the scrubs will carry part of the load and again that has a lot to do with adelman allowing yao to play through the bad stretches to gain confidence, and also demonstrating to tmac through his rotations that bonzi, scola, landry and rafer have the skills to contribute
we need the role players if we are going to make any in roads in the final. We failed in the last a few season because we can't win if any of our two man show is having a off game. Look at us now, we are a team, if the big two is struggling, everyone else step up.
Nice post thread opener. Morey deserves alot of credit. He has made the Rockets talent hunting team 'respectable' again. Remember how many clowns from ESPN were dissing the Rockets draft at the beginning of the season? I bet they are all now eating crow. As Chad Ford says: Morey is either going to make him look very smart or look very stupid. I believe it is the latter. For RA, credit must be given for this stretch of games where the Rockets have been playing extremely well. I think the main thing he has been able to establish (or is it reestablish) is the Rocket's identity as a team - hard nosed defending. It is my humble opinion that that is an identity that fits the Rockets best, and I am glad that RA has been able to reassert / reimpose the identity on the team. Of course, as TBar said, JVG must have some credit for the defensive mindset as well.
Yes Alston played well but he is still looking to set himself up first rather than looking to set his team mate up first. Until this changes he won't be worthy of a starting POINT GUARD position on a contending team.
Gundy does get some credit for establishing a defensive mindset. Adleman gets credit for adjusting it (keeping Yao low on pick and rolls, etc) and still making it work. Rafer has played well. A lot of people have. Despite all that, we don't win this game without an offense that shares the ball well.
The jury is still out on whether that's the best strategy, though. I think the PnR against Yao has been an even bigger problem this year than last year.
I agree. Its far from perfect. I don't think any strategy is going to be perfect--Yao simply isn't mobile enough to gaurd a lot of high PnRs. I don't think that's a problem any one tactic will solve What i DO like about Yao hanging back is that A.) He stops penetration--the open shot they get is a jumper instead of a layup, and, B.) Yao is in good rebounding position when a shot does go up (does this explain his increase in rebounds? Not entirely, but it may be a factor)., Whether its the best strategy, though, is certainly still open to discussion.
AMEN to the thread, but you don't give credit where it's due. what about the players who stuck with it when times were low?
Of course the players deserve credit for the win streak. I just started this thread because there was a lot of talk on the board about players and notenough was being said about coaching/the front office. Players kept their heads up and kept listening through a tough time, and that's certainly laudable.
This is the first time in years that I've felt the Rockets were team complete enough to win consistently. We are stacked. Recently its been teams that have depth over teams that play a 7 man rotation that have won. We are now, I think, one of those deep teams.
