Defense - Breakdown on the layups...your analysis Spock !

I suspect Adelman may be forced to move Artest back into the starting lineup starting tonight until Battier returns. Without either of those guys in the lineup the perimeter defense is too suspect. Wafer should (and has the physical tools) to be a good defender but he's just not there right now. T-Mac has never been a particularly good defender during his Rockets career, so it's unreasonable to not expect poor defense from him with his knee condition. Someone's got to be there to pick up the slack. Last night there was nobody to do that, and the result was that the Sixers got into the paint at will.

I'm at least glad that after more than two weeks of continuous defensive slippage, this issue is finally being recognized as *the* reason why this team seems to have lost its mojo.

 

We shouldn't be surprised, Rick's team in Sacto didn't play D either. That's why the Laker's continually bounced them from the playoffs due to their lack of D. They never could get stops when it counted. Also, T.R. Dunn and Elston Turners defensive schemes have never impressed anyone.

This coaching staff has to have some accountablility. JVG style - No D, no play.

 

DD- Great work. The swa commercial is like the funniest commercial ever! Also to your analysis, the rox don't transition well. I mean if we had some guys that could run to match the rebounding we have, we would avg 15 fastbreak points a game. What we have is a pg that comes for a handoff instead of getting to the hash, tracy is a loafing type, shane stops at the 3, scola runs, yao is yao. So if this team is going to be a half court team, they need to make it a dominant half court team that will never give up easy baskets. They're not good enough offensively to be poor defensively.

 

Wow, great work DD!

McGrady is the obvious culprit right now, but reading the analysis, I'm wondering how much having younger players like Landry and Wafer is affecting overall team defense. Their lack of experience must be taking a toll.

Also, if Van Gundy were in charge, he would've probably buried Landry on the bench for a long while. And this board probably would've been screaming for JVG's head because of it.

 

We're the same team that held teams to about 30% shooting for a stretch of games last season, and guess what, we were playing Adelman's defense. The difference? Battier and Hayes locking down everyone.

 

Obviously referee game fixing in the WCF had nothing to do with it.

The Sacramento Kings were consistently in the top 10 in opponent FG% between 2001 and 2004. Adelman's teams were known for their offense, but his playoff teams weren't defensive slouches.

Last year's Rockets team finished second in defensive efficiency in the league while running Adelman's own defensive scheme which they clearly said was different from JVG's. I agree with the call for accountability, but to claim that Adelman doesn't know how to coach defense is just wrong.

 

They did have their own defensive philosophy last season, but admitted that they used a lot of what JVG and TT brought to the table using the "if it's not broken don't fix it mentality"

I don't know about you guys, but I saw this coming.

Earlier in the season Yao said something along the lines that he and Chuck had gone to the coaching staff because they could see the defense slipping. I remember it because I thought it was interesting that Yao specifically mentioned Chuck.

Later in the piece Adelman admitted that they hadn't really been focusing on the defense that much because they were working on getting the offense down in the preseason without a lot of consistency because major people he thought were going to be in the rotation were having injury issues - ie shane and tmac

So while this defensive slip isn't strictly because of personnel that's part of it. It's also the fact that the "main guys" from JVG's tenure aren't playing together on the court anymore. Whereas last season they were.

That doesn't mean that Adelman's (and Turner's) defense won't work, it's just that they haven't spent near enough time on it (imho) and so now there is no effort at all out there.

I figure they will continue to struggle defensively until they can spend a lot of time together at home working on it with everyone healthy.

 

Good pointers i am wondering to myself as to why did the organization extend his contract so damn early when they should know players give more effort when they near the end and then extend them. It was like they made their plans and jumped the gun to extend him too early. Players play way better trying to earn a pay raise as opposed to making up their minds to extend players so early then they slack at times.

 

I missed that first part, but I do remember that in the preseason they did seem to spend more time focusing on the offense rather than defense. I also do agree that personnel is a major part of the problem (see my post about perhaps having to move Artest back into the starting lineup). Battier's injury is a bigger problem than most people realized, and the general lack of floor time for Hayes in his absence means that we pretty much have no defensive stoppers out on the floor anymore these days.

The next homestand can't come soon enough, it seems. This is yet another adverse effect of having to play so many games on the road so early.

 

I'm talking about McGrady we extended him to 4 more years when he has 2 left when we traded for him.

 

This thread isn't about McGrady's contract. Your post is completely offtopic.

 

It's on topic contracts translate to more effort on the court as to when they are signed and when they end players react differently.

 

There is no "D" in T-Mac.

 

It's off specific topic nm, but you get my understanding i think. We never seen Mac here play in a contract season either. You have to make players think as to make them work max effort for money. That did not happen we traded for him with 2 years left then extended him which was stupid because the player then begains to think well im locked up so my brain tells me just to play instead of competing. Normally organizations make players play out their contracts before they re-up.

Anyways NM

(End Rant)

 

"fake hustle"

 

Bottomline is Rick would rather sacrifice a defensive stop in favor of squeezing in a hoop here and there. Landry is in the game over chuck hayes because landry can make free throws and score a dunk here and there which Adelman values over DEFENSE and CHEMISTRY.


DEFENSIVELY hayes alston Yao and T-mac have defensive CHEMISTRY with each other from playing with together longer and being pupils of Jeff van gundy.You throw barry,landry,brooks in there with them they don't have the same CHEMISTRY and therefore they are not on the same page on D.



This hurts our main guys tracy rafer and Yao on the offensive end because in their minds they relied on Defense to keep them into games even if they were struggling offensively.


Offensively landry may give you a put back dunk every 10-15 posession but defensively he is lost and playing with Yao and tracy hurts the chemistry because they have jeff's defensive scheme in their minds where you executed certain help principles which everyone knew what their roles were.



Shane is a plus because he will direct the schemes to everyone.But at the end of the day it's on adelman to learn to sacrifice some offense and restore this current teams identity which is on the defensive end of the floor. Right now rick is hurting the team because he is so obessed with OFFENSE and he's not playing to this teams' strengths.


Rick needs to stop going with the landry scola duo. He must play deke which will allow us to protect the paint and also gain extra possession on the Glass.


Rick needs to learn to sacrifice offense for defense which will help us with our chemistry.

 

They could but it seems like you can't teach landry Defense. He does the same thing when defending the pick and rolls,Seems like he doesn't know went to jump the pick and roll or when to rotate to the next man. I mean we have him and scola protecting the paint and boxing out for each other and they don't look after each other rebounding or rotating on D.


Hoepfully they can but I still think he should play some of our Defensive guys. I mean phila had theo ratliff in there last night causing us problems with his shot-blocking,Rebounding,throwing outlet passes for layups. Play deke and hayes to match them getting all the stops maybe we would get a few more extra posessions ourselves.