Defense is another kind of offense. It can be viewed as a kind of offense because making the opponents miss a shot equals to us making a shot. With that said, defense is harder to play than offense. Good defense requires more energy to be spent than good offense. In a nutshell, defense can be termed as the hard offense. So a team should get down offense first, then play good defense to add edge to their competitiveness. It seems JVG got it reversed.
A mental-shift to more offense might not necessarily win more games, but it'd sure be a hell of a lot more entertaining. Push the tempo a little bit. Give us a show. Even last year we'd see some fastbreak three's (from Barry) and get into our offensive sets a little faster. When we had Tmac and Yao this year for that five-game winning streak we still looked slow as molasses and unpolished to boot! We could use a little more diversity in our playbook, too. We have the same three plays with some Tmac-creativity plays thrown in here and there. Last year the Spurs had a lot of interesting plays drawn up for their top three options. We have none of that. And we are too reliant on the three. Other than that, I don't have real problems with our gameplan. Let our stars heal and comeback and just play for some pride and see if they're effective offensively. Win some games for us, too. Tanking just sucks in so many ways. Did people call Golden State r****ded for going on a late season tear instead of going for a top three pick? No, Golden State proved to people that they can play. And as a Rockets fan that's all I'm asking for out of this season. Just prove to me that the Rockets can still play.
Kobe is playing with Smush Parker and LeBron plays with Eric Snow. both scrubs! Tmac plays with Skip2MyLou who's suppose to be a 'pure' PG or a pass 1st. He can't score with his back all spassed out, plus don't you think he would score more say under Rudy T?
But they have all been in the hunt. All have been elite teams with legit chances at the championship. And while the Pistons and Spurs might not light it up on offense they are efficient on offense....slow and methodical at times to be sure but efficient none the less. They do not tend to wast possessions and they all tend to know their roles in the offense they play. The Rockets offense looks so helter skelter at times that it is just punishing to watch. At least the Suns and Mavs are entertaining as hell and with AJ running the Mavs they play much better defense than in years past and still have a pretty damn good offense.
The Kings sure seem to be doing great down a significant number of players too. Oh wait, no the injury bug has sent their season down the toilet just like ours. I guess Adelman forgot how to win games just like JVG. The Suns look fine with Amare out, but how did they do when Nash went down last year? Oh yeah, they were sub-.500. It turns our when the people you build your team around are not on the court, you are not going to do very well. This isn't Rocket-science, it is a basic understanding that who you put out on the court matters. No team at the top of the standings is giving significant playing time to players the quality of Ryan Bowen, John Lucas III, Lonny Baxter, and Moochie Norris. Do you really think the Pistons would be at the top of the standings if they were relying on Jason Maxiell, Dale Davis, and Carlos Delfino to play meaningful minutes, with Tayshaun Prince and Antonio McDyess their leading scorers? How well would San Antonio do if you took away Duncan, Parker, Finley, Barry, Mohammed, and Van Exel? I'm guessing they wouldn't be leading the Western Conference. We are built around Yao and TMac. With them out of the lineup, the best we can hope for is to be in the game in the 4th quarter and hope that some journeyman on our team can have a hot shooting night to maybe give us a win. That is what we are getting, and the results are about as expected.
I do think with the roster we had at the time, JVG was a good hire. We needed some discpline and defense. But now, with Carol getting all these players in here who like the uptempo game, JVG might not be the best choice. I mean, before everyone got hurt, we were running a slow down offense then. This is with Rafer, DA, T-Mac and Stro on the floor. You need to change your offense to your personel, JVG didn't do that. Plus JVG-ball has to be the most un-entertaining basketball there is.
