No he didn't. But that's not effort. That's knowing HOW. Did you think Rudy or Moochie was going to teach him to bump and pull shirts? Francis gives the effort. But not 100%. With the current effort put forth, if he knew HOW to defend, his physical abilities compounded with his 75% effort would make him an above average defender. Not great, not "the Glove", but above average as opposed to horrible. daoshi, I'm sorry to go off topic, and I dont mean this as a personal attack. But even the most negative posters on the board respond positively to somethings, such as a trade. I've found it impossible to locate positives in your posts. You just simply trash EVERYTHING unless it has to do with ripping the team's guts out in a trade, or soemone stating that our players are stupid. You're free to think/say whatever you want, but I'm curious, don't you get tired of non-stop trashing? You are UNDOUBTEDLY THE MOST NEGATIVE PERSON ON THE ENTIRE BOARD.
So, I'm the UNDOUBTEDLY MOST NEGATIVE PERSON ON THE ENTIRE BOARD because I disagree with your argument on Francis' effort? I thought A-Tran had that title already! It's ironic that you have suggested trade away players, blamed the coaches, at the same time I've been consistently saying that the Rockets are an inexperienced team, they should be given more time despite so many people want to break the team up. How can I be more negative than you? You know what two threads I started? One is about the second half schedule; I picked the Rockets to finish ahead of the Wolves when you gave up on them; the other one is about whether the Rockets are a well coached team, and I voted YES. I don't know your track record since I usually just talk about the opinion in the posts, not the poster he/herself, I don't have the time to find that out, either. But I do feel that I'm more positive than you in many of my posts. Her is a quote from one of your posts, "Only problem is that Calbert Cheaney has more basketball IQ than our whole team excluding Yao Ming.". If you call this is YOU definition of POSITIVE attitude towards the team, I got nothing to say to you.
daoshi, I didn't mean for it to be a personal attack on you. I really didn't. I've been critical in this thread. So what. The fact that you keep track of the number of positive things you say speaks volumes. Sorry I brought it up. I'm negative, you're positive.
I don't keep track of my posts, but since I only started two threads, it's really not that hard to remember them, right? Never mind about me, I have a thick skin. I really don't care about what others think about me. I came to this board because I'm following the Rockets; I post because I either like, or dislike some of the things they did. Alone the way, there will be positives and negatives, but the way this team has been playing, I thought I was overly positives to them so far. If you look carefully in my posts, I hardly bash any players. I only talk about the aspect of their game, not personal attacks.
The Rockets' defense is a problem, but it's part of a larger problem. This team needs to utilize its personnel better and more efficiently. Yao wastes too much energy setting worthless screens at the top of the key that he never gets passes from once he rolls off. He also works too hard to get position and often doesn't get rewarded with the ball. The rest of the Rockets play one-on-one basketball but don't move otherwise. It's stupid. But the defense isn't much better. The Rockets have tired lately and it's shown in the ridiculously high shooting percentages of their opponents recently and in the rebounding category. Just as the offense needs to adjust to Yao, so should the defense. They tried a zone earlier in the season and got burned badly, and it seems like it's been abandoned by the team. Since the team is tired, they should try harder to incorporate a zone system.
I LOVE YOU! YOU LOVE ME! WE'RE A HAPPY FAMILY! OH HANNUKAH! HANNUKAH! WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! You losers......care too much about Rockets. Well...my statement is that the Houston Rockets currently have two MAJOR PROBLEMS. TWO...ONLY TWO. One of the problems... is... DEFENSE. The other problem is... OFFENSE. See! I'm right? Those are our problems.
Why thank you! Heh...how many times have you posted in this thread? More than me?!?!? WOW!!! You beat me...aren't you glad?
Out of all of the problems the Rockets have/may have, I truly believe that defense is the one thing that is really holding this team back and that improving their team defense will improve their offense.
I agree that shot blocking is not a good indicator, but creating turnovers and stealing the ball are two things that do reflect on how well a team plays defense. As for FG percentage, the stat is flawed because it doesn't take into consideration whether the shot was being contested, unless the shot was actually blocked(which we already agreed was not a good indicator). I honestly believe we are lucky to have teams shoot as poorly as they have against us because more often than not, we don't contest their shots. Denver allows teams to shoot 44% and Miami allows 43.5%, but they make their opponents work for their shots, so they only give up 89.1 and 89.2 ppg respectively. Now, they don't have the offensive options the Rockets have, so they lose many more games. If the Rockets made their opponents work harder for their shots I honestly believe our own scoring would increase and we would get better shots and likely more rebounds. As I said earlier, I'm a firm believer that the best offense is a good defense.
We've shown in the past in numerous discussions about this that the top teams in the league tend to have the best def fg%. And over the course of the season, yes, it is a good indicator of how well your defense is. Unless of course you're saying that most the Rockets defensive stops are uncontested misses. That would mean that opponents for no reason other than playing against the Rockets, just decide to miss shots. Yeah ok. We've played through the halfway point of the season... that ain't the reason.
This is like me picking out 2 or 3 games and proving you wrong. Please check your sample size. ... wee... I made a funny
B.S. Improving our defense won't solve the problem on offense. The guards will still be dumb and still not be able to run a break and still won't be able to throw an entry pass to a 7.5 foot tall chinese dude with a big head in the paint.
Pimp, How can it be just luck over more than 40 games? The law of average tells us that sometimes you face hot teams sometimes cold teams. The "hotness" of your opponents averages out over a long period. If you can sustain a low opponent shooting average over a long stretch, that means you are playing pretty good defense. I'm sure you saw many uncontested shots by our opponents that didn't fall. The fact is, there will be uncontested shots like that every game by every team. You notice those because they are against us and are frustrated by them. But it happens to every team. You can't possibly contest every shot. BTW, low points allowed is not necessarily a good indicator of defensive performance because it could be the result of a slow tempo offense. Oh, yeah, there's a possible explanation for the low fg% allowed other than good defense--maybe it's the lighting of Compaq Center, or the color or our uni?
Stealing the ball is an indicator of how well a team plays defense. Explain to me why the team with one of the best defenses, if not the best, is ranked #28 (next-to-last) in the league in steals? Detroit is next-to-last in steals yet they give up the fewest points-per-game. San Antonio is #24 in steals yet they are basically in a 4-way tie for giving up the 2nd fewest points per game. You don't need a lot of steals to be a good defensive team. It's like the people that say "he gets a lot of steals, so he's a good defender". It's not necessarily true. That's one string of luck the Rockets have going there. Must be voodoo. It can be. But again, not necessarily true. Otherwise 5 of the top 11 highest scoring teams in the league wouldn't also be 5 of the worst in causing turnovers as is the case right now. A stat you say is a very important to defense. There is no one or two stats that are great in reflecting how good a team is. Just because you don't force turnovers doesn't mean you won't have a good offense as you state above. A good running team can be lousy at forcing turnovers or lousy at defense in general.
I've posted this before. This is defensive PPS (points divided by FGAs). It is a measure of FG% defense that favors teams that don't give up too many 3s or FTs. Thus, cover the perimeter, don't foul too much, and don't give up easy shots. The top ten in the league are: San Antonio Sacramento Houston Indiana New Jersey Dallas Portland Detroit Minnesota Phoenix That top ten just so happens to be the Top 9 Winning teams in the league, with only Houston replacing Utah. The Top 9 records in the league and Houston. I'm not much on stats like FG%, Assists, Steals, Blocks and such, but that is pretty sweet. But screw stats, I have definitely seen some bigs wins based pretty much solely on defense. It can stand to improve for damn sure (EDDIE!!), but it is not our biggest problem.
