Hopeless? Tmac has an amazing game and we barely escape with a key win (for us, not them) at home. Further on most nights Marion and Stoudamire are not going to get outrebounded 20-8 by Tmac and Howard. That is an effort difference, not a player difference. A front line of Amare, Diaw, Marion is not that small (their 1st and 3rd highest minute 5 man line-ups have this combination). Phx is actually a middle of the road % defensive rebounding team at .721 (league average around .73)--if you can't slow than down offensively there is no way you are going to make up the difference on your own ORBs. IMO Phx weakness more than rebounding is the open shots they will give you. Their FG% and 3% allowing opponents is a lot for a playoff team. If you can slow they down a little and hit your open perimeter shots you have a chance. They way the Rockets won yesterday--just having extra shots via ORBs and hitting 3s at a 50% clip--isn't going to cut it in a long series.
No time to read all responses, but JVG very certainly had the team working harder to get Yao the ball in good position. The team was more patient and less prone to abandoning him for plan B, and he had Yao more aggressively getting position. Most notably, if Phoenix covered Yao up to deny him the ball, Yao would swing to the opposite block and the ball would be rotated around to try and feed him from that side. The spacing was also very good - they forced defenders to commit and wouldn't let them sit in a passing lane guarding two guys at once (as in, Marion standing halfway between Shane and Yao, close enough to both to easily guard either one). Evan
Just wanted to comment and get feedback on the defensive adjustment that was made on the Rockets end. Who else noticed late in the game that McGrady was guarding Nash? I thought that was brilliant as it forced Nash to move the ball around much sooner than he wanted to. He wasn't able to get by T-Mac as easily and when they ran P&R Battier would be the switch defender.
this was my impression as well. i'd see kurt thomas guarding yao straight up, 1-on-1, not fronting, allowing us to make an easy post entry pass, and i wondered why they weren't employing the yao sandwich strategy that they've been using to totally p0wn yao. i don't think it can all be attributed to t-mac being aggressive, because on a lot of the easy entry passes, it was luther head or someone else making the entry pass. was d'antoni experimenting? did he think, oh well, i'm playing with house money here, so let's see if kurt can stop yao 1-on-1?
