Does JVG need to throw away the playbook and play Phoenix ball?

at this point, who cares?

without yao or tmac we could try the suns style one night and the spurs the next, we will still look like the knicks.

 

Hello Small Ball!!

Or Medium Ball? I really don't know. This thread is dedicated to discussing what the Rockets lineups and rotations will now be. Trade ideas are allowed, but try to keep them reasonable .

The Nets just lost Kristic for the year and decided to trot out a lineup of Jason Kidd 6'4", Eddie House 6'1", Vince Carter 6'6", Richard Jefferson 6'7", and Jason Collins 7'0". It didn't win vs the Bucks, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes in the long run.

The Sonics decided to forgo big men in dealing with their injury problems. They tried to matchup with size, but have been horribly out-rebounded, with the exclamation point coming against Detriot 54 to 32 rebs (Detroit got 26 offensive boards to Seattle's 25 defensive boards, and Seattle got 7 offensive boards to Detroit's 28 defensive boards).

So tonight, the 1st game without their Powerless Forward Rashard (out for 2months), but the 1st game back for Ray Allen, Seattle decided to trot out a lineup of Earl Watson 6'1", Luke Ridnour 6'2", Ray Allen 6'5", Chris Wilcox 6'10" and Danny Fortson 6'8". They ran a bunch of short power forwards by committee. They won their game tonight, but it was also at home vs the Raptors aka the Sucktors, so who knows how this will go.

The Rockets have been playing small ball out of necessity...T-Mac hurt, Snyder hurt, Bonzi fat, until recently...and the only tall guy out there was Yao and his backup Deke. Now the Rockets are really small. Is Jho, Deke, and Hayes going to split all of the 96 PF and C minutes? Is Battier going to get more PF time? Is Bonzi going to get PF time? Are there any other options? How are we going to defend and rebound when we are small like this? Are the Rockets the new Knicks with a bunch of 6'7"ish guys and a couple of shorties? How about a lineup of Head, Snyder, T-Mac, Battier and Bonzi? Yeah baby!

Seriously, I think the Rockets are going to put out some really weird lineups for periods of time the next few games. Deke simply can't go 35minutes per game, and there's now way a Jho/Hayes front court can control the boards and defensive paint. If you're gonna get killed inside anywas, why not accept it and adjust and exploit?...Perhaps they will...or won't. All midget lineup baby: JL3, Rafer, Head, VSpan, T-Mac

Thoughts?

 

o crap. I guess I've gone blind. Can I get a Christmas merge? ..Actually, that thread is just about playing Phoenix style...this one is about minute allocation...I guess it's close enough. Sorry for the mess.

Edit: Looks like my wish is granted. Happy Holidays!

 

To play small ball, you need a PG who can find the man in open court and pass the ball quickly.

But the only thing our starting PG can do is dribbling the ball or shot some wild 3 pointers.

 

When Kirk returns try him at the 1 and try Bonzi at the 4.
http://jazzhoops.net/articles/article60.htm

 

Agreed. We've got a few slower guys that would not be able to keep up that pace. I also agree about the freewheeling. We've got almost no post presence right now so it's time for JVG to steal some plays from NBA 2K7 or something.

The truth is we were never even that good at running fast breaks, so forget fast anything else. I still believe in JVG's reliance on defense to make things happen. That is something this group can still do.

 

Last year when Yao didn't play, the 4 and 5 spots were manned with Deke 20mpg, Jho 33mpg, Hayes, 25mpg, and Stromile 20 mpg...these are rough stats by me skimming the game logs.

So, I don't think Deke is going to get more than 25mpg max..which is what he had tonight. We are 1 less in the PF department (no Stro), and for the near future, it looks like Battier is going to be the man. 44minutes played tonight, and very productive...Battier's usually a 35-37mpg player with like 5 minutes at PF per game...so for now he'll probably get up to 15mpg at PF.

Do you guys like that? I'm not sure I like it. I mean, I didn't mind a Battier PF if Yao was the center, but a C/PF rotation of Deke, Jho, Hayes, and Battier just seems kind of weak. They're going to be over-matched on the boards, in the paint, on quickness...and it's not like our guards are great at helping.

 

Why the hell does everyone think "suns style" ball is the way to go? Last time I checked, they have yet to win a title playing like that. And if you look at the last 10 years, teams like the Spurs, Pistons and even Rockets, Bulls and Heat did not play the up-tempo offense like the Suns. The playoffs is half-court basketball and that is perfectly geared towards us. When you got a skilled 7'6 big man like Yao, the offense needs to go through him in the half-court. Running all the time will take Yao out of those plays and that's not smart.

I wouldn't mind us Running when Yao is out of the game, but we don't have the personnel to run like the Suns. Rafer is not Nash, we'll be looking at turnover city if we tried to play their offense.

 

small ball time.

IF JVG is worth a da**. He will need to know now to play SMALL and run like the Suns and Warriors. Run and Run till we outrun the opponents into the 4th qtr. Mutombo has to play limited minutes while we give more minutes to V. Span and Lucas III. We should have Rafer at 1, Head at 2, Bonzi at 3, Battier at 4, Howard at 5. Than you can bring in V. Span at 1, Lucas at 2, Novak at 3, Hayes at 4, mutombo or Padgett at 5.

Or we can stick to what we been doing minus 2 stars and go this scenario..
Rafer
Head
Bonzi
Hayes
Mutombo
which will give us 2 legitimate scorers who gives us 20 pt/game this year, which should increase with higher roles in the offense but you can see we are clearly screwed playing against any mediocre defenses in this league.

To counteract this enigma we must create a balance in scoring so the opposition will not have a defensive game plan to focus on our top scorers.

 

i'd take
Howard/Novak/Padget
Battier/Hayes
Bonzi/VSpan/Head
Rafer/JL3
and is there any information on Kirk Synder?

 

JVG def will have to change the way we play. when your shooting gaurd has the best post moves you haqve to move away from inside out.

 

Playing small last night was indeed costly. It was one of the turning points that led us to a deep hole. Not only in terms of points, cuz it was only 7 pts max I think that the Clips capitalize on that line up, but the worst damage was our inability to score and mentally as well. We were unable to recover on that.

Our defensive intensity individually was excellent, no doubt about that, but what fell apart was the team defense. Specifically on giving Tim Thomas more open treys. And there was a hold on our rotation.

JVG needs to learn from this mistake. I think for him it was ok to experiment cuz he can always say that we lost because Yao got hurt but we had the chance to capitalize had he not made a mistake by going small.

Great post.

 

Additionally, after years of learning and perfecting JVG's style, we now go to Sun's style? We still have a dominant post up player that can draw a double team. His name is Bonzi. Tmac will be back soon, he too is dominant.

And, we don't have the right stuff. We don't have Nash and most importantly we don't have Amare. Unless you want to trade back Battier for Swift which is not going to happen.

If we can only maintain a winning % of at least 50%, we're still good to make it to the playoffs. I don't care if we are matched against number one like Dallas, I think we can beat them when Yao comes back as well as Tmac. This could be a blessing in disguise. But to change our offensive... hmnn, that's more damaging. We can adpat some plays but not a total makeover from a post up team to a running team.

 

well the rockets current group of players can surely push the tempo.

starters
hayes
shane
bonzi
head
rafer

bench
howard-deke
padgett
novak
billy
lucas

depending on matchup they can stay small with howard subbing at the 5, or go big with deke in, instead of padgett.

 

The overhyping here of what Bonzi can do is amazing. Is there some special Kool-Aid being passed around that I missed? The words "dominant" and "Bonzi" don't belong in the same sentence. Since when is a 13/5 or 15/7 type of player dominant? I'm sure he'll have a couple of 25+ point games but that's about it.

And we don't even know that Tracy is going to play well. He hasn't been dominant so far this season and it's very unlikely he reverts to being T-Mac coming straight off a back injury. Let's try to be somewhat realistic. It's likely his back will flare up again this season.

 

The only realistic in basketball is that the ball is round. We don't even agree on refs and players. For other things we can only hope for better things to happen.

Dominant in a sense that they ( Bonzi and Tmac ) cannot be contained by a single player. You don't have to score 20 points a game to be dominant player.

 

Once again you are seriously overestimating how good he is on offense. When his "A" game shows up, he cannot be contained by one defender. Other than that, he's just an average offensive player who scores 13-14 ppg. If you are still glued to the 6 games against the Spurs, that wasn't the real Bonzi. That Bonzi was a flash in the pan and is gone now. We'll be lucky if he shows up a couple of times this season. The only reason he will be a focal point for defenses is because our other offensive options are worse, not because he's that great. He can't play long stretches of dominant offense over the course of a season. Never has.

Hoping for better things is fine but the recent Bonzi nonsense reminds me of the expectations people had on Stro last year. While Bonzi is more skilled, both players have a lengthy track record and are known quantities. They are what they are and coming to the Rockets (combined with a huge imagination) won't make them into something else.