Okay, I know we have mentioned in other threads about the Rox and their new found ability to drive the fast break. What amazes me is the ease in which they do it now. If your team doesn't play transition defense, the Rockets will make you P-A-Y. It is such a welcome pleasure to watch these veterans run the break like they do. Remember the Stevie years??? Dribble off the foot, don't make the extra pass, botched ally-oops....need I go on? I'm not trying to bash Stevie, but young and athletic doesn't translate to effective running of the fast break. Look at the numbers I dug up from the NBA website starting with The Mavs game through Portland last night: Fast break points, Rockets versus the Mavericks: 17 to 6, Rockets...yes, we beat you at your own game Fast break points, Rockets versus the Sonics: 16 to 15, Rockets...ehh...still better Fast break points, Rockets versus the Suns: 20 to 9, Rockets......um, WOW...Wowey-wow! Fast break points, Rockets versus the Kings: 17 to 6, Rockets...run and gun who?? Fast break points, Rockets versus the Warriors: 10 to 8, Rockets...I Liiiike Fast break points, Rockets versus the Blazers: 24 to 10, Rockets...buttah! Not only are we scoring opportunistic, transition buckets, we are DEFENDING the transition...that gets me pumped; as in real-ultimate-power-ninja-pumped. Am I the only one that wants to cry tears of Joy when I see David Wesley and John Barry push the ball for a fast break 3-ball by John-"The Machine", or a text-book layup by Wesley?
Wow, our team is a great transition team, offensively and defensively, I'm glad we have players that can play within the team concept...it sure is refreshing after the past 5 years.
Thanks for those stats. Very exciting to read. We all intuitively felt we were doing so much better in this area than before but to have outgun those teams is a real eye opener. People sometimes make a simple declaration that fast-break offenses don't work in the playoffs. But that's only part of the equation. Defense combined with fast-breaks can work very well. Other than the Spurs, most recent champions have had both. The Pistons ran the Lakers out of the building off the defense. The champion-era Lakers did OK with Kobe & a younger squad. The old school 80's teams always had at least a pretty good break. We had Clyde. You have to capitalize on the easy points your defense gives you, because points are so hard to generate in the playoffs. The Rockets had a very unreliable fast break before. This year, they can collect a few more gimmies a game, which is huge.
Cool stats. The number and differential of the fast break points seems to have a pretty direct correlation with our own points scored and margin of victory. The Sonics/Warriors were our 2 close victories, and the fast break points agree. Nothing beats our record with Sura, though. 30-11 when he starts- that's a 60 win season pace!
I think benifiting from our lock down D. We were relentless on our side of court often resulting opponent's TO. Swarming D, and rotate back. I like it.
the way to win is get easy baskets. that means fast break and dump it into yao. nobody can beat us when we run our game.
well... I'm pretty sure Vin can beat Sura on that... Isn't him on a 82 win season pace when he plays?
