Apparently he got a contract from china too http://sports.sohu.com/20090109/n261664655.shtml By Jonathan Feigen The Rockets cared. Even when they played as if they didn't, they cared. They turned that into their problems. It might not be their salvation. The Rockets had been rocked, then reacted badly. They pouted and pointed fingers. They looked around for answers,failing to look at themselves. They cursed their misfortune. If they didn't care, they could have taken the losses and moved on. Instead, they made things worse. Their problems were real; their frustrations as understandable as they became debilitating. They just didn't know how to handle them. With Tracy McGrady gimpy when he plays at all, his frustration and disappointment became theirs. With he and Ron Artest sitting out as often they played, the Rockets changed lineups in nine consecutive games and have tried 14 different starting lineups already this season with every change dictated by injuries. "It's starting to wear on the guys," Rockets coach Rick Adelman said. "We never know who will play and who won't play. I think that's been unsettling." There were problems that needed to be addressed. The offense had become out of whack, with the ball movement so often ceasing under pressure and Yao Ming often either left out of the offense or so much its focus that it bogged down. The defense had been slipping for weeks,predictably crashing on the road trip. And yet, there was no time for practices to make corrections. The practice in Philadelphia was the Rockets' first since Dec. 18 and like that one, Artest was unable to participate. So when things began to come apart, particularly in the loss in Toronto when McGrady accepted defeat and his teammates followed him to the season's most dismal effort, they began passing blame in veiled and sometimes open criticism of one another. "It's going to come down to Mac getting healthy and then Mac's got to kind of be more of a dog," Artest said in Toronto. In Boston, he said, "Sometimes Tracy thinks his talent is going to take him. He can just cruise his way." In Atlanta, Rafer Alston seemed to be addressing Artest's tendency to ignore the game plan to try to take on teams by himself. "At times out there, guys take it upon themselves," Alston said. "You get down and try to come from behind, guys try to get more aggressive and try to take on more of a scoring load, rather than stay within the scheme of the offense." For awhile, the Rockets hoped that the influence of teammates could get McGrady to push harder through his physical issues and frustrations and Artest to stick with the game plans to trust and use his teammates. With the finger-pointing becoming too frequent, however, Adelman and general manager Daryl Morey demanded that players look only at themselves and strive to correct their own issues. Without Artest and McGrady, and with Shane Battier in Houston for the road trip to rest and rehabilitate his sore left foot, the Rockets played hard in Atlanta but did not defend in a last-second loss. They began the loss in Philadelphia playing hard, but soon grew frustrated with their defensive struggles and returned to their inability to play through tough times. By the time they reached Boston, they had lost 6 of 8 shots and had a season-long five-game road losing streak with three-consecutive losses to begin the trip since their unsatisfying New Year's Eve win against the Bucks. They beat the Celtics with the sort of fortitude that they had lacked and hoped that this time they had learned a lesson about themselves and what they must do. They knew it was too soon to declare themselves healed. No one game does that. They did, however, see a way out of their slump. After playing the last-place Thunder and returning home to play the Knicks in the second half of another back-to-back, the Rockets have a good, long homestand of practices and days off. They do play the Lakers next week,but they will finally get a chance to work on making repairs, rather than relying on locker room chats and good intentions. "I think it's coming along," Artest said hopefully before the trip began. "For some reason, we're not able to put a good game together. I think right now, we look better on paper than what it really is. You see the Big Three people talk about, it's not turning into wins that people would think it would. We have to get more out of ourselves. Sometimes we play like our life is not on the line. Once we put our life on the line every game, we'll be OK." Things got worse, much worse, before they got better. But if the Rockets have finally discovered what they will need, the pain might be worth it.
...i dont know if sohu is being discredited by hiring feigen, or feigen is being discredited by joining sohu...
sohu has some nice movies archived... Other than that what is Jon going to say on sohu that he hasn't said in the Chron?
This is really interesting, not about the Rockets but about the media. I think you're going to see a lot more of this: with newspapers in decline, they'll have to let (and practically invite) their writers to do more outside work, for income and alternative job security.
