brent barry - i was very surprised by how mobile brent barry still is. i had assumed he had become relegated to simply being a standstill jumpshooter at this age, but after watching him in the preseason, i have no doubt he can play pg in stretches, and will also play a huge role on this team. wafer - i am still trying to figure out what the fascination is with this guy. i haven't seen so many threads devoted to a new player since we traded for t-mac. sorry, but give me sam mack over wafer any day of the week. hayes - i will never understand how half the board thought that the drafting of dorsey signalled the end of chuck hayes. chuck hayes is a guy who i hope retires as a rocket. two things stand out in my mind from this preseason in regards to hayes. 1) his post defense on KG and 2) a play when i believe shelden williams tried to back him down and he ripped the ball out of his hands. if he's your starter, you are in trouble, but if he is your 4th big man - it doesn't get any better than that. dorsey - another thing that confuses me is that any time a thread devolves into a juvenile discussion about our team's prospects in a fight, 10 people immediately mention how "nooNe iz guNnA meSs wiTh uS noW taht dorseyy iz onn the teem!!1". please explain this to me. he's a big guy, sure. but 3/4th of the teams in the league have someone as big. luther head - look, i don't want to be harsh, but not since steve francis was still relevant have i wanted to pull my hair out watching a particular rocket. he quite possibly might have the lowest basketball IQ i have ever seen. one play that typified this in the preseason was on a pick and roll he tried to bounce pass the ball to a cutting yao right at his feet. now, i don't think he's completely worthless. he's probably the best 12th man in the league - he moves well without the ball and shoots pretty well as long as he is wide open and it isn't the playoffs. but this is assuming he actually is the 12th man and not our new backup point guard. luther head should never be allowed to dribble the ball. scola - he seems to have regressed but i suspect he might be struggling to find his role with the new additions rafer - normally i would be worried about the fact that he still can't shoot, but the additions of barry and artest and the potential emergence of aaron brooks ease that worry. landry and aaron brooks - after the health of the big 3, these two guys are the biggest factors to our season. they give us a dimension of youthful energy that we haven't had since sam cassell and robert horry. they are relative secrets now, but the national media will be chirping about these two by midseason. yao - he has looked god awful but i suspect that is to be expected so early in his recovery. mcgrady - he too looked awful but that was expected. more importantly was his chemistry with artest in the kings game. there were a few plays where he ISOed and i noticed artest with his hands out calling for the ball. if things go sour this year, that would be one plotline to watch more closely. artest - a few mixed thoughts: first, i have noticed that he really gambles alot in the passing lanes. i am wary of this as the strength of our defense has always been predicated upon a conservative approach that minimized risk and encouraged agressive help rotation. if one guy is constantly gambling, if he comes up short, the rest of the players will need to be ready to collapse. secondly, i have noticed quite a few ill advised shots from ron at times when the offense would be better off with a few more extra passes. alot of times, after a kick-out from the post, he will immediately fire up the 3, when a man is wide open next to him. but this brings me to my next point: there are bad aspects to ron artest's game. what i observed had already been noted prior to the trade. he can be a ball-stopper, and i'm seeing it already at times. but more importantly, i'm seeing that trading for him was a risk that we absolutely had to take. there will be bad that comes with the good, but the good far greatly outweighs the bad. his ball-stopping ways are a predictable byproduct of the acquisition of any skilled offensive player. and i am seeing that he is really going to help this offense this year. he just has a knack for the game. he is a basketball player. we finally have the third scorer we have been looking for for 5 years now. watching the celtics game, it became evident that the rockets are finally of relevance again. he brings an attitude that this team has never had before. listening to him later on the radio, he said he had spoken up in the lockerroom and made it clear to the players that the celtics needed to know the rockets were in the building. and boy was it apparent. most importantly, ron artest completes this team. he makes all of the peices that were already in place work. he is the 3rd scorer we never had. he is the enforcer and the attitude we have desperately needed. he transforms shane battier from a luxury we couldn't afford to a luxury every other contender envies. he allows glue guys like landry, scola, and hayes to do what they do best because that glaring void is finally filled. i don't know how far this team will go. they could win it all or they could bow out in the first round again. but the roster has everything you would want if you were contending for a title.
so now that we know everything that cabbage dislikes about our team??? saying yao lookd like crap is just stupid. he played great for preseason in all but the first 2 games.
My observations are very similar to yours. I'm kind of annoyed how some Rocket are saying the team still needs time to get used to playing with eachother. Uh ... why? We've only added Artest and Barry to the mix, and Barry can mix in with anyone. What "adjustment" do these guys need? They've had a year to get used to playing with one another. That shouldn't be an excuse any more.
I agree with your analysis but I will say that Luther Head has flashes of brilliance that say confidence, and it's the lack of confidence that causes you to brick or lose your dribble or make an errant pass (ok, it's also lack of talent). In Luther's case, it's the former. He needs to boost his confidence - with PT - and once he does, he could be another Rip Hamilton - there, I said it.
well . . . they have been playing without shane. and tracy. and yao is learning how to play NBA basketball again after spending the past half year either rehabbing in a pool or playing international ball on a gimpy leg. and ron is new and needs to figure out his role. and rafer was mia for his dwi. and theres no deke to practice with and back up yao. and barry is new (and playing pg). and brooks is playing much larger minutes, with new player combinations. and they are running a different offense this year. and adelman has been experimenting with player combinations rather than playing the most effective lineups. and everyone had to take time off because of surgery so they are all out of shape. but other than that . . . yeah they should be in midseason form. hehe.
I think running the read and react offense instead of calling plays had something to do with the adjustments. When adding someone new to the rotation, chemistry doesn't come automatically just because the majority of the players in the rotation have played w/each other. There are things to consider like where a player likes the ball, what type of shots they take in the offense, etc... The team had never played with Artest or Barry.
not up to your usual high standards. could list a litany of excuses, but watching the games its pretty clear they're as Rick Adelman says, "A work in progress".
