From losses of Rockes/Mavs/Heats to NBA trend and Yao's development

The losses of Rockets, Mavs, Heats have their own particular reasons, but all of the teams have great post games and they all lost to the more-athletic and better-guard teams -- Jazz, Warriors, and Bulls (Wade of Heats is a great guard but he was just from injury).

This is a trend NBA is going to. It's not a big-men's league anymore. It's a league pursuing speed and smooth offense flow, requiring athletic players at all positions especially point guards like Williams of Jazz, Davis of Warriors (as well as others like Nash and Paul). The league pursues the trend through officiating the games! You can't "touch" a perimeter player, but you get away from hacking post players most of times, like Jazz did to Yao all series long.

Now let's look at Yao. If you watch Yao's early years in the league, you see a much more athletic Yao (a few Dream-like moves, the behind-back dibble, etc.). Since JVG took the head coach position, he had tried very hard to develop Yao into a Shaq-like player. To be fair, Yao is more dominant in the paint now (before injury), but he is getting slower and slower. This development could be great a decade ago, but it's against the NBA trend today. Jazz realized it and took advantage of it in this playoff series. Is this development good for Yao's career and Rockets? This over season said "NO". Because of the added weight, Yao is more prone to lower-body injuries. Because he is slower, Yao couldn't defend Boozer well in this playoff series.

So what Rockets can do? First of all, fire JVG and hire a more offense-intelligent head coach. Secondly, reduce Yao's weight, make him more athletic, and explore the skills Yao is good at. Thirdly, update the back court and power forward positions. Rockets desperately need a very good PG.

Go Rockets!

 

They gave up post game in the playoff series, but they had during the regular reason. Relatively, they have better post game than Warriors.