No. This year's players are not better than last year's, on defense. This year's defensive system is also not better than last year's. If you buy the dubious line that the best defense is a good offense, we are better this year.
We don't know what our backcourt rotation will look like, but based on Scola for Howard and drastically reduced minutes for Head and Rafer, we should be better.
Think about it. Last year our rotation when everyone was healthy was: Alston/Head McGrady/Head Battier/McGrady Hayes/Howard Yao/Mutumbo Look at the guards: two are really small and get abused by bigger players and one of them is charged with taking care of the scoring load. Battier was solid at small forward, Hayes did all he could in his small yet strong body and Howard sucked. Yao did well (but not as well as the end of the season before when he came back from injury) and Mutumbo was good when the other team wasn't playing a small speedy center. Snyder, JL3, Spanoulis, Wells and Novak got so few minutes that their defense is negligible. It's really amazing that Van Gundy actually made this ragtag group a good defending team with so many holes. This year, our rotation most likely will be something like: Francis/James McGrady/Wells Battier/McGrady Scola/Hayes Yao/Mutumbo Head will find some minutes in there too because he's a shooter, but he probably won't see as many as last season, or his rookie season. Francis isn't and never will be a great defender, but at least he's bigger than alston and head (not much taller than alston, but definitely stronger), ditto for wells. I don't think Scola will be that great of a defender. He might get a few steals but he doesn't block many shots and will have trouble with quicker power forwards. Still, he can't be any worse than Howard. The center and small forward positions stay the same. Overall, this team has the potential to be better defensively. If nothing else, we have a deeper rotation with more offensive threats. This means that mcGrady doesn't necessarily have to score to be a presence. Maybe he decides on one night to play lock down defense and let Francis, Wells and Scola do the scoring. The more bodies we throw out there, the fresher our team will be. The only question is Adelman's system. Can he teach defense well enough? Or maybe more relevant, can he make sure this team doesn't forget Van Gundy's defense? He gets blamed for not doing enough defensively in sacramento, but look at the team he coached: Bibby: Never could defend Peja: Ditto Christie: Only legit defender of the bunch Webber: Probably could if he tried, but never did Divac: Ok defender, but really slow toward the end With Pollard, Bobby Jackson, Brad miller and one year Keon Clark as their main subs, you still only really have one decent defender in this whole bunch. I don't think anyone could have taught this team defense. Yet they were still one robert horry shot away from the finals. If we can play as good as offense as them, I know our defense is better. That said, we would have a very, very good shot to go really deep this year...
we're no longer def team so our d is surely worse than last year... thats good and bad but I rather take offemsive Rox rather than def...
I remember in SF's first tenure with the rockets, alot of point guards would easily go by him one on one!
That's just Francis's trademark. You know for a guy who's a slasher he's pretty damn slow. That's part of the reason why he overdribbles. He can't blast past people like Tony Parker or Leandro Barbosa. He has to literally fool you and then go around you, hence the need to cross you over 20 times. That's also why he's terrible on the fast break. He just isn't very fast. As for the defensive end, the same liability rears its ugly head. He doesn't have the footspeed to keep up with elite point guards but at the same time he can hold his own with the Deron Williams and Baron Davis's of the world and won't get run over. It's a tradeoff. Also MJ really wasn't that bad a defender. I always thought he was pretty decent. Better than anything else we had anyway. (Sura was really tough and played his heart out but he was even slower than Francis)
Utah murdered us? I must have missed something. I thought we had command of that series from Game 1 until the last 4 minutes of Game 7. ALso, if I remember correctly, Deron Williams didn't have that great a series against us. Rafer did a heck of a job on him, and the team defense was great in stopping Deron, Kirilenko, Okur, Harpring, and Giricek. Deron and Kirilenko had much better series vs GS and SA. In fact, last year's playoffs can be viewed as Deron's coming out party, and he didn't even come out vs. us! I'm most worried about Yao's defense under Adelman. JVG had him in check defending the pick and roll and helping out. Yao could pick up some quick stupid fouls under Adelman if he doesn't work on his defense. I don't know about Scola either. Luther Head will go back to his old ways of playing no defense, but I doubt he gets any PT anyway.
Not under JVG. Francis and Mobley became great defenders. Mobley did a great job on Kobe in that Round 1 playoff series. Malone killed us.
TBD RA will likely put less emphasis on defense than JVG did. Some defense requires sheer physical talent; i.e., speed and strength. Some doesn't -- like playing angles, passing lanes, etc. And some are just hustle plays -- some rebounds, loose balls, etc. Defensive schemes play their part, too. Help defense vs. man-to-man helps cover individual weaknesses, but, generally at a cost of players being more easily out of position and opening up an opposing player. Put a good defensive player in a bad scheme and his defense may well look worse than normal. Put him in a good scheme and his defense may well look better than it really is. RA wants to make the offense easier for Yao and T-mac (and has more tools than JVG to do it). And likewise, I would expect him to implement defensive sets that will cover players defensive weaknesses. I'm not a big fan of zone defense but RA might use it more than JVG did. If the players can develop a mindset that defense does still matter, no matter how much more they might score under RA, and that hustle should be a given, then I don't think we suffer a great defenseive letdown.
Yes, we have more players who can be used for the defensive choice, also we have Scola who is much better than Howard on the defensive end.
http://www.nba.com/jazz/stats/2006/conf_quarter_stats.html Take a look at the stats for the Jazz they finished at 44% FG% for the series. The Rockets held their opponent to .429 during the regular season so even though it is close our defense didn't get better in the playoffs. Yes murder may be to strong because the series was close it just seemed like we could not get the big stops when we needed them. I could live with it a little better if they killed us with fast break points because we were a better half court defensive team but they beat us with the same old tired Malone and Stockton plays. I think Adelman will use different defensive sets including a little bit of Zone just to throw off the other teams.
I fully agree. We won't be as good defensivly like we were last year but we won't suck offensivly like we did last year. Everything will change but I'm sure it'll change for better
If we look at points per possession I think we'll be pretty close to last year, but at the end of the day if we're blowing teams out you have to realize that the second unit might be playing a lot of minutes and it may not seem like we're that good defensively, so at the end of the day it's very difficult to tell if a team is good defensively just by looking at the numbers.
I agree, I think individual defense will be better, but our scoring allowed will go up due to playing a faster tempo game. A lot of our defensive prowess was based upon the slowness of our team's play, that won't be the case this year. DD
Our players showed last year that they can play defense. Of course they had coach for it but I'm sure our defense will be effective too with offensive coach, cause we just know how to do that. I really belive that Tracy can be our great defender and we can put him on the opponents best scorer but on the other had we don't have to do that. Just let Tracy concern on offense. I really hope Yao will rebound and defend better too.
I just don't want to set any more records that involve having only 4 Rockets score...in the whole freaking game!
It's possible our defense will dramatically improve with the new coach and new players. Last year, players had to follow coach Van Gundy's system, like it or not. Sometimes, that system had players doing things that did not suit them very well - eg. Yao chasing guards out at the three line. We also had some very weak links in the line up last year in Alston and Howard, who made team defense much more difficult for the other three players, as they were both routinely overmatched and incapable of offering much assistance to their mates. This year, I believe our new coach and his assistants will look more to the strengths and weaknesses of our individual players, rather than plug them into a system. So, if Memhet Okur is shooting from the three line, we probably aren't going to have Yao or Deke chasing him out there, like JVG did. Those guys get to guard the lane, which they do well, and Scola or Hayes or TMac can go running. That's not particularly genius, it's just a switch, but JVG was particularly stubborn. We should also see some simple double teams called on our opponent's hot player. I would guess we get some double pressure on penetrating point guards like Tony Parker, Deron Williams, and Steve Nash. I'd guess we see some strategies to deny the ball to the slew of good power forwards we'll face, with doubles and fronting.. In terms of raw personnel, I think we're much better. Got to go now.
What are you talking about. JVG used people really well defensively. In case you forgot, Yao was guarding Boozer not Okur. Yao was never at the 3 point line. And considering our mediocre talent defensively, JVG created a monster defensive team. I'm not mad that he's gone as our coach but you're dogging him for all the wrong reasons. We had weak links because of our personnel not because of JVG's schemes.
