I agree with your last line completely, but we played athletic teams all year and they didn't waste our defense. The Jazz did so because the effort wasn't there from our players, which could have been due to tiredness or lack of proper motivation. Your comment on offense is way off base. Starters and heavy minute rotation players can't pad stats against weak teams over an 82 game grind. Besides Yao with his injuries, the Rockets just choked and wimped out. The Jazz played very physical and made it not very fun for our players on offense, even when we had open shots. Playoff basketball is different from the regular season. The Jazz raised their game up and we did not. Two of our rotation players (Luther and Juwan) completely tanked.
More good defensive players, yes. Better defense, no. Players put all of their energies into defense in VG's system, and not as much into offense. They will have more focus on offense this year, so the defense will go down, but it will balance out more. Plus, just because Van Gundy left doesn't mean the players forgot how to play good defense. I think what does help is having a deep bench this year, if Aldman plays them, the team will be fresher throughout the season to play both ends.
Our depth means that guys like Head do not have to guard the other team's stars. Because of our lack of depth, Head probably had to guard the other team's stars much of the time....now, that we have depth, we can just use him to guard the 2nd unit players who might not be as good and the mismatch wouldn't be as great. Francis, James and Brooks are all athletic..... Scola is certainly a mobile high energy guy.....so I think it will come down to a commitment by the team to defense and the coaches commitment to put in the right schemes and ingrain in the players to play great team defense. I think our upgrades can cover more ground because they are more athletic.
I totally forgot about Landry. Is there any way Landry can help us defensively? How does Landry's defense stack up against Juwan Howard, Hayes, Scola....? We might need to add another power forward....I'm still concerned about that position.
Anybody who's seen Landry in college extensively know how good his defense is? I wished Landry had blown us away in summer league like Brooks did. Power forward is the only position where we are pretty thin and we'll have to face a tough power forward almost every night.
If Landry is a smidgen more athletic than Hayes that isn't saying much at all. Plus, I'll mention again there are questions about whether he is ready to play in the NBA. Based on summer league, I'm not sure he's gonna make the team. In fact, I hope we make a trade for a 3rd PF and cut Landry loose. I was very high on him because of his college career but he ain't ready for the next level.
Trade for another PF would be the best but i don't think that's gonna happen. Landry maybe won't play many minutes but I think he is ready to be 2nd or the 3rd PF on the team
If he could be as good as Hayes, then that wouldn't be a bad thing....Hayes is pretty solid. But, Landry will have to make some dramatic improvements over what he did in summer league. What did the Rocket management see in Landry to select him over the other choices to begin with? I'm wondering when we are going to make the next move. We still have Rafer, Lucas, Reed and possibly Snyder to get rid of. If we're going to stock up 3 deep at every position, it might as well be the power forward position. I would prefer to have Hayes as the 3rd power forward and bring in a big athletic defensive power forward to complement Scola.
If I remember right in one of his college games the announcers said he has a 37" vertical. He measured in at 6-7 3/4 barefoot, so he's 6-9 in shoes and he weighed in at 248. At about 6-9 250 a 37" vertical, put this in perspective Amare is about 6-10 250 in shoes and before his micro fracture had a 38" vertical. After it he supposedly has a 33" vertical. So yeah I would say one thing Landry definitely has over Hayes besides size would be athleticism. Of course Swift is taller than Landry (6-9 1/2 barefoot) and more athletic than Landry 40" vertical and he doesn't do anything much with it so..........
Statistically, we will not improve defensively with the +/-. This is because if this years team leads or trails by 20+ points, the 2nd and 3rd unit would be playing more, instead of only 1 1/2 minutes at the end of the game dribbling out the clock.
What they saw was a player who was crafty, could score inside and draw fouls despite not playing above the rim much. He did decently well against bigger players on offense and defense and the Rockets (and myself) thought that would translate to the NBA. Plus, he can hit the mid-range jumper against bigger players who back off of him. My thoughts were he could drill the 12-15 footers that will absolutely be there when teams focus on the two stars. What was discovered in summer league is Landry may not play big enough to be successful in the NBA. He seems like a smart guy and maybe he will adapt and get better. What spoke volumes about him was Morey's lack of praise when he was asked about Landry after summer league. Right after heaping lots of praise on AB, his demeanor changed completely when Landry was brought up.
Wow. Yeah, I remember him testing well at a pre-draft camp....but didn't know how his vertical compared to Amare and Swift. That's nice to know. Isn't Landry supposedly skilled and that's some of the things Morey was praising about him? I had read reports that Landry grew an inch after his original college measurement of 6'7" and is more like 6'8" without shoes....but if he has long arms and a 37 vertical, then that would be great because even though Juwan was taller he barely had any vertical. I actually wouldn't mind Swift as the 3rd power forward....his athleticism just went to waste because of his lack of bball skill. Is Kelvin Cato still around? I wouldn't mind giving him the vet minnimum to play off the bench.
That would be nice.... unless of course our 2nd unit is: Mutombo Hayes Battier James Wells (in shape version) But, I think our offense will make a huge difference in our point differentials.
Solid indictment against Gundy ball. Also, one can easily see the records of Gundy's Rockets are as follows: pre-seasons >> regular seasons >> playoffs PATHETIC
Thanks for the background on Landry. Would you say that Landry has more upside coming in than Hayes did? I don't really remember how Hayes worked his way to being our starter..... It seemed like a gradual thing where he just kept hanging around....get a 10 day contract, then played solid and eventually held his own when the opportunity arose and became a big part of the team. I'm hoping that Landry can go that route...where he's scared straight and fighting to keep food on the table and ends up working so hard that he becomes a tougher player for it. It's tough to be compared to Brooks because Brooks has has made a phenomenal first impression for a 26th pick--lights up summer league, wins summer league award, gets selected as the only rookie on Team select. The only thing that puzzles me is if Landry has a 37 vertical, why doesn't he play above the rim mroe? He should be stuffing it in people's faces.
