First of all Steve ranks 8th in league with Turnovers Per 48 minutes with 4.31. And lets not forget he ranks 2nd in the league with TOTAL TURNOVERS with a whopping 195! Meanwhile his assists have steadily dropped each year since his rookie season. His Steals and Rebounds are down from last season, and his scoring is lower than ever! Oh yeah, his shooting percentage is under .400 for the first time in his career . I challenge you to find ONE sign of improvement. I dont see any at all. They guy is not getting better. Good Luck!
LOL. SF was playing hard but could not get his offense going and was 5-20 from the field last night. If he was the reason that we won the game last night, then why not gave the honor to Cat, JJ? And honestly speaking, if your standard for SF3 is that low, then I would have to say that actually SF3 was the reason that we won 32 games so far for the season, even in the game that he was 1-12 from the field because his field goal in the 4th quarter was the difference for the game.
His defense is much improved this year. I know you probably haven't been paying attention as your eyes are firmly planted on No. 11 throughout most games, but its true.
I think steves passing ability is improving, its just the people around him need to hit more shots. He set up JJ for a sweet three in that overtime game yesterday
Here's something for you, as I've said before. Assists don't tell the story. In an offense where the post is being fed, assists are going to go down, especially when the offense is designed to often have somebody else feed that post. I know Steve's TO stats, and I've said they should improve. That doesn't make him the blame for every single loss the Rockets have. That doesn't make Steve a selfish, player who can't give up the spotlight. Sam Fisher already mentioned Steve's defense as one improvement. But wait there's more... If you order an objective look at the Houston Rockets now, you will also see Steve pass the ball more, dribble less, pass up shots in order to give teammates an alleyoop. The list goes on and on. You might see something to cheer for in Yao's friend and teammate, but be sure and get your order now, the season has less than 30 games left... Operators are standing by to take your order. I'm not saying that Steve doesn't need to improve on several aspects of his game, but there has been better play from him, and he is adapting his game to fit into what the coaches want.
Not only that FB, but the Rockets (at least earlier in the season this was true) take fewer shots this year as a consequence of playing a more deliberate slowdown game on both ends. Of course offensive numbers are going to shrink, especially with the continued emergence of Yao.
This guy is not YaoMing !!!!! So far Yao still use interpreter to speak to public. His English is not so good to write this. Read carefully, does this article matches real YaoMing's personalities? NO! Has YaoMing ever have any negative comments on his teammates? NO, NEVER.
BS. Steve was the focal point of the offense for the past 3-4 seasons and he wasn't close to an MVP. BS. Yao shoots a HELL of a lot better than steve and cat, they BOTH should be giving up shot attempts especially if the guy is shooting over 10% better from the field than they are. Offensively Steve is leagues worse than Yao, you're blind if you can't see that. Partially true...yet wasn't Steve's HORRIBLE shooting one of the main reasons it had to go into triple overtime? When a guy gets 20 shots and only makes 5 of them you normal lose...thanks to Yao's incredible shooting it helped balance out Steve's crappy game and barely gave us the victory. Again, he helped put the Rox in that situation and thankfully upped his FG shooting to a whole 25% for the game with that last shot! Oh, and that last assist was almost a turnover if JJ hadn't reached way up to snatch the lame duck of a pass, but I'm not complaining, at least Steve got the ball in JJ's general vicinity...a typical Francis pass. Also, Steve's great and 'improved' defense held Terry to 27 points...way to go Steve. You haven't watched many Rox games if you think Steve's only had a 'few' bad games. Steve's the only one willing to sacrifice it all to win? LMAO, that's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard anyone say here in a long time, especially after the superbowl incident.
You mean that defense that let Jason Terry get by him at will yesterday? Or the defense that let Jason Terry get in for a layup with 1+ second left in the first overtime and almost cost us the game? What Defense? Sure, he has improved, but Steve does not have great lateral quickness...he gets burned A LOT !! DD
The HAWKS announcers were talking about how good Steve's smothering defense was. Terry scored the majority of his points when the defensive rotations failed, not to mentiont that shot from 38 feet out.
No, I mean the defense that caused him to lock down Terry so that Crawford had to shoot the shot at the end of regulation, the defense that caused him to make the key double team on O'Neal to force a bad shot in the Indy game, the defense that caused Marbury to fall on his face during his big MSG debut. (Btw, didn't you predict a huge night for Marbury during that game? How did that bet work out for you?) What did you want him to foul Terry? Yeah, I'm sure you would have just respected his hard nosed D if that had happened, right? No way you would have called for his head, right? Anyway, the easiest way to show that his defense is improved is to look at the stats: Last year vs. opposition, Steve gave up 19.5pts/48 vs. pgs 17.4pts/48 vs. sgs source http://www.82games.com/02HOU2C.HTM This year vs. opposition, those numbers have improved significantly: 17.6pts/48 vs pgs 13.1pts/48 vs. sgos source http://www.82games.com/03HOU4C.HTM Accordingly, to look at those numbers (as well as the anectdotal evidence above) and say that his defense hasn't improved is patently absurd. Why must you focus so relentlessly on every single fault? Your judgment is clouded to the point where it seems to ignore the reality tht is apparent to even a casual oberver, that Steve (and pretty much all of the rockets) are much better on Defense this year. Do you comprehend that we have the best record we have had in 5 freaking years? Might not some of that credit go to Francis? Or that we had a thrilling win last night? No, I guess not, you have start another rehash "trade steve" thread as a result. b**** and moan all you want, but do so on the basis of the facts. The facts, as shown above, indicate that Francis is playing better D this year. Do with that what you will. (now is the time when some enterprising young soul tells me that steve's net PER number is slightly worse than oppposing pg's this year, with which I agree -- although including his SG stats makes that number positive-- however my sole intent was to measure defense, not PER).
Although, if you really wanted to be fair, you'd have to prorate the changes against the entire team's ppg allowed this year versus last year. While it could be argued that each of the players have improved individually, it's perhaps more likely that most of the differential has been achieved through tactical reasons. Just eyeballing it, it seems there would still be a difference, just less dramatic.
Absolutely, but then again you can say that for almost every stat you want to cite (yao's improvement is due to Cato's takeing the pressure off, etc) That's one of my points, basketball is a team game. If Steve makes a drive and dish, it's up to Jackson or Yao or Cat or whoever to hit the shot, or not drop the ball, etc. Unfortunately, it seems like everytime something bad happens to the Rockets team (as if a victory is soemthing bad) the blame gets put on one player, to a much greateer extent than the converse when something good happens? Remember th first atlanta game? Didn't Yao ride the pine during that game as he was largely ineffective while the guards led a big time comeback to pull off the victory? I don't recall the same plethora of Yao bashing threads start up after that game, do you?
Team defense or not, everyone has individual assignments. When Matt Maloney got schooled by John Stockton in the 1997 playoffs, it was somewhat acceptable since Matt Maloney was making close to minimum. Steve is making max contract money, and the guy consistently gets outplayed versus other top point guards in the West. Just because he can outplay other streetballing point guards in the Eastern Conference does not make him a good point guard in the West. How many more games against the Kings will it take for Rocket fandom to know that paying Steve max contract while Bibby makes a couple million less than Steve and schools him like no other guard in the league before there is a realization that the Rockets will never win a championship going through teams like the Kings and Mavs. The Maloofs have the money to spend around 30% more than the Rockets. Every dollar the Rockets spend on payroll must be equal to 1.3 dollars of the Kings, or else the Rockets will never get it done. If Rocket fans say that they need to maneuver to avoid the Kings or Mavericks in the playoffs, then they are delusional. Avoiding two very strong teams in the playoffs in order to win a championship is just futile.
Do you notice that Yao has been way more consistent this season shooting-percentage wise than Steve? Yao is top 25 in the NBA in terms of efficiency. He's top 10 in terms of efficiency in 48 minutes. Steve is #50 in the NBA in efficiency, and he's not in the top 50 per 48 minutes. If you think Yao's game against Theo Ratliff who is arguably one of the best post defenders in the league is an indication of his play the entire season, I suggest you take off your Steve Francis' tunnelvision blinders. When anyone is suggesting Steve is not right for this team, it is because they want this team to win more and not less. Some folks are actually rooting for a championship to happen in this decade.
Sam I see you like to use that site, can you tell us what the PER at the chart labeled 'Net 48-Minute Production by Position' says about Steve? And also the PER for 'Opponent Counterpart 48-Minute Production'. It looks like you used the one chart out of that page to show Steve's 'new improved D' yet conviently left out his overall effectiveness. Also, you left out that the opponents are getting 2-3 less shots this year as opposed to last, a BIG reason why opponents PPG are down...which is indicative of JVG's system NOT Steve's 'improved D'. Also this years opponents PGs VS. Steve are getting .5 more assists than last year, even with LESS possessions in a game then last year. But I'm just a casual observer, what do I know...
