I don't care he can average 30/20 in the 3 years if he keeps missing 50 games a season. Has Moses ever missed more than 10 games in one season?
If Yao averages 30/20, give him the MVP. Seriously. It doesn't matter if Paul has a 30/15 year. It doesn't matter if Kobe has a 35/7/5 year.
these threads are stupid. you do know moses once put up 33 pts and 37 rebounds in a game 7 of the playoffs right? case closed.
uh.....malone? Yao can't take over a game, plain and simple TMAC still has to do the bulk of the work and create for him half the time. <3 Yao ! Get better though!
scoring-wise, we have. he won't top the 25ppg he put up a few years ago, not with the system and esp. the amount of injuries he's having. however, he can improve his passing and shotblocking, like he has this year. but offensively, we've seen his peak. overall-game, yao is getting better though.
Yao will score more points if he shoots the ball more. He barely averaged over 15 shots per game this season, which is crazy. Last year by comparison when he averaged over 25 ppg he got 17 shots per game. If he averaged 20 shots per game, which is where I think he should be at a minimum, he could conceivably put up some very impressive numbers. The frustrating thing about the Rockets for years now is that supposedly Yao is the centerpiece of the offense and yet he doesn't take that many shots. I don't think there's any question that right now you'd have to take Moses Malone, but there's a large asterisk there. I'll feel more comfortable answering the question after a few more years.
plus, it's hard to be in your prime when you will only play 30 minutes a game. unfortunately, we won't see yao put up career best #s anymore.
yao is the centerpiece primarily in the first 3 quarters. when yao has it rolling and we try to pound it into him, b/c he's so easily doubled, he can be taken out of the game with ease (or at least be denied the ball effectively). and in the 4th, he was never a 4th quarter player. i agree with you that he should take more than 20 shots a game. but again, he's so easily taken out of a game if teams just intend on just doubling him constantly and he never has the mentality to demand the ball when he doesn't get the ball. and with the movement in the offense under adelman, it's unlikely he'll ever approach 17-18 shots a game anymore. tmac's shot attempts should be decreased too for the better of the team.
even so, the rockets will not take any chances and play him more than that. trust me on that. expect yao's minutes to be around 29-31 mins the rest of his career. we can afford to do that b/c of scola and landry, and maybe adding another big man this offseason. so it's safe to say yao won't avg 25ppg anymore. like tmac, if yao stays healthy, he can do so much damage. but this past 3 years where he has started a year great, injuries stopped him. b/c of that trend, houston has to think of yao's future and manage his minutes.
The real problem is that the Rockets have never figured out how to exploit the double on Yao. Two guys on Yao obviously means an open shot for somebody else and yet somehow the Rockets have become experts at wasting that opportunity. I love Chuck Hayes but allowing his player to come off and double Yao with no fear of reprisal is not a winning formula. Even worse anybody in this league is going to get tired battling two other players all night long. It's no coincidence that when Scola moved into the starting lineup the Rockets started to win and win and win. When somebody draws a double, night after night, and the rest of the team can't step up and rip somebody's guts out they're wasting one of the most potent offensive weapons in the game. I like JvG, but that in a nutshell is my biggest criticism of him. Next season I think the offense has got to start with Yao. Once he's doubled the rest of the Rockets have to step up and make the opponent pay. That's what they started to do this year, finally. My key for the Rockets to win: make the other team pay for a double team on Yao. As for shots per game my personal preference would be that post players like Yao and Scola get the most shot attempts. Both guys converted at better than 50% this last season. Jump shooters run hot and cold. Big guys who can play in the paint convert much more consistently. And I don't know what team you've been watching but this season Yao came up big in the fourth in a whole string of games. In the last few minutes of a game not only is he a big target for an inbounds pass but his penalty shooting is pretty much money.
You'd like to rest your starters as much as possible, but I am extremely skeptical of the notion that Adelman will limit Yao to 30 minutes a night UNLESS the Rockets are winning big night after night. The West is still going to be a nightmare next year--it might be even worse than it is now because Oden's going to finally be able to play for Portland and the Lakers will have Bynum back. Yao, T-Mac and the rest of the starters are going to play as many minutes as it takes. Home court advantage in the playoffs is just way too important.
trust me, scola will improve. landry will improve. and hayes will always be in the rotation simply b/c of his defense. with how we played this year without yao, adelman has a lot of trust in those guys when yao sits right now. you have to remember, when yao went down and landry was still 100%, our offense was the best we have seen in the past 4 years in the first 7-8 games. the reason yao started the year playing 37 mpg b/c landry never played and scola never played more than 9-10 minutes a game. and deke was never in the rotation. now you have scola playing at least 30mpg next yr, landry around 25-28 mpg, and hayes another 10 mins. we're just deep at that position. we need yao to be as healthy and fresh as possible in late-game situations and late in the season. what i want is for tmac to play less like yao also. but his backup is luther head. ugh.
Scola and Landry are undersized for the PF position, much less the C. When they did have to move over to the C this year other teams with bigger players were able to beat the Rockets on size alone. Deke can still block shots and rebound but he's an offensive non-entity. What's more if Yao's not on the floor he's not drawing the double team that opens everybody else up. I just do not envision him playing for only 30 mpg unless the Rockets are consistently jumping out to large double digit leads every night.
which center dominated us when yao went out? the center position is not something that we should fear. sure amare went off on us, but it's far and few in between. how can you not envision yao playing that many minutes when we went 18-7 without him, started 12-0 without him. and we got better in the playoffs as the series wore on against a physical jazz team (you can argue if we had rafer for every game, we had a great chance to win it, even if you dont discount tmac's and battier's injuries). again, to guard against yao's potential future injuries, i don't know why you are against it. we're a "top 5 west" team without yao there. just have yao down the stretch healthy and it'll win us a few more games. no need to play him too much during the game. our defense will keep us in games anyways.
From what I remember the Suns took the Rockets apart in the paint after Yao went out. The Hawks too. Scola and Landry by themselves just could not beat teams with size and athleticism in the paint. The Rockets might have gotten 12 wins in a row after Yao went out on pure heart and guts (and to be honest some pretty crappy teams), but they went 6-7 after that once teams figured out that the Rockets couldn't handle size in the paint. 6-7 isn't going to be anywhere close to the playoffs next year in the West. I think there's a big question mark about Yao's susceptibility to injury. For the umpteenth time this is the first year he's been out with a wear and tear injury as compared to a freak accident. If playing Yao starter minutes means home court advantage in the playoffs I don't think there's any choice but to play him. If the Rockets can win with Yao only playing 30 minutes a game next year more power to them. But if you believe that's likely I've got a bridge in New York up for sale.
