as much as i hate malone, his persona, utah jazz it's hard to imaging karl malone with tracy mcgrady together on a team not winning a championship 3 years running. where yao, oh well, yao is great, except he has not advanced to the second round yet...in 6 years...
not only you're thinking about the wrong malone, your "imagination" is a bit problematic, too. if karl malone couldn't win a ring in his lifetime with stockton, one of the greatest pg's of all time, what makes you think he could have done it for sure with mcgrady? and your last one is a direct bashing at yao. totally uncalled for. one can also say, well, for mcgrady (plug some other names in here) it's 11 years in a row... truth is, bball is not tennis.
It wasn't a claim. Do you believe that Yao is an all-time great or even close? Those are the players who most closely compare with Yao. Tell me the post players that you think most closely compare with Yao and i will show you that they take less than 20 shots. All of those guys are the first option on offense and neither of them take 20 shots a game. If you want to just look at Duncan, we can. Even when he was at his best (which was much better than Yao) he didn't take that many shots. Their offense was still fluid and he was their most efficient and best scorer. That's championship basketball. If Yao is taking 20 shots a game he has either taken his game to another level or our team is playing bad basketball. That is all there is to it.
Duncan in his prime was averaging 17 or 18 shots a game. While I would like to see Yao get up to around 20 shots a game I would still be thrilled if he got to 17 or 18, which is a far cry from the measly 15 that he's averaging right now. Regardless of where you think Yao should cap out in terms of shots per game I don't think it's debatable that he should be taking more, not fewer or the same number. That's the critical issue. One more thing: let's be clear here about why Yao doesn't fit into the same category that Hakeem is in. He doesn't have the athleticism to pull down rebounds and block shots on the offensive end like Dwight Howard. But on the offensive end he is a nightmare due to his size and shooting touch. Given what the Rockets lose in pick and roll defense when he is on the floor Yao has got to balance his defensive liabilities with offensive production.
I could agree with you if Yao was playing at the level of Tim Duncan in his prime. Unfortunately, he is not at that level. Please do not discuss Yao and Hakeem as if there is any semblance of similarities, either. The dream was a better passer, finisher, had better post moves, etc. There have been greats without the atheleticism of the Dream and Dwight (maybe not as un-atheletic as Yao) so that's not his only weakness. I don't understand how if Duncan only took 17 or 18 shots in his prime you could advocate Yao taking that much or more when he is clearly an inferior player, comparetively.
i think the logic here is a bit questionable... but i'll stay out of this conversation in b/w you and badgerfan.
What's clear to me is that you pretty much don't know what you're talking about. Is there some hard and fast rule that says players who are this good should only take X number of shots and where exactly did you learn it? I would argue that how many shots a player should take is dictated by the situation the team finds itself in. So far as that goes: 1) Yao is clearly the number one offensive option on the Rockets now. Whether or not he's the equivalent of Hakeem or Kareem is irrelevant. For this team at this time he's the best they've got and as the centerpiece of the offense he needs to be shooting more. 2) What you're saying flies in the face of guys like Doug Collins, who have said over and over that they think Yao should be taking more shots. Frankly I feel far more comfortable with the opinions of former coaches than anonymous posters here at Clutchfans. 3) When Yao shot 17 attempts per game last season his scoring average moved up to 25 ppg and his efficiency was over .510. He converts consistently at over .500 and he does so posting up guys and shooting jumpers--not just jamming back offensive rebounds or off of point blank shots in the paint. Regardless of his place in the pantheon of great centers he's an offensive threat, one of the toughest guys to guard in the NBA currently and he's being underutilized. Every indication is that if his attempts per game go up his points per game will go up and he will stay at over .500. Who cares if he's not as good as Hakeem if that's the case? If you feel more comfortable shying away from specifics and instead relying on vague rules no one's ever heard of before, be my guest.
Yes, if Yao shoots a few more shots a game then he will probably improve his ppg. Is that what you want to hear? It will not, however, improve the rockets as a TEAM, which is the goal. My argument is that he should be more worried about finding his teammates for layups/dunks, which are a higher percentage, than looking for his own fadeaway jumpshot. When you brought up those all-time greats i was simply saying that they could get away with taking so many shots because they were that good. Yao is not. It is not good basketball for ANYONE to be taking that many shots a game IMO. Doug Collins and any other national broadcaster has probably only seen Yao play about 1/50th of what me or you have and those games they saw could have just hapenned to be the ones where he shot very little. I haven't heard Morey, Adleman or a local broadcaster say that Yao isn't taking enough shots and i tend to take their analysis of Yao to be more knowledgeable. Unfortunately, for you, basketball is much more complex than just passing the ball to a high percentage shooter and letting him shoot. The fact that he gets so much attention should be better utilized to get other players shots that have much higher than a 50% chance of going in.
the THREAT of the scorer scoring is what gets him all the attention. Along your lines of logic, TMAC should never shoot......
Okay kiddos...i wasted waaay too much time on this subject. I understand he has to score alot for us to be successful just like any other star player. I didn't mean he should become Jason Kidd and just stop looking for his own shot. I just think he's taking enough shots for us to be successful. If he starts to take a whole lot more then our role players will never get involved and they won't show up when we need them. Hey...we disagree...its pretty obvious me and badgerfan won't agree any time soon. Lets end this discussion because i think there's no chance we'll agree.
badgerfan obviously wants yao to get his stats. our offense will stagnate like crazy if yao takes 20 shots a game. it already does many times when we try to force feed yao the ball. for yao to get his, we have to give him space to operate. yao is not very good when there are a lot of people around him (either defenders or his own guys). in turn, he tends to over think. so if you want yao to get 20 shots a game, you have to basically isolate him and let him go to work. as a result, you get stagnation. you get the same thing when you isolate tmac too much and that wasn't what we wanted. yao will get around 14-15 shots a game, tmac will get more b/c he's simply a perimeter player around 18 and we should have scola get at least 10.
What the hell are you talking about? Yao averages 50% shooting. So does Scola. Who else on the Rockets is anywhere close to that? When you say you're opposed to anyone "taking that number of shots" what number are you talking about? 15? 16? 17? 20? I don't know where the productivity curve starts to level out but I am pretty sure that if Yao takes 18 shots a game the Rockets will be all right. Again, regardless of where Yao should max out at he should be taking more than 15 shots a game. Do you have a problem with Yao taking 17 or 18 shots a game? Here's another little question for you: did you ever stop to wonder why Yao gets so much attention? It's because he's a threat to score. If the other team knows he's going to look to pass every single time do you think they'll bother sending a double team at him? Yao needs to be a credible offensive threat in order to draw the double team. And one more time: the core argument is that Yao needs to take more shots per game. He's underutilized. That should not be controversial at all given the number of media talking heads who have asserted that throughout the years unless you're afraid that a dominant Yao is going to show up some other player on the team.
That is not the situation at all. The problem is not forcing the ball inside to Yao. That's like arguing that a double team on Yao is not a good thing. It's a very good thing if the rest of the team can step up and exploit it. The problem is that once Yao gets the ball and the double comes the other Rockets have been doing nothing. Instead of cutting hard without the ball they've been standing around looking at him and waiting for him to do something. The most important change this season was bringing in Scola as a starter--once the other Rockets could make the other team pay for doubling Yao it started to open everything up. The key for the Rockets in the coming season is going to be exploiting the double team when it comes to Yao. That means that Yao has to touch the ball on almost every single play down the floor. Even this season there were way too many plays where the Rockets came down and fired off a shot from outside without attempting to establish the paint first. The flip side of exploiting the double is that when Yao only gets single coverage he has to make the other team pay. Against the Hornets Matt Bullard said over and over "I can't believe the Hornets are only covering Yao in single coverage". The result? Yao went to work and lit them up. And one more time: regardless of whether or not you agree with the figure of 20 shots a game I don't think it's debatable at all that Yao should be shooting the ball more.
like i have said, his usage rating is very high for a post player. you cannot go to any guy on every single play. you need to keep the defense guessing. when yao gets single coverage, the ball goes to him almost every play. but he rarely does. and we have all seen yao struggle with double teams. that's why we try to get him involved with pick and roll or penetration so he can get easy buckets. when we play the lakers, hornets, and pistons, yao always get a lot of shots. but those 3 teams are the few teams who play him straight up. you don't want yao touching teh ball on every play when you know they're crowding him. when he passes it out, it's like starting the play over again and you're wasting time.
What are you talking about? When Yao gets the double that means that somebody is unguarded. If Yao can kick it out and the rest of the Rockets can swing it around, or if the guy who's left open can cut hard, somebody on the team is going to get an open shot. That's a good thing. That's what you'd like to see happen on almost every single play. And if the other team is foolish enough to double Yao before he gets the ball that's even better. That's essentially what happened in the first quarter of the GS game back in January when Scola went nuts.
watch how yao fights double teams and you tell me. yes, it's good. but when the double comes hard and fast, like most teams play him, he doesn't throw the ball where it should go to where you can swing the ball and get an easy shot. most of hte time, he passes back to his passer and the play is re-started. i think you should know that from watching yao throughout his career.
That should make zero difference. You can swing the ball around faster than the defense can follow it. If the ball comes back out then whoever gets it needs to swing it around to the open man, either along the perimeter or with a skip pass. Or somebody needs to cut hard to the basket. Preferably both.
