I agree with you that they are ball stoppers in the sense that they both need the ball to be effective, but thats a lot of stars out there. Lebron needs the ball to be effective, Kobe needs the ball to be effective (on offense). I'll hold off on the Artest judgment until the end of the season. If Artest was hitting his shots we probably wouldn't be having this conversation, same with Tmac. And I used to think that Artest wasn't getting shots because Yao was clogging the lane or he had to share plays with Tmac, but he's played a game with Yao and a game with Tmac out and he didn't play well. Besides, he had Kevin Martin back in Sac and that didn't really slow him down.
Kevin Martin doesn't get in the way quite like Yao and Tracy. Artest hasn't figured out what to do here yet. His shot selection at times is horrible and I've thought he lost his mind. IMO, he should continue going to the rim, taking 3-point set shots and the occasional contested 10-12 footer. But his falling away shots from just inside the 3-point line have to go. I think he's getting better. I also don't think Artest needs the ball that much to be effective when Tracy is on the court. Perhaps if he plays on the 2nd unit with Landry, AB and Chuck he will be more comfortable. Give him time.
The bottom line. This team can't win a championship without McGrady. We have to incorporate him otherwise we simply do not have the talent. So, does it matter how things look without McGrady? Not really.
i think it's pretty obvious that mcgrady did just fine in this offense when we were winning something like 22 games in a row. threads like this just leave you speechless. It also looked pretty good when yao was in there before he got hurt in said winning streak. facts are fun aren't they? this team has yet to play with a healthy combination of yao, t-mac, artest, and battier and people are making declarative statements about who can or can't run adelman's offense. i think all of them have absolutely proven they can, they just haven't had a chance to show it together yet. impatient a$$holes need to shut the f#$k up and give the team a chance. we haven't looked great yet but what do you know we're first in the division and have beaten every team in it.
Give me a break. We are aiming at playoffs. Adelman's offense, when clicking, looks good even with scrubs. But it lack consistency, especially in playoffs when teams play tough defense. We need all arround players like T-Mac then.
------------------------------------------------------------------- u certainly were not watching the 3rd qtr when the Spurs came back and only down by 2. Yao was where our offense started and he read into the game so well and got the ball moved as efficiently as it could be, and not to mention that defensively he was doing a helluva job blocking/altering shots... look how happy Yao was when the team won, he does not care at all about the stats on the paper as long as the Rockets wins.
id have to agree with this. sacto sucked big time in the championships against the lakers. the offense simply didn't work. they lost because they didnt have a go to guy. they got manhandled by shaq, kobe and a bunch of scrubs.
The fact says, we can survive when Tmac is out the rotation, but when Yao cant play, we may loss the game easily. Such as last season vs Jazz at home in January, this season vs Mavericks at home
The biggest change you saw tonight was guys running without the ball, especially the second unit. That's T-Mac's biggest deficiency with regards to this offense.
I have no problem with the win, all I'm saying is Yao did not play well no matter how much of a blowout this is. All our stars deserve their fair share of criticism, and I believe this game Yao could've done better with the glass. Why? If we want to be a championship team, our star center needs to grab at least 8-9 rebounds a night. Against teams like Celtics and Lakers, we're in trouble if Yao only grabs 1 rebound. We were outrebounded despite the win, in the future, this will hurt us bad. That being said, Yao has sparked offense with his blocks.
The offense didnt look that great against Indiana the game prior without T-Mac. Too much to try and draw out of one game and one in which Luther Head played out of his mind.
That's because Adelman's offense is very ill-suited for an offense that feeds off its superstar players, yet maximizes the talents of role players. This is also why I believe Adelman's offense has more often than not emphasized Yao's weaknesses by having him spend too much time out of the paint (if you remember, Adelman was pretty dead set on forcing Yao into that role much of last season). It's amazing than when the Rockets go back to the JVG offense (inside-out offense feeding off Yao's double-teams), albeit with few tweaks, they suddenly look better. I wouldn't blame McGrady or Yao for the 'Adelman offense' not working well, it's just not well-suited to their strengths, especially McGrady's. If Adelman is here to stay, the Rockets would benefit from trading away McGrady for a guy who can stroke it from the outside (i.e. a Ray Allen clone). So I guess I agree with you on one point: it's not a good 'fit' and someone will have to go (likely McGrady). I do think Adelman would be a great college ball coach, though...
So the motion offense takes off on a night where Tracy sits, Artest gets a quiet 16 and Yao gets left in the dust? What does that tell you? People need to get idea of a traditional motion offense out of their head. Our "motion" offense is centered around three relatively slow superstars so don't expect to be seeing some NCAA style, Bobby Knight kind of textbook offense. We don't have the personnel to run an offense like that and the system itself doesn't suit our players. It worked once by definition on a night where Luther Head played like a star and carried us -- that tells you something right there. I also think an underlying theme in this thread is the JVG vs. Adelman offensive philosophy argument. JVG was pretty polarizing when it came to this. Either you felt the "feed the big man til he can't eat anymore and just wait for kick outs" approach was smart or you couldn't stand. I'm somewhere in the middle. Making Yao the focal point of the offense is too important. Let's be practical: you have a 7'6" guy playing 3-5 feet away from the basket and he makes 50%+ of his shots. Anchoring your offense around that almost makes too much sense. Again, i'm somewhere in the middle. Why can't we incorporate JVG's "feed Yao" approach with Adelman's "player movement/spacing" philosophy? Isn't there a happy medium somewhere?
Lets see how we play tonight againtst Denver on the 2nd game of a back-to-back. If we win and dominate maybe we recommend T-Mac not play the next few games and see if it continues....
What is this suppose to mean? Everyone likes to throw this around like Tracy was the only one that contributed to that 22 game win streak. Yao played in 2/3rds of that run only missing the last 6 or 7 games to under .500 teams. Tracy played well, I just wish he would put together that type of play for 65-70 games or so, then I don't believe there would be a thread like this. After Yao went out, nobody truly believed that that Tracy could carry this team very far in the playoffs and he proved us right.
well to be fair i think you should say no body believed that we would make the playoffs, and when we got into the playoffs no body thought we could take the jazz past 5 games.
that's also artest and yao. it's just not tracy. but when healthy, there are plays where tracy does move without the ball (see my clips i posted). in actuality, tracy is the most fit to play adelman's offense moreso than artest or yao. he displayed that last yr in the 22 game winning streak and the series v. the jazz.
