There's not much there... Other thoughts from around the association: • Perhaps we "misunderestimated" Houston. The Rockets' early close wins over Golden State and Portland gave us an idea that they'd be competitive, but after last night's one-sided win in Utah they really need to be taken seriously. Houston is 3-1, with the only loss coming in Portland's difficult Rose Garden, and the road win over a Jazz team that has always been the Rockets' kryptonite seems especially fortuitous. Here's the big shocker: They're doing it with offense. On paper, Houston's attack looked absolutely anemic entering the season. In reality, Rick Adelman is again squeezing the most out of it with his motion offense. Houston ranks 10th in offensive efficiency in the early going, and if the Rockets can keep that up their stout defense should do the rest of the leg work to get them a surprise playoff berth. Up next it is a much more difficult test: the Lakers arrive in Houston on Wednesday. So do I, so I'll be able to give you a firsthand report on the new-look Rockets.
As much as I know that's a GW Bush reference, I like to think it's an homage to Arrested Development.
What's more shocking is that some of these sportswriters are shocked that we are still capable, much less, more capable of scoring more this year. I think it was pretty obvious to Rockets fans that offense wouldn't be the issue, but defense, rebounding and height. Most younger, faster teams have no problems scoring - see Grizzlies, Warriors, etc. And the Rockets, on PAPER moved much closer towards that with Yao/Tracy out then anything else. What WAS shocking about last night, in particular, was out-rebounding the Jazz and holding them to 39 points in the second half.
Actually there are many fans like a lot of these reporters that doubted the Rockets chances this year. I didn't see many people confident about our offense. You can't blame them. No Yao, No T-Mac and not even an Artest. But they have been surprising offensively, which was suppose to be our biggest struggle.
I have to disagree a bit here. coming into the season, I wasn't worried about rox's ability to score, but I was definitely worried about their ability to score EFFICIENTLY. With the fast pace that the team is going to run, they WILL always score points. But would they be able to score at a high efficiency without Yao and TMAC? Those are things that are not at all certain... I think Hollinger is talking about the surprise of their Offensive EFFICIENCY rather than raw offensive output as well.
I am surprised. I thought our scoring would be completely predicated on defensive rebounding which leads to the break. And I had no confidence in our defensive rebounding. Scola , Hayes & Landry are solid offensive rebounders so I assumed we would get 2nd chances but they would be offset by our opponents getting 2nd chances and deep looks. I still kind of feel the same, if we don't shoot so great from behind the arc we lose... but ya. I am surprised by the offensive output.
Aha! Just like I said before the season started, the pundits were all underrating the Rockets' ability to score points. Now they see a top 10 team in offensive efficiency and are expressing surprise. Hollinger's shortsightedness here baffled me -- in this case he did very little to dispel the commonly held criticism that he is little more than a numbers geek who does not watch games and cannot translate math to reality. How do you, for example, look at career statistics for Aaron Brooks, a young point guard with barely two months experience as a starter, and thenceforth proclaim a ceiling on his capabilities as an offensive leader? How do you fail to reconcile the subtraction of a notorious ball stopper and inefficient scorer in Artest with the emergence of a more prolific offensive team? How do you fail to account for the expected development of talents like Landry and Ariza, and despite overwhelming evidence in the summer leagues and preseason, fail to account for Chase Budinger as a factor? I'm probably being unfair to Hollinger, since he was hardly alone in his casual dismissal of the Rockets as being anything but a fringe team. And maybe I was just seeing what most people couldn't see, particularly with Aaron Brooks. Even most people here on ClutchFans had bought into the whole "they don't have the talent to compete with good teams" argument to the point that the "heart" and "grit" mantra has been proclaimed to a nauseating extreme. Yes, I'm tired of hearing that nonsense. This team does have heart and they are known for competing for 48 minutes. But they are not 3-1 merely because of heart -- they are 3-1 because they have talent that everyone didn't know they had. They're 3-1 because they are doing things on the basketball court nobody knew they were capable of doing. Dammit, people. There is real talent on this team. Potential all star talent, even. Don't act all surprised because you weren't expecting it to emerge out of the shadows of perennial all-stars that have been the face of this Franchise for years.
I'm with Rockets fans on this one, but let's not rag on the national media too hard now. Think about it this way: for the Rockets to be successful this year, they are going to have to basically do a few things that have rarely been done in basketball HISTORY. Ariza's career stats to this point: 20.2MPG, 7.1 PPG, 1.3 APG, .320 3PT% So far this year: 37.3MPG, 20.2 PPG, 3.3 APG, .520 3PT% Brooks' career stats to this point: 20.4MPG, 9.2 PPG, 2.7 APG, .411 FG%, .358 3PT%. So far this year: 36.8MPG, 21.0 PPG, 8.5 APG, .500 FG%, .390 3PT%. Players don't just break out into all-stars this late in their careers (6th season for Ariza, both guys' 24th birthdays). We're basically looking at Ariza turning into Caron Butler and Brooks turning into Tony Parker but with a better three-point shot, out of nowhere. Of course we Rockets fans always held the faith . But it's not unreasonable to cut everybody else some slack for failing to predict something as unlikely as this. For the most part in basketball, players by their first or second years have demonstrated enough potential so that scouts at the very least could see what would happen if they were given more playing time and ball control. Even guys like T-Mac and Jermaine O'Neal that had minor roles their first couple of years in the league were scouts' darlings even when their statistics fell far short of drawing the national attention. In the case of Brooks and Ariza, everyone missed the boat--fans, players, GM's, scouts, even statisticians like Hollinger, and we are truly starting to see the real power of Morey if he can outwit everybody else to find these diamonds in the rough. Now obviously these numbers won't hold up over the whole year, but we have enough guys underperforming to pick up the slack and ensure that this team is truly in it for the long haul. And it's reasonably certain that contrary to popular opinion, our team really does have enough talent to compete day in and day out. To the chagrin of every basketball almanac in history.
A part of the early offensive efficiency might be a bit of a mirage: the guys are shooting really hot from the 3 pt line in all but the first game. They are good shooters, but even good shooting teams will have cold spells. If the Rockets have a few colder shooting games, things can get real ugly when they don't have the post offense of Yao or the skills of Tracy McGrady (or the bully-ball tactics of Artest) to fall back on.
I agree.. I for one thought that we would take a step down offensively this year.. I'm glad to be proven wrong!!
this was never a surprise i don't understand the talk of us not being competitive without yao but our stats in the past few seasons indicates that having yao or not makes no difference in terms of our winning percentage our offence has much more flow, our defence is much quicker the game last night was such a joy to watch.. we actually looked fast lol
Huh? Brooks and Ariza are guys hungry for major minutes with main man roles. It's unrealstic to expect them to continue at this pace while other teams adjust accordingly. Definitely possible, but let's keep our expectations in check.
Exactly. As good of shooters as we would like to believe, I honestly don't think anyone would put money on Ariza shooting 50% from downtown, and Brooks 50% FG for the remainder of the season.
Here is what he forecast for the Aaron Brooks this season: [rquoter] 2009-10 outlook: Brooks comes into this season firmly in control of the starting point guard job, and with both Yao and Tracy McGrady sidelined and Ron Artest gone, Brooks will shoulder a lot more offensive responsibility. That should play into his shoot-first tendencies, and it wouldn't be a big surprise if he averaged in the high teens. What I'm more interested in is whether he accompanies those buckets with a few more dimes. On a team with so few players who can create their own shot, it's incumbent upon their speedy point guard to create a few for them.[/rquoter] Seems totally fair to me. And I can't blame him for thinking that a team that was basically average at offense last year wouldn't improve with Chuck replacing Yao, and Ariza replacing Artest. You certainly don't have to be a numbers geek to have believed that.
What's more shocking is that before the season began only 6% of fans on this site thought we had a chance of winning 50 games or more.
