In Knick's game, for several consecutive possetions, Yao had to chase Kurt Thomas at perimeter. That was a disaster. Yao can't blame Yao for being too slow to cover Kurt Thomas at the perimeter. You should blame the one who put him in this awkward situation. In this short season, how many times have we seen that Yao got into foul troubles for being too slow on helping defense. He is a big man and he is too slow compared to most NBA players. It is up to the coach to use height advantage and to cover his slowness problem. For God's sake, Yao is the pivot of the offense. Can we have some kind of defense to help Yao out by limiting his foul problems or, just like what JVG is doing, send Yao on endless help defense to cover Charlie Ward's ass? If I were Yao, I would be a good player and hard worker for a couple of years, finish my contract, and take off. Maybe somewhere there is a coach, just like Rudy, who won't use me as a whip boy and won't give me that miserable face all the time. Maybe somewhere there is a player, like SF3 or Kobe, who will declare his leadership and take his responsibility. Maybe somewhere, there will be a PF, like Brian Grant, who will fight for every single rebound and rush in to help me on defense. Maybe somewhere, there will be a SF, like Odom, who acturally can slash and pass, instead of JJ who functions as JVG's mouth piece to pass blame around. Well, I only make 5 million a year now, and I already have a decent life. Maybe I can take the MLE money and live on my advertisement money. Of course I am not Yao, and nobody, except Yao himself, can speak of his mind. But I can sense his unhappiness and frustration now. This is his third year. Rockets better do something and do it quickly to improve his situation. A news article like the on Chronicle blaming Yao's defense won't help things in a long run. Otherwise...... Does anybody remember what we did to Orlando on TMac?
Dude, you're a moron. Help defense is the cornerstone of a good defensive team. Does this particular squad need to work on it? Yes. They got burned repeatedly by the pick and roll on Thursday. But you can't just have one player not rotating because he is big.
Who said Yao shouldn't help? Yao is the pilar of paint defense. But his slowness is a fact. Asking him to rotate a lot is asking for trouble. On the other hand, helping defense doesn't mean everybody runs equally. In the great Bulls dynasty, they are a great defense team. As athletic as Jordan was, he got a lot of defensive help from Pippen since MJ needed to carry the offense load. In Spurs' first championship year, Duncan got a lot defense help from the Admiral. Now in JVG's eyes, Yao doesn't fight enough for offensive position and he also rotated too slow on defense. But this guy never missed a single practice and a single game. Don't take Yao's niceness too far to turn him into the whip boy of this aging team. Nice guy may explode someday and turn your house upside down.
You just don't get defense in the NBA. You can't just say, we shouldn't aski him to rotate because he is slow. Defense is a team sport, EVERYONE has to rotate. If it isn't Yao's man running the pick-and-roll, Yao will still have to rotate to help out on defense. Unless and until our perimeter defense improves, EVERYBODY on the team has to help. This is the case for every player on every team.
But the coach should design a sheme to cover his weakness. Yao is a better rebounder this year. But he just got so many fouls. He was fouled again today against Clippers. Yao's current teammates just are not as ggod as the last year's on defense. JJ is one year older. Mo is no comparison with Cato on defense. Tmac is superstar and he is not supposed to work as hard as Cat on defense. And Ward is just too slow. Yao is under the hoop and he is slow. What can he do except trying to block shots or to take charge, which resulted a lot of fouls? Be passive on defense and take care of his numbers? His fouls showed at least he tried. What was the last time MoT got fouled out?
