If Joey Crawford isnt doing that game, Rockets win by 15 last night. Thats the only game they will get. Oh and Rick Adelman, nice job pulling Wafer out of the game when he's the only one scoring. Interesting strategy.
Don't get me wrong, I did not want to blame the refs for the loss. I merely wanted to point out that even with the Blazers having a good night and the refs pulling questionable calls out of their collective butts, we still almost won. Most likely would have if we hit our FTs. As for the fairness, I would have to say maybe . The Rockets got more FTs so they got more calls but I refer to the calls and non-calls at crucial times. The goal tend or lack thereof was at a nasty time deep in the 4th when we needed a basket. The refs missed it..their human but calling fouls under the basket from the half-court line is a bit much. It happened more than once. If the ref UNDER the basket 3 feet away did not see a foul, how did the ref @ half court see it? Really, the refs were not that bad but they did have the notorious Rocket hater Joey Crawford running the crew.
Exactly. There were bad calls both ways (although you have to admit that the Pzyll flop call on Yao was a momentum changer). It was pretty fair. Neither team was shooting good at the line. We lost pretty much because of some incredible shots by Roy and Aldridge. Nothing you can do about it. I felt pretty good about the series. Portland did their best, with the two stars playing amazing ball, and we still hung tough with them without our backup center until the last minute.
I have to disagree, even though I am not really sure if you know what you are saying. We don't prefer 85 point games where we win per se, we just prefer winning. There are only 1 game since February where Yao scores 20+ and we got less than 90, a blowout against the Hornets. So no, it does not "happended" most of the time. There is also only one example where we scored over 100 with Yao getting around 10, thus my comment about it being incredible. Your scenario is evidence of and a tribute to our defense, which is our strong suit. My scenario is a testament to our offense stepping up. It is easier for us to make defensive adjustments to stop our opponents then it is for us to make offensive adjustments to score on our opponents, so evidence of good offense outside of Yao is in that sense incredible. Obviously we all prefer to win, but I was pointing out a positive that can be interpreted from the numbers that might attribute to a future win. -V
Great post! Yes we lost but we took the best of the Blazers and they just barely won it. A lot of people are treating this like we got blown out but remember we had it down to 2 with less than 10 seconds left to go. All that with Yao extremely limited. Roy played phenomenally and Aldridge had a great game too but even with Yao down we got major contributions from Brooks, Artest, Wafer and Lowry. Scola also played a decent game. The Blazers have figured out to shut down Yao but their are at least 4 other Rockets that can put up huge numbers too and that's going to take a toll on them. Also even with Yao not contributing Adelman has shown that we can negate the Oden and Pryzbilla by taking it to them in the lane. They might get their blocks but Wafer, Brooks and Lowry can also get them into foul trouble. We lost but a close tough game but there still is a lot of positives to be taken from it. GO ROX!
