in the next year or two, we should really look into trading some people if hill doesn't develop into a shotblocking center, we need a defensive 4 or 5 that is tall and long, chuck is a great defender, but we need a paint protector
I wonder how good the D will be with Brad Miller in the paint, I suspect for the first 3 months at least he will be the starting or primary center. DD
Whatever minutes the team has with Yao in the game is minutes they didn't have last season. Also, since Miller has been a starting center, imagine the confusion it might cause other teams to have to match up with Yao coming off the bench.
wait, wasn't Bonzi and Mike James traded for Bobby Jackson? They weren't on the roster all at the same time.
Defintely think it was a combo of philosophy and players. JVG made them run half court offense and pretended to push the rock. If you took a look at the time of possesion and the number of field goals in our best defensive season I bet our time of p was up and number of field goals us/them was down. All I'm concerned about is defense and rebounding. I really think this is going to be a very good team. Why, the second team is going to push them. AB vs Lowry Ariza vs Bud Martin vs. Shane (will make Martin a better offensive player) Scola vs. Hill/Chuck Yao vs. Miller (Making Yao come out and play D 15 ft away and get use to it)
More like TOM THIBODEAU. Not to underestimate a healthy Yao (and Deke backing him up), but Thibodeau generates great D play everywhere he goes. Ask the Celtics fans.
The defense originally was geared toward a few things - Funnel drives in to Yao, make the offense shoot long twos and don't foul jump shooters. Also, we had only one or two people crashing the offensive boards and the rest were getting back on defense... which cut down on fast break opportunities. The difference last year is evident... we didn't have someone to funnel drivers to and we had everyone crashing the o-boards. This year we can go back to some of the defensive methods that helped us to begin with because we have Yao and Miller... just their height and length will help defensively inside.
defense is a team thing.Yes I know having Yao will change things defensively, but he can't do everything. I propose hiring JVG to show the importance of team defense :grin: JVG is the ****
A trivia question for those of you believing it's JVG's slow paced style that allows us to have such high ranking defense. Guess who coached the following team? Pace factor #1 - fastest team in the NBA Offensive rank #3 Defensive rank #6 I know many of you would think the above statline to be impossible. But yes, it was real. There was actually a team that accomplished this. For reference, the same team was 2nd in pace, 9th in offense, and 6th on defense a year earlier. So it was not an anomaly. This type of top 5 pace/top 10 offense/top 10 defense combo only stopped when the team's best player went down with an injury.
We don't have to be #1. Just top 10. Yao should help us get to that point by himself. Plus, getting the ball out of Brooks and Ariza's hands will keep us from coughing up stupid turnovers which lead to easy buckets all the time. The biggest part about having good transition defense is taking care of the ball. Let's give this team a chance to band together before we condemn for last year's poor defense (and poor offense frankly). It's a completely different team with Yao back, Martin on board for a full offseason, and Ariza and Brooks back where they belong, as secondary offensive options.
I'm assuming everyone knows the JVG and Tom Thibodeau were not with the Rockets for the 2007-08 season. I do agree that the defensive success of that season was a result Thibodeau's defensive coaching the previous years.
So in order to truly gauge this team. It is important to separate pre and post Trade Deadline (TD). Another reason I wanted to do this was to prove to myself that Martin, Hill, & Jeffries truly negatively affected the defense. Code: Rockets Stats FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% FT FTA FT% ORB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS Pre TD 37.28 84.33 44.60 7.82 22.61 35.55 18.44 24.23 72.74 12.19 42.53 21.31 7.00 3.89 13.85 20.89 100.84 Post TD 38.58 84.61 46.03 7.97 22.03 38.06 20.11 25.50 73.95 11.22 40.95 22.82 7.30 3.86 13.70 20.85 105.24 Change 1.3 0.3 1.4 0.1 -0.6 2.5 1.7 1.3 1.2 -1.0 -1.6 1.5 0.3 0.0 -0.2 0.0 4.4 Opponents Stats FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% FT FTA FT% ORB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS Pre TD 38.53 82.48 46.72 5.54 15.98 34.61 17.86 22.87 78.08 10.41 42.49 20.27 7.29 6.76 14.10 22.25 100.48 Post TD 41.13 84.08 48.33 6.80 17.17 41.04 17.90 24.30 73.74 11.15 43.34 22.09 7.26 5.99 14.33 22.79 106.94 Change 2.6 1.6 1.6 1.3 1.2 6.4 0.0 1.4 -4.3 0.7 0.9 1.8 0.0 -0.8 0.2 0.5 6.5 I chose to make 0.05 a statistical cutoff, as in any change less than that is not important to mention. It is likely that this number could be much higher for a number of these values, but I did not want to start calculating t-values, confidence intervals, etc. Basically, the new team is worse on defensive. (Your saying Duh!) Opposing teams shot the ball better from the field and 3pt line. I would believe the increase in assist is from the same source of the increase FG% & 3P%. I would suspect the increase attempts is due to pace increase with the loss of Landry. It is possible that the increase is due to an increase in possessions for the opposing teams. We did lose some rebounding which could affect these stat, 1 offensive rebound and 0.6 defensive rebounds a game which may have some affect on that. I found it interesting that opponents blocks went down and TO and PF for the stayed relatively constant. Now the speculation with the addition of Yao (and Patt-Patt & Miller), increase maturity of Jordan Hill (hopefully), and Martin/Jeffries/Hill learning the defensive sets and positioning better: You cannot underestimate the effect a training camp will have on the overall team defense with the new players. While Martin is known as a matador on defense, knowing what he is supposed to do with Battier & Ariza to teach him I hope will do wonders. He does not have to carry the entire load on offense here either, so I would really like him to work towards being somewhat avg on defense. Even just with closing out on him man, ball pressure, and giving less space to catch a pass. We all saw in SL that Hill needs more time to better understand what he has to do. Jeffries I would expect to catch on and actually be an important piece of the rotation this fall, especially when the Rockets get into foul trouble or face teams with size like the Lakers. The Yao effect I really hope will do 2 huge things to these numbers. 1. Help the Rockets in the rebounding department. I'm not only talking about Yao basically average 7-9 rebounds a game (assuming he plays less minutes), but the fact that with him on the court boxing out the biggest or 2 other opponents he opens things up for the other Rockets to get rebounds. Those other guys no longer have to out jump the C every time, because Yao can box him out. 2. Prevent the layup drill. Just Yao's presence down low should definitely decrease that FG% from that ridiculous 48% after the Martin-Landry trade. Even more, Jeffries is at least an average PnR defender (better than Landry for sure), and while Miller is not great at moving his feet, he has true size and some experience to be able to alter more shots than the Rockets did before. All in all I would expect more jump shots and fewer lay-ups. Given all that, you still cannot expect this team's personnel to rival that 2008 team. Especially without Thibodeau plugging holes and the slow down, no fast break, get every rebound (unless it is the one you need with 1 min left in game 7) JVG style, there is no chance of that. They can still be serviceable on defense though. They must though fix one fatal flaw: The 41% 3 pt shooting that opposing teams shot last year after we acquired Martin. I'm sorry but that is just ridiculous. I am really hoping (as I mentioned above) that Martin can work on this. With better interior defense, you might limit the number of open looks teams get, but by how much? If that second defender has to give nearly full help every time on Martin &/or Brook's man, it won't matter who that defender is. Unless the rotation is perfect, there will still be some one open that can get a 3pt shot off. As much as interior defense, rebounding, and offensive execution in the clutch will make or break the Rockets season, the ability of Brooks and Martin to show the ability to provide on AND off the ball pressure next year will be key to the Rockets getting home court and being a true contender.
Back then we were still playing JVG ball half the time, because Tracy(And others) couldn't(or refused) to run the princeton.
