I would say Battier. We are a defensive team that relies on their defense to create offense. Defense is our identity. And Battier is our best defender. He sets the tone early in the game and everyone follows.
I agree that Scola is definitely the key piece in this year's success. We finally have a legitimate 4, and it makes a huge difference. Add in Landry and Hayes and we are rock-solid at the 4 spot. Something tells me that Scola in this year's playoffs will be a hell of an upgrade over Juwan's sorry-ass performance in last year's playoffs. Just a guess.
hey Dak it might have been easier and less confusing if you had said from the getgo "After our two stars, who is the most important cog in the machine?" and as much as I totally dig Scola's game and attitude.....Shane is his daddy. We should feel so blessed to have guys like Battier, Scola, Chuck, Landry and Harris...five blue collar guys who do whatever it takes and never stop competing. Most teams will have one or two guys liek that, we have FIVE (possibly 6 if you include Rafer, who [shooting woes aside] is a very hard worker and scrappy as hell)
Jackson is a playoff-tested veteran, so I think he should produce for us, and Brooks won't be nervous because he's too young to know any better. I wonder though, if Adelman is going to keep Brooks on the bench in the playoffs. I suspect he will.
Rafer is more important than those two in some instances, i just hope we use AB to some capacity. I just looked at you're other posts and I'm a little confused by them, are you saying that we would win more games sans tmac than sans Scola. I guess i can follow you that Scola is the one piece that can push us in one direction or the other but tmac obviously has the biggest impact. I look at it like a weighing scale, where tmac/yao is the big bar that counts the 100s of pounds, the rest of the team counts the 10s, and Scola is the 1s because any minor adjustment in his play will either win the game for us or lose it for us. I think if one of our superstars is missing its like dialing back one of those 100s. If we don't have tmac we can kill one of these 'light' teams like the sonics but we need all of our efforts to take out the 'heavy' teams. I think some of us veteran NBA
sorry i didn't finish... I think some of us veteran NBA fans get a little jaded by superstars (while they are usually overhyped) and love to root for the lesser players.
No one will know how we would have performed with Battier against the Suns, but if he really is out for tonight it would be his first game of the year. I'll be watching to see how our defense holds up without him. If it doesn't, well...you may have an answer to this question.
MVP of Rockets = Tmac and Yao MIP of Rockets = Rafer, Scola, and Battier Oh wait... thats the starting lineup, so if the starting lineup plays well we win. BRILLIANT!!!
I agree with the statement "TMac is so good, he sometimes overpowers the team concept.", all except for one word, SOMETIMES. TMac overpowers the team concept every time he is in the game. And that's the problem. The first thing out of Adelman's mouth after he became coach here was he wanted to make the game easier on McGrady and Yao by getting both guys easier looks so they didn't constantly have to work so hard. Well, what that means is McGrady could expend less effort if he would move around the court more without the ball, instead of standing around and waiting for the ball to come to him, then him operating against the double for 12-14 seconds of the shot clock. What that means is if we get the ball to moving really, really fast from one side to the other then back again, that eventually you will catch the defense flat footed, mesmerized by the ball movement and you can then get easy layups. McGrady can always then overpower the GAME when it is needed down at the finish, but he won't have to exhaust himself all season by operating that way all the time. But it means giving up a few assists and a few shots during the regular season and during the first 3 1/2 quarters of the games. You wanna know why guys stand around when McGrady goes to the bench? It's the same reason defenses stand around when the offense throws it around the court 12-15 times a possession. McGrady's teammates get stagnant standing around watching him operate and then when you take him out, their subconscious has been trained for the first 12 minutes of the game to play off McGrady. All of a sudden he's not there and they are subconsciously looking for the next McGrady when none of them are it. It's a lot easier to adjust to him not being there at the start of the game and then getting your subconscious trained to get your body to automatically do certain things. It's simply a habit that is formed and habits can be either good or bad, productive or counterproductive. If you've ever played the game at any level, you should understand what I'm talking about. It's the same thing if a team runs a certain offensive play the whole game, say pick and roll, and then down at crunch time, coach wants them to go to the four corners. Only the most fluent of basketball player minds can accomplish this without hiccups. The rest of them have to start "thinking" again out there and it slows down everything to the point where a good defensive team can jump what you are doing. McGrady, the great player that he is, really needs to make a full adjustment to Adelman, and quit trying to torque the offense to suit his need to have the spotlight so much of the time on him making plays.
very well put. but again, i'd reserve judgment on just how much tmac disrupts the offensive rhythm of his teammates until we see these guys play a whole game without tmac against competition stiffer than the soon-to-be-ex-seattle supersonics. my guess is that against good teams, it isn't so much tmac taking his teammates out of the game, but better defenses.
He's out scouting Nachbar to see how good a fit he would be here next year as a FA. Word on the street is a re-signed Nachbar and Marcus Williams along with VC for Rafer, BJax, Head, Francis, our #1 pick, and Loren Woods.
