And without Battier, we beat the Suns! And have great defense too. I changed my mind. Our MIP is.... NO ONE! We're like f***ing Wal-mart baby, you can't take any single player to beat us! We'll just rise up again, you know why? Because we're constructed from the hearts of people! It's your own desires that perpetuate the Rockets, and no injury will eliminate them.
I'd rather the Rockets not be compared to Wal-Mart lol. I'm sure most people don't want anymore Wal-Marts to be constructed.
One thing I respect is when a guy starts a thread and stick around to defend his pov. I do that as well as dd,ibm and others. Even when I disagree, I respect that. DD ur wrong! Last yr the rox won 52 games while missing yao 32 games. This yr they'll win 53 plus while yao missing 30 games or more. The common thread is Tracy. Now if u want to say scola has diversified the attack, I'll give u that,but to say he's mip,is r****ded. What most fans have a issue with t-mac is the on/off switch, but with or without yao he's the mip. Why? He's the only guy that can be undefensible and play at elite level. Scola has struggled against longer, atheletic players, which isn't anything to be bashful of. If u polled most fans and asked to make a choice between Scola and landry, most would pick landry because he skill can catch his atheleticism. So its hard to call a guy that will split time with a 22 yrs old rookie as the mip. That's like calling carl herrera mip on the championship squad.
Its simply amazing how good the rookies are. If we had had those 3 guys last year there is no way we loose to the Jazz. Of the 3, I do think Scola is the most important addition. The man has a champion's heart to go with real skills. He is gonna have stiff competition from Landry but Scola is more versatile and that will keep him in the starting lineup. This year's playoffs are gonna be exciting even without Yao. Win or lose however im very grateful to this team. They could have given up and quit. Instead they gave us a season to remember. The thing about this team is that they play so well as a team that even when someone important is injured their substitutes can and do pick up the slack right away. That makes it much harder to judge who has the greater impact on the win loss record though by default that should go to Tmac. After that I would choose Rafer and then Scola.
Scola does so much for this team that goes un-noticed, it is no coincidence that the Rockets took off when he went into the starting lineup. DD
Scola is the most important guy for the Rockets. T-Mac and Yao are going to do what they do. The trick is that the Rockets need somebody who can pull attention off the two stars and make the other team pay when defenses collapse on them. Scola not only scores, he scores at a very high efficiency. Not only that but he also provides rebounding, grit and plenty of intangibles. A team with him and Battier is going to go far. My strategy for the Rockets early in the game: get Scola rolling. Once the other team figures out they have to worry about him Yao and T-Mac can start carving up the defense.
The problem with T-Mac is that he runs hot and cold. That's just the way it works for shooters. Sometimes the shot is off, and when it is other teams are content to let T-Mac shoot the Rockets right out of the game. Scola on the other hand consistently converts at a better than 50% rate. That's huge. And guess what, if T-Mac's having problems let the other guys, especially Scola, score points. Once the heat is off T-Mac he'll have more opportunities to drive to the basket and get open shots. A team that relies on jump shooting only is going to have big problems getting anywhere. You need a post game--Yao, Scola and Landry.
As long as Scola is in the game and focused I fear no other team. Whether this is because Scola himself is a total badass, or if its because he brings that last little bit of something that puts us over the top, I don't care which it is - I just know that our winstreak wasn't a fluke, our win percentage with Scola in the lineup isn't random, and Scola brings something to our team that will take us further than most people currently realize. To steal someone else's sig... In Scola we trust.
There are many difference makers on this Rockets team. Scola is, Battier is, Landry is, Deke is, Bobby Jackson is, even Hayes is a difference maker in so many games. Once JHO, MJ and Snider are gone, all Rockets have now are contributors except maybe Loren Woods. That's the real reason why Rockets keep winning no matter who is missing games. I like Scola, but the most important player is Tmac without question, even though he is no longer as important as previous seasons, which also is a very good sign.
Rockets started to play better long before Scola started, back to that one point loss game to Nuggets. Scola does a lot for the team, but he gets credit much more than Battier and Hayes, two defensive monsters. For example, nobody started a thread saying Battier or Hayes are most important, but Scola got that in his rookie year already.
You know. You are exactly right. You may have hit on the reason this team is so successful even without Yao. We have a lot of difference makers on this team.
so bascially DaDakota is telling us that since Scola is the second or third most important player, this makes him THE MOST important. Flawless as usual.
Luis Scola is the only player on our team who can score in the post (well, besides Yao) without being force fed. This makes him key. It still helps to get a good pass from the perimeter but he can work a poor defender like Amare and get some easy buckets. This adds alot of variety to our offense because we don't ALWAYS have to depend on tmac stringing someone along for a layup or a 3 pointer. This keeps us from being a low percentage jumpshooting team and opens up our game. Its not that Scola is the most important player but that he is the only post player. I think people get post players and big players confused. Landry and Amare are big players but they don't do work in the post they finish from jumpshots and dunks without putting their backs to the basket.
I like all these assumptions about how a guy does in the regular season, but the real games are coming. We've seen rookies play well and we've seen them struggle. He'll we've seen veterans stuggle when u face the same team over and over again. The road games are always the toughest for rookies in the playoff. I used to really like the matchup with utah, but their 2nd unit guards against our midgets worry me a little. We'll see though.
luis and landry are simply valuable b/c they are the only 2 legit threats in the post to open up the space for tmac.
The Rockets are a 50+ win team without Scola. The Rockets are possibly an above .500 team without Yao (for a whole season). The Rockets are a .500 or below team without T-Mac. T-Mac and Yao are still the most important players on the team.
