Luis Scola: If Only Yao Ming is Still With the Team

Irony.

It's way to early to pen in this season as a bust.

 

I'm kinda with u on this one. The rox if they have the current roster isn't really any better than they are now asa far as being a true contender like Boston,Detroit and such.

Yao and Tracy are a yr older and are at their best. Neither will get any better in my opinion. Still doesn't have that legit 3rd scorer that can get 15ppg and get his own shot when things break down. A small team in every since of the word. No one with any size behind shane,tracy, and yao.

Unless they do something to get a high impact type talent, thery continue to be one player away. To those thinking about the 92-93 rox team is way off. That team had a top 5 nba player in hakeem who was great in every since of the word. When u have a guy that plays great 90% of the time, it makes everything else better. No disrespect, but neither yao nor tracy can play 70 games at hakeems level.

 

True...

There have been teams to win it all with much less than a tmac and a yao though. There has to be a problem with the role players. Yao is arguably the best center in the nba, tmac is 2nd or 3rd amongst shooting guards. This is the reason most analysts (the correct term because they aren't experts) say we are underacheivers.

 

More like they had a Top 2 player. But 2 Top 15 players is just as good, as far as regular season success goes.

 

"I am a leaf on the wind - watch how I soar."

 

if you're going to nitpick you're 100% wrong. being a contender in no way is predicated on the assumption that you get "70 games each from both Yao and McGrady" it's really only predicated on having both tmac and yao health for the playoffs. history has shown tmac can alone carry a team into the playoffs, which is the only regular season imperative if you're going to nitpick. furthermore this year history has shown that a 50/50 mix of both tmac and yao plus either tmac and yao can get you the #1 seeding for at least a time period. does that mean history will repeat itself? no but it does show that things are not as black and white as you say.

as the guy above me says, the irony of using an assumption to challenge an assumption. no team stays healthy for 100% of the season, and while houston has had its share+ the past few seasons there's no logical way to dismiss houston because one of our stars might get hurt. using your logic it's impossible then to declare any team a favorite... because logically no team is immune to injury and because of course each team has a guy they cant afford to lose. for example los angles is definitely DEFINITELY not a favorite because if they lose kobe they're done and kobe in past years he has shown he has trouble with teammates... so if you expect that he wont have problems with gasol and bynum next year and implode the season by demanding a trade, history is not on your side. see how logical this is?

scola might have called the streak luck somewhere. but I doubt that. certainly that's nowhere in spanish in the quote pryuen referenced. the only thing he says is it's only logical that the streak had to end some time. the only thing close to luck he mentions is when he talks about the loss to NO... "it just wasn't our day." not a direct translation but that's exactly in colloquial english what he wrote.

you really do not have a clear understanding of what the streak was about if you think it was a "house of cards waiting to explode". as much as I personally would love to see an exploding house of cards (as opposed to simply collapsing but actually exploding like the opening credits of a michael bay movie) the streak really was about the stretch of 17 games before yao got hurt, when night in and night out houston was the best team in the league, with elite lock down inside/outside defense, interior play, offensive flow and shooting. there was nothing fluky about it until we lost landry and with it any semblance of interior play and offensive balance. so yeah, the streak maybe could have gone 19 or 20 games instead of 22. oh no, now houston's only the 3rd most amazing team in NBA history instead of the 2nd most amazing team.

"luck" could have gone the other way, what if yao hadn't gotten sick houston would have won 27 games before they lost. who cares? in the larger picture whether it's 20 or 23 or 24 games the takeaway is the same. with a full complement of yao, tmac, landry scola, alston etc, a strong case can be made that houston is the best team in the league and that's before the kool aid

 

what did you mean "coincidence"?

 

Your statement is true for TMAC, but false for YAO. Yao hasn't reached his peak yet, he has been improving each season. Every season Yao shows you something different and better. He still has some way to go to reach his peak. TMAC? He has been over his peak and is going down right now.

 

What in your mind is Yao going to get better at coming off another season ending injury and being a yr older? Is he going to learn to hold the ball high and tight with his elbows out? Is he going to suddenly get explosive and quicker to the baset or around the basket? Is he going to go into every game with the mindset of dominating smaller players? Is he all of a sudden going to be in great condition to where he can be relentless offensively and defensively all the time? After 6 yrs, how do u think he's going to get better?

 

tmac is def. not gonna get any better. it really depends on his health if it allows him to play at a high level.

but i disagree with you on yao. he is not better than last yr. his best stretch of basketball was before he got the injury a year ago. he's not the same since. he's settling for more fallaways every time i see him. yao peaked last year before the injury. he was scoring at will shooting 54-55% as an AVERAGE. now he's at 49-50% shooting fallaways.

we need better role players (and they are better but more improvement from landry, brooks scola as we move forward).

 

His rebounds definitely better than last year. Think about Yao in January.

 

Yao is more important to the offense than any other single player on the Rockets. He's the "inside" part of the inside-out game.

Also, he's the one player left on the team that can consistently punish the opposition if they don't double him. That's what Scola's talking about when he writes about how Yao makes everything easier.

 

i love yao

 

How did you manage to type so much without saying anything?

 

I still think about the near Eastern Conference Pacers team. That team had better outside shooting than we did. They had A. Davis and D. Davis, Rik Smits in the front court. We are constructed nearly the same as that Pacers team. The exception is that T-Mac has turned into a jump shooting guard and he doesn't nail that 3 pointer anywhere near the efficiency that Reggie Miller did. Our pt guard play is nearly the same as theirs. Travis Best and Rafer a wash.

I think we need to get some better three point shooting off the bench or that slashing penetrating big guard. Brent Barry would have been perfect for this Rockets team. The big penetrating guard is up in the air. I'm hoping that Francis can come back and be like Baron Davis in his comeback tour. If not, then I'm open to getting anyone that will do the job.