I respect Steve Francis' game. He's got million dollar talent. Like when he jumped over the whole Grizzlie team for a put back of a Jackson miss. But his basketball brain is worth 10 cents. Like last night when down by 3 he got past everyone and threw up a brick with no chance to go in and followed that up with a dribble, dribble, dribble shoot a brick 3 without getting his teamates involved. I'm not bashing SF, just making a observation. On 2 on 1 or 3 on 1 fastbreaks he ALWAYS takes it to the hole and will not pass it. What up with that? Where is his basketball sense, (cents)?
I cant speak for thebody part of the equation...but as far as the rest...this is kinda like the pot calling the kettle black.. by all accounts, SF had one of his best games of the season as a PG...b****ing about a couple of mistakes is just wrong. everyone makes mistakes...just look at the opening post of this thread for an example.
it's not just a couple mistakes...yeah he had a good game if you look at the stats, but he does a lot of questionable things EVERY game
He had a great game but he, like most everyone on this team struggles to close out games. Memphis did the exact same thing last night against us, and gave us every single opportunity to make a comeback with all the early shots they took while not eating up more of the clock in the closing seconds. We're still learning how to win in that aspect, and Francis is even more so since he claims the majority of the responsibility being the leader of the team, and considering he's in control of the ball more then anyone else on the team. I think the team's had a losing mentality for so long now, that we still sometimes struggle to figure out the right way to win. In closing out games we sometimes force bad shots, bad passes, make bad defensive switches, give up costly turnovers, etc and practically give our opponents every opportunity in the world to make a comeback. It was the case in Denver on the 26th with the costly foul that sent Lenard to the FT for 3 shots and gave them a win. It was the case last night with the poor shot selection in the closing minutes. It's been that case for the past 4 years since being lottery bound. It's a mental thing more then anything not knowing how to win, or what decisions to make to seal and close out a game, because physically we can beat any team out there in the league on any given night (We have two potentially dominant players in Francis and Yao. They both have their own issues when it comes to dominating a game but they're both very capable of it.), but it's really the mental game that separates the winners from the losers, and the mediocre teams from the elite.
I have a hard time criticizing a guy for missed shots when, at the time, he was 9 for 17 and the best option on offense. Considering he got essentially no rest in an extremely fast-paced game, it's no wonder his shot was off in the final 2 minutes. The game was cost by the fact that we couldn't get a defensive rebound in 4 tries in the final minute and three of our primary scorers shot 13 for 36 for the game. It didn't help that JVG burned all his timeouts when Francis was on the bench and the Grizz were making their comeback. The very fact that we had an opportunity to win the game with under two minutes to play on the road, getting horribly outrebounded, with the majority of our scorers shooting under 40 percent is really pretty miraculous. Even the best teams only hover around .500 on the road and the Rockets are currently 10-12.
It's a mental thing more then anything not knowing how to win, or what decisions to make to seal and close out a game, because physically we can beat any team out there in the league on any given night (We have two potentially dominant players in Francis and Yao. They both have their own issues when it comes to dominating a game but they're both very capable of it.), but it's really the mental game that separates the winners from the losers, and the mediocre teams from the elite. You mean like a 10 cent brain?
I'll second that, SFs beeing improving, you cant expect him to play a certain way for his entire NBA career and then ask him to change and expect an entire turnaround overnight
players must make all shots, don't you know Jeff, the posters round here complaining about missed shots have never missed a shot in the NBA themselves!!!!
Going back to the title. the first time I heard that phrase was for baseball player Mike Ivey. The exact phrase for him was $100,000 runway, $0.10 tower. Interesting that the body has appreciated, while the going rate for poor brains stays the same!
Thank goodness for your post, I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that was a pretty entertaining game last night. I'm also having a hard time complaining about the guy, when the momentum of the game completely changed around when they took Steve out of the game in the 4th quarter. To me that's where the game was lost. The rockets also had the misfortune of losing every long rebound in the game. One of the things I enjoyed last night was all the coaching moves between Brown and JVG. It was really fun watching all of the strategy changes made in that game and many of them worked. Padgett also played a great game last night. With the grizzlies giving the rockets their best shot at home, the boys still had a chance of pulling it out in the end. Its unfortunate some of you appear to have missed a pretty darn good game.
hey hey hey now.. lets not get off topic .. because we all know J-Lo has the million dollar booty i mean body and i doubt that Francis has a 10 cents brain .. cause if he had a million dollar body.. than he sure as hell would use them instead of passing the ball up to a lesser of value player confusing but whatever
Come on now the guy trusts his teamates for 47 minutes, what more do you want? Oh, I know....1 more minute. DD
I don't consider this to be completely true, only partially true. Steve is only about 40percent into his transition still along way to go.
