Right on! Also if Yao can let go of his Chineses National team commitments, he'll make Stevie eat his words....Yao is a 20-10-3-3 baller given the right offensive structure which JVG will hopefully accomodate and when fully fit...Yao's national obligations reminds me of the issues in soccer between club and country. I hope Stevie won't become a cancer because he had 4 years to be the MAN with no play-off appearance to speak of. A hypothetical question is if Stevie is relegated by JVG for not passing the ball "enough" to Yao, will it lead to infighting and a possible trade?
That's awesome how you insinuated that there was an internal conflict there. Do you always help situations loadedCballer?
Vlade Divac averaged less blocks than Ming and I consider him a great center wrt today's centers...Brad Miller was an All-Star "center" and Yao tripled his block average... Ostertag, Bardley and Foyle are one trick ponies and doesn't have the heavy responsibilities that Yao carries...if all Yao had to was block shots solely he'd average 4-5 a game and lead the league in the next ten years...does that mean he's a great center? Imagine if all Hakeem had to do was block shots and rebound and doesn't have worry about being the #1, 2 and 3 option in the early Rocket years...can you imagine???? 5-6 blocks and 15+ boards/game.
Why not??? With the pressures of a new arena, a new coach with a differing philosophy to what the Rockets have been doing for the past four years (is iso dead?) and a second year phenom who is expected to have a greater role in the team (possible the #1 option)... don't you think that locker room tension could occur and boil when expectations and goals are not met and especially if coach's instructions are not being followed to the letter? Internal conflict is always possibility. In terms of your second question, it's just a hypothesis. Nothing wrong IMHO.
f4p, Your side will not be taken seriously in a thread about Francis for 2 reasons now: 1) Your name- no one expects you to be objective and point out faults of Steve w/ a name like that 2) This repose: Are you f*cking joking??? Martyn was not in the games long enough to make an impact positive or negative. Martyn just simply sucks! He averaged 16+ minutes a game to Steve's 41. Francis averaged almost 4 times as many turnovers than Martyn. Norris is terrrible, and so is your false assessment. The ball massager that is Francis and his PG play was much much more of an issue than that of Martyn. For the record, Cat averaged almost 42 minutes per game and a twice as many turnovers which isn't great but not all that bad. His problem is shot selection. The problem with that is Steve get schooled by PG's that are his size, so unless the Rockets get a big physical PG who can guard a SG then the opposing SG will score 50 points a night on him. Francis' value is going to sink like a rock if he does not learn how to play PG, and soon his trade value will be along the lines of Jason Williams. A guy who is over paid and not good at his position.
I still think Steve can ay the 2 defensively, though. Obviously not against everybody, but Steve's main defensive problems aren't physically, they're athletic - which is surprising given Steve's athletic abilitiy. He gets schooled consistently by PG's that are quicker left and right then him. In the end, Marbury, Nash, Payton, Davis, Williams, etc., beat everyone off the dribble, that is their games (although it does seem that Steve plays slightly better against Payton and Davis, who are more physical and not quite as quick than the other three). Steve just has to do a much much much better job making it difficult for those PG's (and others) to do it. I truly don't think he understands where his weakness is in that area. Side note, one of Nash's best qualities, and one that I hope Steve can learn to do more over the years, is his ability to keep the dribble - he does this better than any PG in the league. Where Steve will beat someone off the dribble and drive the lane, he'll invariably jump in the air for some kind of wild layup (that he often makes, he is pretty good) or a turnover. Nash keeps his dribble going and often will bring back the ball all the way out, but even more often by just starting to do that a passing lane will open up. Steve's trading value will never be as low as J-Williams was. He does too many other things well, and watching the Rockets play with and without him in the game proves that to me.
May I respectfully suggest that you are the one with an overabundance of selective perception. Moochie Norris is hardly a recognized icon in the other 28 NBA cities and didn't play enough minutes for Kenny Smith to announce on national televison that the Rockets are guilty of "dribble diarrhea". Somewhere in your mental highlight reels, you seem to forget that the Rockets seldom started a half court set with more than 12 seconds on the clock and then Steve went into his multiple crossover manuevers to eat up about 4-6 seconds more. I'm not deliberately bashing your namesake or am I a "hata" but I've got too many games on tape to think otherwise. Pick one if you don't agree. Regarding Yao, at least 50% of the time one or more of the following occurred: 1) He received the ball with 8 or fewer seconds. 2) There were no weakside cutters...only 2 or 3 Rox planted at the 3 point line with their defenders sagging the paint. 3) When Yao did pass the ball back out, seldom was a re-entry post pass made. The Rockets simply did not try to get Yao the ball in deeper post position and/or with an entry pass after the ball had been moved around the perimeter. This is all easily verified if you have tapes of last season. Otherwise, it may be you who is blocking things out.
At least the whole discussion on Steve being a S or P of a G, just confirms that the offense would be better off through Yao. Even though he is a center, no one contests that he is a great passer with great court awareness. He doesn't have to rebound, block shots or score more to prove that. Comparing Steve or Yao BB IQ is not even funny: I am sincerely sad to see how SF is lagging behind. So if SF needs to be our scoring leader, that is just fine, he excels at scoring. But, as far as decision making is concerned: give the leather to Yao. This is akward because usually, or by stereotypes: PG decides and C slams it 'in'. The defense side of the discussion is another story altogether. Both SF and YM have a lot to do in this aspect and the sad thing is we do not have any defensive leader on the team, except maybe Adrian Griffin. But defense is not our weakest point, team chemistry is.
You've got to run the offense through the big man. Once that happens things will open up for Francis and the others on the outside. I don't care how green Yao is, if you have a 7'6" guy you use him as much as possible. I think before the next 2-3 years are over Steve Francis willl show his true colors and we will be shipping him out of Houston.
Chris Childs isn't even worthy enough to hold Stevie's jockstrap. Yao isn't ready to be the centerpoint of the offense, but Steve is. He is the franchise and even when Yao realizes his potential, point guard play wins championships.
Point guard play wins championships? What are you trying to say here? Last I checked, Dominant centers win Championships ( with the exception of Jordan ).
HAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHH!!!! wew!, all this debate over what PETER VESCEY wrote in the POST??? jevus! you guys really will bite at anything to start the yao vs. steve wars, huh? ok, and for the kid who said something about vescey "breaking" the story of rudy's retirement, lets look at this... les said they would asses things when asked about rudy coaching this year, rudy's public fight with cancer, and the rumblings around the league that there needed to be big changes going into the new arena...hmmm, i think just about anyone could break that story. vescey's methods of reporting are like this: watch basketball, devise an opinion, and then in order to give your opinions some authority, follow around the sports figure and go, "so, you really hate that new coach, huh?" do this about 5,000 times over and over until celebrity sports figure gets pissed and says, "yeah, whatever!" and then promptly write about it in lengthy detail in the post. or he just completely makes **** up. vescey's occasional accuracey pretty muchs goes like this, pick up a handful of darts and briskly throw them at the dart board, if you do this everyday, at least one will hit a bullseye every few months. how do i know this is true? i live in nyc and read his article for a good laugh. ****, no one here believes a damn thing he says either.
oh yea, i was just curious, lionheart, who was that dominant center that played for detroit and boston for those last few rings? just wondering.
was this sarcastic at my expense or not? the first line seemed true, the second one did, the 3rd one i'm not sure, and the 4th had to be sarcastic. i think. is this where i put an emoticon in?
it is for debates such as this that i do not block things out. hell, maybe i'm just overreactionary to all of the guard hate/yao love around here and feel i have to stick up for the guards every once in a while, but i don't think they were as inept as everyone makes them out to be. many things people don't like seem to be problems they have with rudy's offense more than steve (i.e. not getting it up quicker or having movement which we've never had really) and it just all seems to get dumped on the guards. i know we didn't use yao perfectly, but i also know francis rarely dribbled the whole clock out only to give it to yao at the last second (he wanted to shoot too much at that point to pass). you would agree that yao often paused a good 2-4 seconds to look around sometimes and often got mixed up in his footwork, resulting in a stop to his movement, and then necessitated passing back out in desperation. now since we always started the offense so late, whoever he passed to was screwed and maybe it wasn't yao's fault, but it happened. that's about all i got for now.
Yao obviously has to be the number one option i think. When you have a 7'5 320 lb. badass, it might be smart on your part to get him the ball *steve and cuttino* ... no matter if you have a 43 inch vertical or not. having said that, i still think that maybe steve is still the best player on the team. at least last year he was, but i think Yao is the man from this year on. Did you see his increased size... arms, calves... unfreakinbelievable
