LOL. Critiquing (or hell, having hope) from 12 minutes of play in an exhibition game... man, and I thought people overanalyzed the regular season....
Charity game or no charity game, the fact is Mo has short arms, so rebounds are hard to come by. But if he could chill on the meatball subways for a while we may some see some gains in the rebound department and not the weight department.
Mo spent all last season recovering from a year off due to injury the previous year. Towards the end of the year, he started to come on strong. His weight slowly went down as the season went along and by the end of the year, he looked to be in great shape with the offensive game to match. Cut him some slack. At least wait until the season starts to slam him and don't judge him by some silly meaningless exibition game.
You see hope for Mo when he scored 2 points and have 5 rebounds in a game where Bobby Simmons had 16 points and 4 rebounds?
i really am confused at the degree of hatred people have for motay. dude was the 2nd best low post scorer on the team last year. he absolutely carried us offensively for many 4th quarters. defensively, he is the only big man on the team who gets good positioning on driving players...thus the number of offensive fouls he gave others. no, he's not a "stopper", but i don't know that we need him to be. next year, at 100% (hopefully), if motay can give us 15-17ppg, i can deal with his defensive deficiencies. more accurately, i think yao ming can deal with motay's defensive deficiencies. rebounding wise, if you watched the game, mo would work very hard to get position in the paint. the main problem i saw (and i saw every game) was that he flat out did not go to the ball after he boxed his man out. there were times when he did, such as the philly v houston game...where everyone just assumed KT would rip him a new one. guess what? didn't happen. mo not only controlled KT and scored on KT, he also had damn near 10 boards in the 1st half! all of this shows me that motay has the skill necessary to be a serviceable power forward. i think he just needs the focus. to this point in his career, he has not shown the ability to maintain focus on his own, however, there is hope that a strong coach (JVG) can assist him in maintaining it. i truly believe that motay, above every other rocket, has the best chance to improve his play under JVG. what mo lacks is what JVG can demand. if mo has any cajones, he'll respond to JVG's challenge. and judging from the way he responded to jamaal magliore's challenge, i am convinced motay has the cajones....he's just needed someone to squeeze 'em. squeeze 'em JVG!!! squeeze 'em!!!
Nice, verse. Couldn't have said it better myself. It's weird, everyone assumes that this team will be the same as last years team just because we haven't made a monster trade/FA signing. JVG will make a huge difference coaching this team. I expect all the usual Rocket whipping boys (MoT, Cat, EG, Cato, hell maybe even Moochie) to be much improved this season and flourish under JVG's new style of coaching. OK, maybe not Moochie.
and how am I suppose to know that? are you saying Mo does not look overweight? I remember him during his Clipper days and he was in much better shape then.
I will have to totally agree with this. I was at many rockets games last year where in the 4th quarter he was our go to guy. One game in particular was the game against the Clippers where they kept feeding him the ball down low and he could not miss from his baby hook and he single handed brought the rockets back to tie the game and eventually win the game. Throughout the season he always stepped up in the 4th quarter and was money from that baby hook in the lane. True he has other aspects that needs work like his toughness etc but i think with JVG he might be able to step up and play with more fire. At least we hope. I remember him as a Clipper he was much leaner. With the rockets he did bulk up a bit but it is both muscle and fat. When he got injured he added weight from just sitting around. I met him right after we signed him and he was much leaner then he is now. But i think he should be taking back to his normal form soon with consistant play.
MoT will be the surprise player on the Rockets this season (and I mean that in a good way). Just wait and see.
