Kyle Lowry is nothing but a decent backup PG. He should be nowhere near to being a 15 minute backup PG on a team that wants to win a NBA championship. Brooks is just downright awful. He is the biggest ball hogging, shot chucking point guard I have ever seen. He makes Iverson seem pass happy and shoot shy by comparison. Brooks needs to go. He makes Yao worse, he makes Scola worse, he makes the Rockets team worse as a whole overall. I can't believe some Rockets fans defend this guy's horrid play again and again again. The Rockets point guard situation is just downright atrocious.
DD, you're a great poster here. But, you couldn't have been more off on your adamant defense of Wafer and Brooks. I hope these past two games allow you time to rethink your past statements. Brooks will be good, but he's not ready now. He's a problem now.
Today it'd be the last time Brooks as a starter. He just isn't ready for big games. His TOs severely hurt the team. The whole team lost momentum because of these and offense started to get stagnant.
Does Brooks have a two point jumpshot? It seems like he never shoots two point jumpers. He either tries to drive to the paint or shoot long threes. It seems like he could be a high percentage two point jump shooter. Instead of being denied the paint on his drives like what happens most of the time, he could just pull up and shoot a wide open shot because they're respecting his quickness. It befuddles me how someone who seems like he would be a good two point jump shooter never does.
Oh stop it. I's not that DD's off, it's his school-girl antics. Don't you know he knows everything about basketball, all the others don't don't ssst?
This team NEEDS the calming influence and the consistently accurate shooting of Mike Bibby. We get neither out of our starting PG.
Aaron is inconsistent. Can he ever be consistent? Can, we as Rockets fan, with stand inconsistent play after having Rafer for several seasons?
Brooks and Wafer are basiclly same. They can be a weapon to surprise other teams, but once they got figured out, they won't be effective, cause they can't do anything else besides making shots.
Like I said he is very Steve Francis like, but shorter meaning he can't finish as well at the rim. He is either a potent scorer when his shot is going, or a train wreck waiting to happen when it isn't. Unfortunately it seems to be 2 train wreck games and one average game for every spectacular one and he doesn't get to volume shoot every game like Francis did when he was the number one option for the Rockets. 5 assists and 8 turn overs in this series isn't simply because the team isn't moving. That doesn't mean the team couldn't move better without the ball, but there have been plenty of open players that Brooks has missed, and plenty of unforced turn overs. Then add the possesions wasted because he dribbles out most of the clock and forces himself or someone else to take a bad shot with the clock winding down. So far he has shot like Rafer this series and played worse defense, and made worse decisions with the ball. When our "scoring" PG is getting outscored by both Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown that's a problem because that is one of the worst scoring PG tandems in the playoffs. We need him to play better or we don't have much chance of winning. And I certainly hope he does, but without a huge increase in consistency it is hard for me to have much confidence in him as the long term answer.
How did Brooks end up with 5 personal fouls? I don't remember how he picked them up and how many were offensive. I'm surprised that Adelman did not play the Brooks-and-Lowry backcourt at all, IIRC. Was this due to Brooks's foul problems? Adelman also did not play Barry at all, while Wafer got his most minutes in this series. I don't think this had anything to do with the Game 2 conflict, but Wafer not shooting well didn't help tonight. I thought Brook/Lowry and Lowry/Barry were pretty effective in the first two games. However, I can't criticize Adelman's backcourt rotation because I really can't figure out what he's after. But I have to give credit to Farmar for stepping up in Fisher's absence. I also thought he did a better defensive job on Brooks than Fisher did. I thought Brooks took too few shots (8), while Artest took too many (23). I think our starting backcourt functions better when it's more balanced. Overall, our ball movement just didn't seem very good or crisp. My feeling is that the Lakers defense messed up our shot selection and made us force a lot of shots, resulting in low FG% by Brooks, Artest, Yao and Scola. Battier's offense is too minimal to even be mentioned. I suppose you can blame Brooks for these deficiencies, but IMO the entire starting lineup just got outplayed. Even Yao got enough touches, but just could not score. Switch Lowry for Brooks tonight and I don't think the result would've been that different. But who knows, maybe Lowry's defense would've stifled Farmar as well as prevented some of the fast breaks that were killing the starters. He had 3 turnovers - 1 in the first half and 2 in the second. All the starters with the exception of Battier had 3 or 4 turnovers. Battier probably had fewer because the Lakers' D doesn't focus on him.
3 turn overs by itself isn't horrible, until you see that it accompanied only 1 assist and 3-8 shooting, with quite a few of those shots being blocked with absolutely no chance of going in, while both opposing point guards scored more on a better shooting % and less shots. This is one of the most favorable opposing PG matchups for Brooks in the west. It isn't about blaming Brooks as much as being concerned about how Brooks will play next game. As far as blame, Artest and Wafer were at least as bad or worse this game. But they have been more consistently good at their role this play offs as a whole, so I am not as concerned about how they will perform next game. Fair or not, the PG is going to be judged by how he runs the offense at least as much as how he scores. Can Brooks be a positive if he isn't shooting well? Right now I would say he hasn't been, and he needs to be if he is going to be the long term answer for us.
I guess his to' s were the only only ones that hurt right? I guess the 3rd qt fiasco was his fault too? Maybe, just maybe the lakers are a better team.
Brooks has more turnovers/wasted possessions than the boxscore has showed. If Morey likes to talk up Brooks with "hockey" assists, then he should also keep track of something like "dribble out the clock with a last sec bad shot/pass".
Lakers is the better team, no doubt. But one of the biggest reasons why Lakers are better is our PG situation sucks, our back court situation without healthy Tmac sucks. Our starting PG is playing worse than Lakers reserve PG, then Lakers have Kobe.
