Hey guys, I drove up to the game tonight from Oakland and saw the game live. I took a few pictures, but none worth posting or mentioning because really, I'm no camera man and I've always hated doing camera-related things. Anyway, here are some of my observations from the game: Pregame: There were more people standing on the floor on the Rocket's side of the court than there were on the King's side. While the crowd was overwhelmingly composed of Sacramento fans, there were a good number of enthusiastic Rockets fans there. Shane Battier, Chuck Hayes, and Luther Head were kind enough to step over and sign autographs, while Mike James ignored the crowd and Carl Landry went as far as to practically flee into the tunnel when people began to call his name. (He was the last guy on the floor). One thing - people, get something worth signing. The vast majority of the autographs were people with little pieces of notebook paper asking for them to be signed...seriously? Players: Yao could have easily scored another 15 or 20 points. Every Sacramento fan around me was pretty much resigned to the fact that Yao was going to dominate, and dominate he did - for one half. Sacramento got away with a ton of holding, pushing, and grabbing on Yao in the post, and the defensive three second calls should have come at least another two or three times. Artest was similarly getting away with a lot of body and hand contact while Tmac was receiving the ball in the post. Adelman or not, Tracy is initiating a TON of the offense - during many possessions it is as if the other players aren't even playing until Tmac gets the ball. Also, as gifted as he is, he definitely does not take defense seriously. You know the player at the gym who will swipe at you and the ball instead of bodying up and denying you the rim? That was Tmac this game... This is acceptable because he can be assigned to guard a mediocre player and thus save his energy, but I hope come playoff time we have a different story on our hands. Teams with scoring role players will have field days here. Mike James: Get him out of the game. I've been feeling increasingly anti-James recently, and tonight is no exception. He is decent on offense, I'll give you that - however, his good shot and acceptable penetration abilities are offset by the fact that he takes far too many possessions creating his own shot. Everyone knows the player that can't change his mind in the middle of a play - that's Mike James. If he's going to pass, he'll do so without threatening the defense. If he's going to shoot, well gosh darn he's going to shoot no matter what crappy situation it is. Occasionally, he'll throw a bailout pass to someone as he gets stuck at the baseline. However, offense aside - Mike James was getting BURNED on D, and though he may score in bunches, he costs the team in bad shots, turnovers, and opponent buckets. I remember about 5 possessions where: 1. Mike James gets burned, layup. 2. Mike james early shot clock bad jumper: miss. 3. Mike James burned on D, layup. 4. Mike James turnover. etc. James pretends to play good D on every other possession or so, getting into a good stance - but two steps and you're past him. Bonzi: Good rebounding, but he got burned even worse than Mike James. He WAS guarding Artest for much of the game, so cut him some slack on that. However, when not "locked in" on his man, his D was lazy, lazy, lazy. He doesn't close in on shooters, and doesn't rotate quickly at all. Shane: The only player on the rockets that played acceptable defense. He really doesn't take possessions off, and when it comes to closing out on shooters, chasing fast breaks, and rotating, he does it with maximum intensity. However, he practically never looks for his own shot and whoever is guarding him can pretty much use one eye on Yao or McGrady. Battier needs to look to shoot more. Defense: Our defense is what cost us the game. We'd better hope that once Adelman's offense catches on, it's worth it - because every player except Shane showed very little defensive intensity. Even Yao would take posessions off, leading to his man scoring on a cut a few times and his rotation assignment getting easy short range jumpers. Tmac would expect others to D up and wouldn't pick up on transition help, and Bonzi would rather pretend to go for a block than actually go for one. Mike James looked like he was playing hard D, but I'm pretty sure it was just an illusion. Offense: Tmac high post. Tmac Low post. Tmac Yao pick and roll. Rafer random drive to basket. Mike James tunnel vision iso moves. What offense? The Rockets outside of Mike James need to stop looking for the extra pass. They're all such unselfish players already, what ends up happening is an extra, extra, extra pass. Instead of a drive-dish-shot or drive-dish-drive, what you get is a drive-dish-pass-pass-pass-drive-pass-shot fake. The only smooth plays were the basic ones with Tmac and Yao and one uncontested Battier bucket - the rest were...well. Overall, this team has so much talent but has, in my opinion, completely lost the defensive intensity JVG installed. The missed assignments and rotations I saw were simply unacceptable, and the Kings got easy buckets all night long. Right now, our offense isn't there yet and our defense is slacking off - hopefully we'll turn it around soon. Kings: Kevin Martin is quick as hell. There was no one we had that could stay in front of him. Artest got away with a lot, and he plays physical. He also plays hard - it looked like he took Tmac as a challenge and made sure to body up and stay in front of him as much as possible. Brad Miller: Is afraid of Yao. Mikki Moore: Big body, mediocre skills, can't guard Yao. Udrih: Like his play. Garcia: Missed a lot of easy shots, but created a lot of easy shots. Hope this sheds some insight.
Interesting observation. And i know mike james won't ever change. He shouldn't be playing /w tmac and yao in a lineup again. Best suited at the 2nd unit where he belongs.
good observation. They should bundle up rafer anf mj to trade for a decent pg, otherwise they have to literally merge the two to make a decent pg.
Actually, I forgot to write about Rafer: Rafer actually plays good D. I'd put him second behind Shane on my list tonight on effort and defensive intensity. He does get burned by top grade PG's, but most players do. Rafer plays monster minutes and while he's out there, you know he'll try his best to keep his man down. On the other side of the ball, Rafer's much better than he looks on TV with keeping control of the ball and distributing to whomever needs to be distributed to. Newsflash: his shooting is really bad. Even in warmups - you could see that oftentimes he didn't want the shot.
please stop popping the Mike James fantasy bubble. Fans deserve to have their fantasy so they can last for the whole season.
Thanks for the summary. I disagree about Rafer. Part of the reason Yao fouled out was Rafer wasn't guarding his man well enough. He MIGHT try hard, I don't know, but he certainly did NOT do well. Kmart was in Yao's face all night, but Kmart is fast, I'll give you that. But Beno was in Yao's face all night too. Is Beno a premier PG?
Beno is playing like a man posessed. He scored 26 on the Spurs mind you. That was him being guarded by Parker. So no I would say Rafer did a fair job.
Good analysis and thanks for the sideline perspectives. In bold is what I was saying about Tmac in another thread were people we basically saying that he is doing all that he can do. Although you agree that his lack of defense is acceptable, this is where I differ because he is right now a leader for this team. So they take their demeanor from him and this is probably why everyone is playing such sorry defense. They see Tmac do it and they get lazy too. The problem is that they can't then turn it on on the offensive end like Tmac does; so they just end up sucking the whole game on both ends of the floor!
