The starters were in with Deke since Yao was out as mentioned with his left toenail removed. Should be back in a week. Juwan started on the bench with Rafer and Bonzi in the back court, Tmac and Shane with Deke. Shane started at the four. The first two subs were Luther and Kirk Snyder. Juwan came as the last of the "starters" team off the bench. Bonzi abused V Span on a post up, got the and 1. He seemed nice when signing autographs, really nice and down to earth, my son and I were a bit shocked by that... Harryaz is really tall, he seemed to move pretty well and run the floor well, even ran the pick and roll with VSpan but booted the pass. Several players were'nt ready for Billy's passes, and some of his passes were off line, but he blew past the A team defenders and ran the pick and roll fairly well. Lucas looked amazing at times but missed some close in shots. He is quick. Luther looked good, hit a contested three, nothing but net from the corner. Looked bulked up too. Casey Jacobsen I thought was 3 for 3, someone earlier said two. I swore it was three. He looked really good. Novak has a beautiful shot, but twice got the pass which was offline and it seemed to mess up his shot. He got one great pass, nailed the three so fluid it was scary. Quick release, easy to push around though. He played the four against Padget who didn't show very much of anything. Rafer got a pass while wide open out on the arc and nailed the 3 pretty smoothly, he seemed in control and made that great pass to T mac for the windmill slam. JVG took T Mac out ten seconds later. The new announcer has that radio sound,he could be pretty good, hard to be any worse than tgray.
I took my wife and kids there and they enjoyed it pretty much. Kinda hard to get a guage on the team with just one 20 minute scrimmage session.. But for some reason like someone else said it was surprisingly boring compared to last year...All the young guys looked good... Azubuike has a lot of athleticism, i liked the way he attacked the basket...
What did everyone think about the "Let's Go Houston Rockets!" chant idea they had? Do ya'll think it'll actually work during games? For those who weren't there, they assigned a role to all 4 sides of the Toyota Center. The first baseline side would go "Let's!", then the other baseline would say "Go!", moving to the sideline who would say "Houston!", then finishing it off on the other side with "Rockets!"
It was hard enough for the guy to get 4,000 people to do it right. I don't think 18,000+ is going to work all that well. Besides, I didn't think that was some kind of new game cheer or anything. It was just some bullshiit to waste time before the players came out. I don't think it matters what we chant anyway, as long as it's loud.
Julio, I thought that cheer worked pretty well today, and when Clutch has done that at games with Houston and then Rockets on the two different sides of the court, the crowd has gotten into it. It makes the crowd competitive with itself. I hope they do it at the games...
man, i cant believe flying ryan is that tall, azibuke has HUGE arms. that dunk by tmac was pretty awesome, and not to mention ill probably never get to see them that close again (2nd row). i really like novak's shot. even though he only made 1. padgget is alot taller than i orginally though. deke was nice, he gave his jersey/shirt thing to a fan. and yes they are wearing that padded armor stuff. hmm luther seemed more confident when he was dribbling, non of that one sided thing he was pulling last year. rafer actually scored on a three. vspan was okay. and i dont remember snider..and bonzi is a pretty big guy.. haha... well even though my summary of the game sucks, thats all i can give...my friend took some pictures, so here they are http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/vovin....done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos
oh yeah i know it was previously mentioned earlier, JHO IS STILL WASTING UP SPACE. they called i think 2 fouls and he took forever to shoot them. granted he made both but the time never stopped =/
The highlight of the day was shaking Steve Novak's hand and warning him about scotty the body. Did anyone else get to shoot free throws??? Bonzi gave me a stone face when I said "You the man Bonzi" on court before shooting the free throws. Maybe he doesnt like the attention?
Well that was fun. Who else went? I did not expect that many people to be their since it was on a Monday, I guess people still get Columbus Day off. The first hour was just ticket promotions, videos of the Rockets highlights, random fans shooting half court jumpers. You know, that kind of stuff. Finally the players came out. Everyone was there except Yao Ming. They did their shoot-around and then started a 5 on 5 game. Key notes during the game: -Skip made one open 3, but missed 2 other slightly contested/open jumpers. -Vassilis was sort of show boating, and did a pump fake (pulled his leg up and then back) and shot a 3. He air balled. This drove JVG crazy. He had his face burried in his hands and he was ready to pull out what was left from his hair. C'mon VG this is the first time he played for his fans. Let him have fun. -T-Mac only played like 3 min and had one nice alley-oop. It did look planned, but it was still nice. He made both of his FTs but missed a couple other contested jumpers. -Novak did not really impress me with his 3 point shooting. This guy gets paid to shoot and I believe he went 1/3. -Kelenna Azubuike really impressed me. He is a hard nosed player that works for every bucket. -Bonzi posted up V-Span and ofcourse got the bucked and 1. He looked lonely on the bench with no one sitting on his right, or left side. I bet he misses that $32 mil he walked of in Sac-Town. -Battier hustled. Ryan Bowen x10 is what I saw today. -Padgett missed his one open 3. Should we give Bonner another call? -Head impressed me. He hit both of his 3s and one was highly contested. -Deke looked winded 4-5 minutes into the game. -Howard hit his FTs, and I'm not sure if he hit his jumpers. I saw him miss one. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
haha did you guys see it when the side that yelled "houston" called out deke. he and i think bonzi were the only ones that paid attention and waved. tmac = gay. i got to shoot 2 free throws cause i missed one...bowen was holding a child wtf? haha but that dude is huge..too bad he possesses little to no basketball skill. and yeah rafer's biceps are nothing to kelena's..
My kids and I had a great time! I was able to get a polaroid taken with the Rocket's NBA Championship trophies. My sons were able to get T-Mac's autograph on their jerseys, my daugther got Hayes and Howard's autograph, and I was able to get Well's autograph. I did get some pics but I had a pocket camera and will have to wait to get them developed. All in all it was worth the six hour drive to H-Town. I can't wait for the season to start. I will need to get NBA League Pass this year.
sorry the pics are dark cuz we took them from the other side of the court......the flash wasnt strong enough! sorry fellas.... http://home.earthlink.net/~nicerollin/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/rocketsstuff025.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicerollin/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/rocketsstuff030.jpg http://home.earthlink.net/~nicerollin/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/rocketsstuff027.jpg http://home.earthlink.net/~nicerollin/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/rocketsstuff028.jpg
the best moment was van gundy putting his head in his hands. he didn't look pissed, just more like why would you take that shot, billy. classic. t-mac was the highlight, he didn't shoot well, but i thought physically he looked really, really good, and that's always fantastic news.
