Our D is far from where it was a few months ago. To give up 104 to the Hawks is bad. But remember, we gave up 109 to the Kings at home, gave up 100+ to the Heat. Clearly we are slipping, and I definitely want to see Tmac take more pride on D! Clearly , we are no longer the best defensive team, and I hope some of our perimeter players wake up, i mean Dikembe can't block everything
tmac played great D. when he was on joe, joe can only score when he called for the screen and deke wouldn't help up. when straight up, tmac shut him down. tmac is just not good around the screens b/c he doesn't want to absorb the contact.
Well without Yao, we have been adjusting to running a faster paced game. We've still been winning games, and as soon as Yao gets back and the game becomes slower, the grind it out defense will show through. We've had some bad defensive nights, yes, but we are playing a much faster game without Yao.
Thid team ideally can use a Jeff Foster type to eat up boards. The Atl kids ran circles around Deke and Juwan tonight. Foster is not faster, but he is quick to the ball.
Have you seen a plane crash to a bunch of brids at take off? In today's case, Rockets crash to a bunch of hawks at launch phase, try not to worry about it...sky is not limited...
It is the effort that has slipped......the team coasts far too often, they are getting the big head about their record and it is biting them in the A$$. DD
Exactly. This was a classic trap game. And we fell into the trap. Absolutely no defense tonight, just hacking. We thought the Hawks would just lay down and die for the mighty Rockets, lol.. For the last couple of days I've been hearing Rox players talk about playoffs and home court advantage, etc. They clearly overlooked this Hawks team, and paid dearly..
Hopefully this will be a wake up game. One that can motivate our guys through the time when Yao comes back. Once he's back, I think a lot of things will click fairly quickly, and they'll begin to recognize what's at stake every night.
the reason we get no respect........we play well againt miami and slip up against atlanta.....theres no reason for anyone to take us serious
i can't believe i'm saying this but you're 100% correct. that's exactly what has happened, and van gundy has been predicting it for a while. i have a feeling it might be an energy thing with some of the older guys too. we need to bust out the yao signal. a blessing that could come out of this, if he regains his dominance by the playoffs, is that he'll be totally fresh through june.
Today's problem is that all the Roxs are not absorted in D~it's terrible~!But as word goes back,man always has indolence after a big fire(big win over Heat).So the roxs did today! BTW~since the series games will be coming,our Roxs should do their best to keep them"best defensive team"!There is nothing but solid defensive can bring us a ring in series games~! At last,I wanna say~we will go farer than ever when we have healthy Yao and Tmac and we are all absorted in defensive court~!
Defense is more of a mental game than offense. I guess since we're doing fairly well w/o Yao, the success is getting to our heads. Or maybe the team is getting too excited about Yao's comeback and the unlimited potential this team has. Despite my complaints about Jeff, he does know how to motivate his players on D. This might be a needed lapse for the run ahead.
The problem is that JVG does not put Snyder and Span on court when Battier and Head are having bad nights.
Ugh, not another JVG should put XXX player in post again. Anyway, I saw this loss coming even just after the Heat win. And I'm sure several others here might have seen it too. It's always underdog teams like Atlanta who can topple a winning team after they've won big. And make no mistake, Atlanta isn't a "bad" team by any stretch. Their main problem is that they simply don't have the experience to know how to close out games night in and night out.
I think you are right. Battier has his tough defence as usual, but it just could not stop Johnson to score, and he did not do much in the offence side. It was better to let Snyder play last night. Head...I do not what's wrong with him.
i suppose jvg is ignoring at some potential bench player, rocket's bench player scored 8pts...but hawk 32pts... does anybody think such team go further in the playoff??
JVG shoud have put in Jake. His ugly mug alone would have scared the Hawks into missing shots. I agree with wingz0. Why is it some bench scrub becomes supposed savior every time we lose? You stick with who brought you this far even when they have tough nights. It's called, having a little faith. I wonder if the Rockets got mentally lax due to Yao's imminent return-- just thinking we don't have to kill ourselves playing hard because the big guy will make up for everything later even if we lose a game or two now. With this team, the D is mostly an effort thing. When the Rockets don't have the mental readiness to play 48 mins of intense ass busting D, their age get exposed.
