First...our interior defense is perfect. I don't think many people can score inside with Yao, Eddie, Mo, and Cato protecting the basket unless your name is Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Shaquille O'Neal, or Chris Webber...or Elton Brand. BUT ANYWAYS... Our interior defense is fine. We almost lead the league in blocks.....and still are 4th in rebounding although we have not been getting much rebounds...WHY?!!? BECAUSE THE OPPOSING TEAMS ARE MAKING ALL THEIR SHOTS. First...Francis, Moochie, and Mobley should not allow the person they are guarding to get past them. This causes penetration and foul trouble for our big men. BUT WHEN THEY DO GET PAST, our players have to find someone to cover instead of just watching the guy with the ball. Our help defense is all right. Yao always comes over to help Griffin..which leaves someone open. That means some of our other players have to go and help cover Yao's man. Posey is a good defender. But God...he drifts off to often. When people go inside...he should understand that we already have plenty of big men. He needs to stay on his man. But I don't get why the Rockets practiced their usual gambling type defense when they leave one guy open...AGAINST THE SEATTLE SUPERSONICS. Every player can shoot. Throughout the game...we left Rashard Lewis and Ray Allen open. That's just sad... Our offense is pretty normal. But our defense needs to be improved. When one person goes to help out another...another person has to go and help out the person who went to help out the other guy. Our defense needs to be intensified!!! We need to start out aggressive...
Our biggest weakness as a team is on defense. Our guards and our small forward peak and leave their man all the time, allowing smarter teams to use backdoor cuts etc to tear us apart for easy shots. The best thing the coaching staff could do is teach them how to play a zone, so that when teams start picking apart our defense, we can mix it up and go to a zone. Playing man to man defense is a lost artform, especially from guards. DD
Zone would be a good idea. Then our players won't be running around. They will have specific areas to "patrol". And Yao or Cato along with Eddie and MoT will defend inside. That would work for a while...Mobley and Posey can both switch off and guard multiple positions. But after a couple of minutes...a smart coach will probably figure out how to break our zone. But still....zone defense sounds better than what we are doing now!! Whatever we are doing on defense...
We need to mix it up. Some zone, some man to man ... No defense will completely shut down the opp. but we need to switch among many defenses and dictate the game instead of helplessly watch the opp play to their strong suit. More importantly, our guards need to play more straight up defense rather than gamble and allow opp. to drive to the basket and get our big men in trouble. We are also bad in defending picks and screen ... We can play good defense at times. We need to do it all the time!
