One crucial part of our win against the Lakers last night was the fact that we basically shut them down defensively for the last 4-5 minutes of the game. You could especially tell on that play where we made Fisher take a buzzer beater that the players were working really hard. It reminded me of when JVG was the coach and unless you played defense like that on every single play, you weren't allowed on the floor. Now, we only seem to do it in the 4th quarter, if its close, and if its a good team. I bet we have a winning record right now if we played that kind of defense all the time.
Jordan FREAKING Hill...Battier had a great 4th quarter but JHill's defensive on Gasol and the rest of the Laker bigs at the end of the game was the key to the win IMHO. If he can give you that kind of effort, with minimal mental lapses and improving offense then it might create an interesting but really good problem for coach Adelman.
Really meant Scola, as good as Scola's offense normally is, his defense is an issue but if Jordan's offense evolves to go with solid "D" and with Yao in the middle then where does that leave Scola during crunch time?
This is something I keep thinking about this season. If JVG was coach, there is no way he'd let us be this bad defensively and there's no way we'd have this bad a record playing JVG defense. I'm not criticizing Adelman or agitating for JVG, because I don't think JVG is a better coach than Adelman. I don't know if JVG can get a team to the heights Adelman can, but wouldn't let one slip to these depths either. As for the Lakers game, I think the refs refrained from making us look bad at the end. There were a couple of chances for refs to fall for flops (by Odom and Fisher, for example) and they didn't. They could have easily handed this game to the Lakers and we'd be talking about how the Rockets fell apart down the stretch again.
