Poll: What would you most attribute our loss to the Suns to?

Yea, but what was with that soccer-style 'Ole, ole' chant that was going on in the second quarter. That was crazy!

 

1. Suns are the better team (at this point)
2. TMac had his worst shooting night of the year (at least I can't remember a worst performance) Brick City!
3. Ming looked older than Mutombo.
4. Sura couldn't hit a red barn with a brick bat.
5. We did not make our freebies.

I voted for 2 as the main reason.

 

We just ran out of gas trying to play to their tempo. Dikembe was our savior in the first half, thank God for him.

If I had to lay blame, I'd put it on our defense, and the inability of just about everyone to hit (or even take in some cases) an open 3. Andre Barrett had a good look near the end of the 3rd quarter, but he penetrates to the hole instead and bricks a runner. Sura shouldn't be shooting 3s, period. Wesley and Barry and Tmac all looked sort of off tonight. And our D, why double? Why collapse? They live and die by their 3s (at least Qrich does). Stay at home on your man and make them beat you inside.

 

Blame that one on Chance.

 

Well, in a game like this, Kobe would be able to go to the line at least 15 times, T-mac 8.

By the way, T-mac is not a good 3-point shooter if you look at his statistics, why does he keep shooting the 3 ball?

 

i attribute it to a slow start. once we got down by 10 or 15 early we couldn't make it up and spent the rest of the game tryong to get within striking distance--like most of our losses this season.

 

And allowed the Sun' many easy 3's points.

 

The Suns did a great job of denying the ball into Yao - forcing us to settle for jump shots. Yao's points mostly came off of offensive rebounds...

I thought the rockets played well. The numuber one problem I saw was that we didn't get a hand in their shooter's face...The Suns 'live and die' by the three, and unfortunately, we gave them too much breathing room...

 

True. I was actually a bit surprised that we were not blown out. If T-mac makes some of his shots and we hit our free throws then we could have stole one.

 

The main reason we lost?

15/30 (or whatever final number it was) freakin' three-pointers.

And the fact that our open shooters couldn't hit the TC with a baseball.

 

44% from the arc for the Suns,

That's the ball game right there. Even with that we had a real chance to win this game.

I personally appauld the Roxs for their effort and game last nite, just like everyone else should.

Don't worry we'll tear the Fakers apart on Friday nite.

 

The suns are just a better basketball team than we are right now.

 

The Suns can shoot and we can't. Tracy had an off game. Howard just looks terrible when he shoots, Mo wasn't much better. Sura should never shoot another Three.

 

I voted Tracy's poor shooting, but I feel it was the teams poor shooting. Even though the Suns were hot for stretches of the game our defense made stops when we were suppose too. But on the offensive end no one was hitting any shots.

Killed us from end of the 3rd quarter all the way to the end of the game. Other than that I was very impressed with Yao's play last night. I just wish we would give him the ball more, and get a higher percentage shot rather than long jump shots.

 

You are so right. Did you notice him leave Marion wide open for three towards the end of the fourth, when we had the game down to 9 points?

HOWARD YOU HAVE BEEN GUARDING MARION ALL GAME, WHY ARE U CONFUSED ALL OF A SUDDEN?

Then what does he do the next possession. Jack up a looooong jumper from the top of the key the didn't have a chance of going in. No one was under the basket for the Rox, and the Suns were off to the races after the Def. rebound. Terrible just terrible.

 

Heck, there were plenty reasons we lost. Jeff's game plan and substitution pattern was a little off last night.

1) We didn't shoot very well, especially TMac.

I attribute some of it to the minutes he had to play. TMac said he has never been so tired after a game before, ever. 42 minutes against a running team like Phoenix? He elevates so high to shoot jumper, he needed fresh legs. Jeff had him played 20+ minutes straight without a break from the tip off and then checked out with 3+ minute to go to the half? What happened to a break in between and have your star finish the half strong?

Our other shooters were too pumped for the game and hurried the shots too much. Even FT shooting was off. Everyone missed 1 of 2 FT early in the game.

2) Rebounding.
Rebounding is the one thing Phoenix is worse than its opponents and we couldn't win that battle.

Deke had a very good game but leaving him in there for 12 minute stretch spanning the 1st and 2nd was a bit much. He couldn't get the rebound the last few minutes he was in and he fouled more than ususal.

How about the 3 crucial minutes to start the 4th when we had 5 avg to bad rebounders on the court at the same time: Ming, Taylor, Barry, Wesley, Barrett?

3) Phoenix shot well from the outside.
We determined to stop Nash's pentration and Amare's inside game. Yao and Deke played Amare well. We trapped and stopped Nash cold on the PnR and dropped the wings to help the helper but the rotation was too slow to get back to the shooters. Maybe we should have changed it up? I imagine to take away open outside shots, we could give up other things.

With all the minuses, the fact that we hung with them for a long time shows that we are capable of much better things when we click on all cylinders.

 

This game was winnable and the Rox matched the Suns in RBs, assist/turnovers, FT%, shots attempted, if we just could have knocked down a few more shots or if some of those shots that rimmed out went in we may well have won. I was happy that we matched up in those other statistical categories and the Rockets are definitely playing better. I think we can now claim we aren't the most disappointing team in the league, that privilige belongs to Utah, Denver and Minnesota.

If I had two wishes for the rest of the season, it would be to keep feeding Yao and make him play more minutes, lets see if he can step up. I would want to know before we have to give him a max contract. Lets stop babying Yao and find out once and for all what he is made of.

I would also prefer the Rox to not take 28 threes, this team is not an outside sharp shooting team. Take the 18-20 footers instead of the three. The Suns deployed the same defensive strategy that JVG tried on the Suns, let them beat us from the 3 point line. It worked for them but not for us. We can't hit threes consistently and they can/did.

 

They gave us open looks, they barely guarded us, and we could not get a shot to drop. It was that simple to me. The gameplan was fine. We just couldn't hit an open shot. It's the same problem we've been fighting all season.

 

Yeah and Gundy's bad coaching is the reason we went 3-20 from behind the arc??

You JVG haters are getting annoying!!!