WOW.....all I can say is you're VERY VERY NEGATIVE AGAINST Yao Ming by using a paragraph of 10+ long sentences versus 3 short sentences for TMAC to just say Yao Ming sux !! Just the fact that TMAC has 24 shots attempts, and Alston has 13 attempts tell you something terribly wrong in this game for his team mates to continue bricking insteads of passing the rocks to Yao Ming for him to do his tricks there down in the low post. Despite getting into early foul troubles for those BS calls within 3 minutes in 1Q, he still came up big.....22/9/2 assists/2 blocks. All I can say you're so biased by blaming it all on Yao Ming with lame stuff like Rafer Aslton and Steve Novak could shoot better if Yao Ming had been "more aggressive"......
The biggest negative other than the fouls was that the guys around Tmac and Yao didn't do their share. Shane was on the bench forever with fouls... Novak was cold after hitting his first shot... Mutumbo looked his age (48 lol). If the rest of the guys on the team aren't going to knock down shots.. we are SCREWED.. Mike
i didn't really see anything wrong with yao offensively other than not giving him the ball. when he got it he did a good job of attacking. he should have had atleast 20 shots tonight. we didn't search him out and it was extremely frustrating when the game was still very much in reach and he didn't get a touch. it was almost entirely single coverage all night and they weren't exactly working overtime to keep it out of his hands. ugh, the guys have to recognize how money the big man is. i knew once again we'd be slow out of the gates and i think it's going to be a work in progress for most of this month. we'll win some games but i'm not going to be shocked by anything right now. this team's gonna get real good, just got give it a bit.
Dude, you don't know what the heck you're talking about. Get off the couch and shut up, damn it. Yao was being screwed by the referees again, as we all witnessed it. Yao was hacked by AK47 and Loser Boozer, NO CALL!! Yao touched someone softly, the refs blew their whistles. What the hell is that crap!??!??!! Yea, shut up if you don't know what you're talking about. Yao played aggressive tonight, he's 1 rebound short of a double-double. It was TMac and the rest of the team that lost it for us tonight. Yao played a good game and if it wasn't for those stupid referees blowing ticky tack fouls on Yao, Yao would've have 30+ points tonight.
I am not biased against Yao. I am one of his biggest fans and supporters. I would bet JVG would tell you the same thing about him. He has to get up 20+ shots. It's up to him to get them. He had the touches, but he continually waited for the defense to collapse on him and threw it out instead of taking it to the double like he did after he came back from the toe last year. That Yao was not playing last night. Double doubles don't mean anything for this guy. He is 7'6". By virtue of his 6" height advantage over practically every other player on the court, he should be a double double every night. He reacted to the defense all night instead of forcing them to react to him. To the rookie poster: Fouls??? Hey, the refs were calling them both ways. Yao had the opportunity to sit both of his defenders down and force Utah to throw Boozer on him. But he didn't force the issue. He has got to remain aggressive offensively. Yeah, the refs were blowing the whistle. You've got to force them to blow you out. Otherwise, we are back to last year before the toe injury where the refs determine our aggressiveness. That can't happen. You have to force the refs to adjust how they call the game. They know they will look foolish blowing Yao out of the game in 15 minutes at the beginnning of the 4th quarter. They will adjust. But if you don't stay aggressive and ball up when they stick a couple on you, you are dead offensively. Granted, Yao needs to back off defensively with the aggression. He should always play soft defensively early. Yes, he got about 3 calls that were a joke. I hate it. But that's an excuse. The refs were calling McGrady's defender every time McGrady went to the hole last night. Yao should have taken it to the hole relentlessly, and early and brought down the whole Jazz team.
I cant help but think if our starters weren't in foul trouble and we had them on the floor longer, this would have been a close game. I cant wait to see Bonzi in the rotation. One thing for sure, Utah is BIG and physical. No one will want a part of them come playoff time if they keep playing like this.
The biggest positive side for this game in my mind: Even the rockets had no clear picture how to execute their offense and TMAC had a very bad shooting night, they still got 97. That is good, for a JVG's team. The Rockets finally got some decent 3p shooters and that could be a big upside to the whole season. Jazzs got sizzling hot hands making almost all the midrange jumpers all night, so down by 10 is not too bad for the rockets to accept. How to defend big size jumpers is a big problem to the team though. The reason that they lost the game is that JVG didn't have the guts to play offense against offense. Our PF is hole and nothing you can do about that. So why not sending more shooters around Yao and Tmac and try to win it out in a high scoring game? I know that is not JVG's kind of game, but you need to find the other way out when you have no tools to fix the defense problem at a given night.
Bad as we played, we still had a chance to make a game of it. That's a pretty good sign of the talent that's here now, but it's good that we didn't sneak a win because of it. We would have thought we could coast and turn it on and off at will. Maybe they find out it's not so. Thats about it for the good.
I like this thread, and completely agree with all Zach's points. While T-Mac was off offensively, his passing was very nice. I still like him as Point-Forward, Magic Johnson style. Yao needs more looks, as always. Come on, JVG.
1) Yao Ming had only 12 attempts- this indicates that his team/ coach don't consider him the main force on the team. 2) T Mc G seems not the player he used to be, how could you say he is the clutch shot when his shooting was, for him, so poor? 3 Snyder needs to be involved in more plays. 4) Novac - JVG kept him in for only a few minutes at a time he had hardly any chance to get involved in the game. 5) Battier seems not to be a Power Forward and for all the little things he does well he cant guard a big shooting Forward. 6) JVG decission making is in question here. 7) Sura- possible trade bate. 8) The one good thing from the first game is that the Rockets now know what they have and what they don't have and a gillion other questions as well.
I think the biggest problem is our players are still not adjusted and comfortable with Yao and T-mac's game. in short no chemistry. second. Yao and tmac still need to figure out how to co-exist with each other. time to time you will see tmac taken shots but somehow not involving Yao. same with Yao. The team goes either Yao for 15mins than switch to tmac for next 15mins. They take turns, which is not good BB. Both players need to include each other within their games. Kobe-shaq, was a great example as kobe's offense often feed off from shaq's defense, or shaq's offense often feed by Kobe's mismatch with the opponent. third, coach JVG. he needs to do something with getting the team to play together. there is no excuse with this many years under the belt with Yao and Tmac. They don't play like a team.
I think we need to quit blaming some doofus point guard for Yao supposedly not getting the ball. That's B.S. The bottom line is Yao was not aggressive enough. I didn't want to go here but to illustrate my point, go back to Hakeem. Okur, Collins, and Boozer are all average to below average defenders at best. What does Hakeem do against that team last night? He would DEMAND dadamball and then as soon as he got it he would be going. He would have taken it to Okur until Okur fouled intentionally to get himself out of the game because he would have had enough. And if the guards didn't get Hakeem dadamball, he would have been screaming on the court, screaming in the timeout huddle, and probably screaming to the media afterward. (I'm glad Yao doesn't scream to the media, but he does need to scream at his teammates if they aren't getting him the ball. It's in our best interest for him to do so.) Look, if Hakeem were playing for Van Gundy and the guards weren't getting him the rock, JVG would sit them down until he found guys that would give him the rock. The problem with Yao (and it's probably the only problem) is that his aggressiveness comes and goes in spurts. JVG is not so stupid that he can't see when Yao isn't getting the ball. He is going to make sure and has made sure that Yao gets the ball. TMac basically said that we weren't aggressive enough last night. He said the Jazz wanted it more than us. He's not going to call out Yao personally. Just read between the lines. Who is the least aggressive by nature player we have? Practically every time Yao touched the ball, he hesitated, then the cutters would go running through dragging extra defenders right into his lap, then he made his move after that with other defenders in the proximity. The whole basis for putting shooters on the floor is to spread the floor. So, when he gets the ball in the post he should go immediately and let the shooters space the floor. I'm not putting all of the game on Yao. For the life of me, I do not understand why we've got perimeter shooters cutting through the paint after Yao posts up. They should already be spotted up on the perimeter and stay there until their defender leaves them and goes trailing into the paint for the double on Yao. Then they should reposition around the horn to provide a passing angle for Yao or trail the defender to the basket for the lay in off the pass off. Instead of doing that, they would throw the ball to Yao, then he stands there and waits for them to cut through the paint, then he makes his move. Why??? I don't understand it. The only time cutters should be running through after posting up Yao is when the perimeter defense has been torched with the long ball and they are closing out all the shooters. Then the shooters cut to the basket for basically the give and go from Yao. The good thing is we did get 97 while actually playing so poorly offensively. The bad thing is we could have easily gotten 115 if Yao had got up 25 shots like he should have. It is so obvious now that this team starts and ends with Yao. Tracy is a great, great player.......when he is healthy. But we will only go as far as Yao takes us. He's got to bring it consistently. I'm not letting TMac off the hook. He played so inefficiently that I don't know what else to attribute that to besides the fact that he must be hurting or at the very least not confident about what he can do with his back. One thing we know for sure is when a player's back is bothering him, his shot will be off. TMac's shooting was so flat and so short for most of the game that I have to suspect that he has got something going on there with his back still. Because he is too talented and too skilled to be shooting 33%. Hey, it's just one game. I'm not discouraged.....yet. I still think they will work it all out. And I think we are in for a lot better effort Saturday night against Dallas. But I sure hope McGrady is healthy. I'm really worried about him.
I applaud the effort to turn the discussion positive, but last night was such a stinker, the posts just keep going south, and that is understandable. The comeback at the end was the only positive that was hopeful. I like the way Synder takes it to the hole, but he didn't finish well on a few occasions. I agree with Jopatmac that TMac, who had a very underwhelming preseason, continues to look, well, bad. He looks like a shadow of his former self. But, Amare looked really out of sync the first game, but much better the second. Time will tell, but it was a very unimpressive beginning. Granted our expectations may have been a bit unrealistic, but I think it was reasonable to expect a better performance. I am sure the Heat fans feel the same way.
