On a back-to-back. Lets hope the Portland game didnt tire Yao and Tracy too much because GARM will explode if we lose this one.
The Good: Brooks is playing well and reducing Rafer's minutes. TMac is playing back into form. Scola is playing great and should have been in the game in the fourth. Artest plays some aggressive defense. The traditional fourth quarter collapses are turning into comebacks. The Bad: Just about everything else. Yao has mysteriously become a large stationary pole serving virtually no purpose. Artest has lost his shot. The Rockets can't get a rebound, and don't play aggressive defense. Adelman's famous offense never happens. Barry is serving no purpose. Rafer is largely a waste of roster space. Chuck Hayes is too offensively challenged for his defense to make any difference. The Rockets still play down to the level of their competition and have zero killer instinct. The Rockets are relatively short and unathletic compared to most NBA teams.
THis is the NBA.... You take it out on the next team the VERY NEXT DAY on a back-to-back of a Western road trip. Decimate the Clipps!!!!....
Rockets are just like the Cowboys this season. Just waiting on the injuries to hit. The overhype...well...look out below. And, NO PLAYOFFS! I'm kidding. I kid. I'm so thankful I went to sleep at halftime. I had a feeling we were going to lose this game...just by what I saw in the first half.
so the beauty of dvr is you can watch playback frame by frame. I watched that last shot by Roy too many times to admit, freeze framed it and the clock didn't even start till he's almost at the peek of his jump shot. Ridiculous. He clearly beat the buzzer, which I'm sure the refs were looking at, but the guy working the clock clearly was homin it out. It happens all the time, just a damn shame. No human being can catch a pass, stop, turn, jump and shoot a jump shot in F'n .8 seconds. If you can't even catch a ball in .2 seconds, how the hell can you do all that in .8? Are you kidding me? Whatever...home court advantage....yada yada yada...I know. I know we shouldn't have even been at that point, but that shot by Yao could have been the shot he needed in the ass to get his confidence going. Its way too early to start freakin out, but it's plays like this that can come back to haunt you. Besides the fact that I'm tired as hell today from being up till 1:45am....only to see them lose in that fashion. Whatevs.
Well, that sucked. Look, I know it has already probably been said (I'm just too lazy to go through and find it in this thread), but we shouldn't get too upset about this game. The Blazers are going to be in the Western Conference playoffs, regardless how much they get out of Oden this year. Fernandez and Rodriguez and this Batum kid all give them great depth to what they had last season. And just think - they are not only missing Oden, but Martell Webster, too. Also, I think people forget that Joel Przybilla (who was actually drafted by us once upon a time but never played) always gives Yao trouble. But we got outrebounded (by more than 10), Artest and Yao are both struggling offensively, we couldn't stop LaMarcus Aldridge to save our lives and still it took an incredibly lucky shot by Roy to win the game for them. I was very proud of the way the Rockets came back when they got down by 10 in the 4th quarter on the road. It is still early November and we still don't have our full team yet. I just hope that we are not too tired tonight in playing the Clippers. They are down but hungry for that first win - we cannot afford to have the losing streak reach 3. The Rockets will be fine - we were 13-15 or something like that last season and we didn't have nearly the talent last season like we do this time.
One other thing I'll say about last night's game...and this may have already been mentioned: was anyone else bothered by the fact that Adelman had Yao guard the inbounds guy in Steve Blake at the end? You had to think that they were going to try to get the ball to Roy and should have doubleteamed him with Artest and someone else and not have even worried about guarding the inbounds guy.
Yeah, and Kenny and Charles talked about it too...I would have parked Yao just inside the FT line to clog the paint.... DD
the way we played all game, i'm suprised we even took it to over time... disappointing loss, but the blazers played their hearts out
Feel sad about the lose, but it is good to happpen early in the season. Long way to go. The team is lack of chemistry. Need to get the rebound.
We all know what a great on the ball defender Ron is - to me it would make sense to have McGrady and Artest doubleteaming Roy and denying him the ball. Make someone else on Portland hit that 30 foot shot. I honestly think that both McGrady and Artest felt there was no way he was going to make that shot, but like you said earlier, if you get a hand in his face, the probability of that shot going in goes from being 1 in a 100 to 1 in a 1000.
See, I think that shot is about 20% unguarded by Roy.......NBA players can make that shot if left alone..especially ones as good as Roy...but if you guard him, it goes down to the 1 in 100 you are talking about. DD
he was there technically because of his size, and they had him positioned to cut off any passes into the paint area...since all they needed was a regular 2 point shot to win at that point. The plan worked perfectly, except that nobody ran out to challenge the shot. If I were drawing that up....I put Dorsey in for Yao, do the exact same thing, but move him way closer to the inbound passer. Yao was like 8 feet away from the guy trying to shut off the angle. Since Dorsey has pretty quick reflexes and a great wingspan, plus obvious defensive prowess, I def would've used him instead of Yao in that situation....what the hell do you have to lose. Yao's reflexes are just too damn slow. All it takes is one ball fake and you can get it around Yao at that distance. I just think you have to start using the specialty players you have sitting on the pine. When the game comes down to .8 seconds, I mean....the ONLY reason to even have Yao in there is to put him down in the lane at the very least, to challenge any shots near the basket. Other than that, he's way to slow to make any kinf of difference out on the perimeter. The other thing that pissed me off was the possesion w had after the full timeout.....where Tracy clearly looked pissed when Adelman called the timeout and gave him a stare walking off the court. I think Tracy thought he had a matchup he liked coming down the court. Instead, they call a timeout, come out and Tracy gets trapped with 4 seconds left on the shot clock, they take another 20 second TO and then Artest takes a terrible shot. Two timeouts, and thats really all you can draw up? Too much to be desired about this game, it was just atrocious offensively, and then to battle like they did and have it stolen after going to OT on the first game of a road back to back....just terrible...terrible. But hey, thats what you have veterans for, they'll be alright.
hey the blazers got LUCKY 1 FREGGING time. But I have to say that was a lucky shot by that Brandon guy
Oh, sorry if I misquoted you, I thought you said 1 in a 100 goes to 1 in a 1000 instead of 1 in 20 goes to 1 in a 100.
It was lost by our usual starters coasting through the first three quarters. I so hope we get our motivation up and I hope that the Rox find some ball movenent too. We look out of sorts at times. Start brooks! T-mac is looking a little more intense( int he 2nd half..He should have started strong.) We cant just coast through the games then play at the end to win a championship. Much less a playoff series. but Yao needs to get mean. His performance reminded me of game 7 of the Utah series. Hoping for the heart of a champion to come back! J
LOL, okay this made me snort out loud at work and have the girls ask me what was so funny. It was a little hard to explain. Poor JVG, always wanting to win cost him a draft number... and how in the world did we win that game??
It was only the 5th game of the yr! People start giving up already. Give this team some time to gel, we are probably going to be mediorce until late December. Once everybody figures each other out, then we still steamrolling. The last few seasons we have always started slow. If we can get yao to start sacking up and grow a pair, then the steamrolling will start sooner, I would have also liked to have seen Scola in there in OT instead of Hayes, Hayes is dead weight on offense.
