Everyone agrees that they laid an egg up until about 6 minutes in to the second quarter. Jefferson was just torching us and Yao was clearly shell shocked. The good thing is we made a run and got our confidence back and played the way we are capable of playing as a team. The reason why Im optimistic about this team is that we can afford to have one of our star players out of sync and we can still find a way to get Ws. That wasnt always the case, and that isnt the case with most teams. Jefferson was amazing and kept his team in the game almost single handedly, but even with his individual performance, the team still ended up losing by 17 points. Thats too much pressure on one individual player. Basketball is a team game...the best TEAMS win. the rockets have the potential to be a top team in this league once they gel and start execting at both ends. They have so many good pieces. Were not there yet, but if we keep playing defense the way we played in the second half yesterday, and if we keep rebounding as well as we did and shooting as well as we did and passing as well as we did, the sky is the limit. We have all the ingredients, we just have to find our stride and keep up the defensive intensity like we did last year during the streak.
Some teams just dont have the roster versatility we have. With a lineup of alston/Tmac/Artest/Battier/Yao....Everyone of those guys have a diverse set of skills. They can shoot, pass, rebound, and defend. Then throw in the fact that you have a wealth of role players to complement these guys like scola, landry, brooks, wafer, barry....Not every team can put this kind of talent on the floor every night. Once rick settles on his rotation, we will a tough team to beat. We can matchup with any team in the NBA.
they played good d last year under rick. Whats the difference this year? We added another top wing defender and our big center is healthy. There is no real explanation for our slippage defensively. Maybe chuck wagon should see more minutes. I really dont have an answer.
It has to be the inconsistency in the starting line-up. I think the injuries this year and last year have been about the same, but at least last year it the injuries were basically Tmac gone for 9-10 games, then Yao gone to end the season. This year you had Tmac and Artest in and out of the line-up. You can't really work on getting rotations completely squared up when you have different people playing major minutes every day.
Battier was out for about 15 games, then rafer went down, Ron and Tmac had their period where they were switching turns, then tracy took his 2 weeks. Then Yao went out. Its been crazy.
Yao hasn't missed extended periods of time. Just a game or two here and there. Same with Tmac and Artest. When it comes to injuries, I would rather Tmac miss 15 games in a row than miss 10 random games in a 30 game span.
I think you're going to see this lineup more to solve the problems with the D. Yao tmac Battier Artest Alston Adelman hasn't used it much before because the ball wasn't moving with Tmac and Artest in the lineup together but Adelman seems to have talked to them about focusing on D and moving the ball. Lets see if it helps the teams consistency.
