I hate to say this but everytime Yao is fronted, he rarely gets touches. I didn't see the blazers try to front Yao at all (big mistake).
Portland tried fronting Yao in their last regular season meeting and Yao played his best game against Portland for the season. I think some teams are better at fronting him than others, so I don't believe it would have made that much of a difference. Double-teaming him might have slowed Yao down a bit, but honestly, the rest of the team was hitting everything, so all that would have done is to leave someone else open for an undefended jump shot. The Rockets were simply playing at an extremely high level and I don't believe there was much Portland could have done to stop them.
yeah so NICE to see ppl driving to the basket in the playoffs. im not at all a tmac hater, but man its nice to watch a rocket playoff series and not have to yell PLEASE drive to the basket!
I didn't want to make a thread about this, but the Rockets have not played well following blowout wins this season. For the purpose of my research, I said any victory of 15 or more was a blowout...here's how it broke down... 19 point win followed by 1 point loss 19 point win followed by 10 point loss 19 point win followed by 12 point loss 23 point win followed by 9 point loss 20 point win followed by 5 point loss 19 point win followed by 5 point loss 17 point win followed by 7 point win 17 point win followed by 12 point loss 26 point win followed by 7 point win 21 point win followed by 4 point win 19 point win followed by 3 point loss 19 point win followed by 2 point win 17 point win followed by 5 point loss 17 point win followed by 4 point win 20 point win followed by 11 point loss That's 15 blowouts of 15 points or more, by an average margin of 19.5 points. Then in the 15 follow up games we went 5-10, losing by an average of 3.8 points. That's an average swing of 23.3 points between blowouts and follow up games. Doesn't bode well for Game 2...although it's the playoffs and anything can happen.
Good summary. I think Adelman was trying to screw up McMillian's 2nd half game plan. I am sure Portland spent a bit of time during half time to talk about doubling on Yao. Their defense was thrown off and not ready for the plays by Battier and Brooks. One of the many things that Rick did right this game. Round 1 to Adelman.
real dominating win on the road!! yao played very well and brooks played crazy..man! the blazers are not really that good..they have a huge matchup problem against us..now lets see what we can do in game..same intensity! and good job we didnt let the blazers come back during game 1.
Yeah! It's really an excellent performance of game. In this game, we had a good start and dominant pace overall. But we still can see some potential weakness points. Especially on Brooks, I'm not so confident he can organize the offence very well on crisis time. Yes, he did excel in his speed in this game. We need him to think more.
What worries me the most is what if Yao gets a foul problem next game. When Yao got his fourth, we really had a hard time scoring nd even had a shotclock violation :\
Regardless of what happened, its never good when Yao gets in foul trouble...unless you're one of those people who think we're better without Yao...
It depends on when he gets into foul trouble. The earlier it happens, the worse it is. 4 fouls with 6 minutes to go in the 3rd isn't TOO bad. Its still bad though, don't get me wrong. Although you could make the argument that Roy and Co. trying to draw fouls on Yao took them out of their game offensively. When they were running Roy off screens and moving the ball around... that offense was better.
Wihtout normalizing against the records of the teams we played, then this seems kind of meaningless. Blowing out Memphis and then playing the Lakers could result in this type of pattern. I imagine the records of the teams played in the blowouts is worse than those of the 5-10 second games. Also, probably road versus home venue needs to be considered. Without the additional analysis, you cannot make the point that the Rockets have a tendency to follow-up a blow-out win with a let down.
I agree, and I was going to include that info but I was already up waaaay later than I needed to be, and just didn't feel like it. I still don't feel like going back and getting the exact stats, but I can tell you this from what I jotted down last night... 10 of the 15 blowout wins were against non-playoff teams, with an average margin of victory of 19.6 points. 5 of the 15 blowout wins were against playoff teams, with an average margin of victory of 19.2 points. In 6 follow up games against non-playoff teams, our average loss was 5.2 points. In 9 follow up games against playoff teams, our average loss was 1.7 points. Those numbers obviously aren't the most telling since they aren't normalized and they don't take home/away in to account, but a quick glance at the results you can see that on the follow up game, the Rockets had 8 opportunities to win on the road and only came out on top 2 times (average margin of 3 points). Those two games were against Golden State and San Antonio. With the Rockets on the road against a playoff team tomorrow, that would probably be the most important stat to look at. In their 4 follow up AWAY games against playoff teams (San Antonio, Chicago, Denver, Cleveland) the Rockets were 1-3 with an average loss of 5. Still not the most stringent statistical method, but it's a little more telling than before, and the numbers still don't sound too positive with a "blowout follow up road game" on the horizon.
Browse this gallery: http://www.chron.com/sports/photogallery/April_18_Rockets_at_Trail_Blazers.html Something smells wrong about this. Every picture but one features Brandon Roy... and the one that doesn't is Greg Oden. For shame Chron, for shame. At least send some photographers yourself...
