Agreed about Brooks, and Yao.....maybe time to put Deke in there. I said in another thread we are getting killed on the weakside offensive rebounds, particularly over the rim. I also notice that Adelman has our PFs trapping or stepping out hard on the high PnR with the other team's PG, leaving their PF wide open for the weakside putback or a nice roll to the hole. I would like to see them play the high PnR a little more straight, mix it up some, to stop leaving our weakside so exposed. DD
Several years ago, I said 1. Yao Ming 2. Mcgrady 3. Jeff Van Gundy one of them need go. Now Van Gundy gone, but we are still suffering. With Van Gundy, at least we have defense. Right now, no defense and no offense. Even the eastern bottom teams win us like anything. WTF!
the defense has been terrible. it all started with the absence of battier on the perimeter (yes, even when shane was limping a bit). the perimeter defense is terrible, and then yao can't anchor the interior defense alone. plus hayes is not being played that much lately, hence the total collapse of defense. i think that's the number 1 issue right now, which no one seems to have a good solution. and on offense, i understand you have to run plays for mcgrady (especially early in the game when he's moving better than he would later), scola (since he's been hitting his shots lately) and even wafer and brooks, but look at yao's fga numbers in the last couple of games. he's obviously not getting enough touches and often is down to a garbage man to grab rebounds and loose balls, or help on defense for the perimeter players (all the things he doesn't do particularly well). tonight, the opposing team is fast and athletic. they have the upper hand in their perimeter players and we as usual have ours in yao. but what i saw was we ran too many stuff for our backcourt players and scola and not even nearly enough for yao. rafer took quite a few bad moves, too. and adelman had to call timeouts just to enforce plays called for yao. but by then, it was late in the 3rd quarter and we were already trailing by ~10. yao needs to be established early in the game in most cases. jvg always made sure this would happen in a game. you try to do it midway in the game it's usually too late, because yao (or most of other nba-ers) cannot quickly get into a groove all of the sudden. and then adelman pulls yao out after a couple not-so-successful possessions (not all yao's fault) and stick with a slumping brooks in the 4th. he even kept wafer out, who obviously has been playing well offensively (which is what we need when trailing). his 4th quarter gamble today obviously failed. and yao did look a bit unusually out of the game mentally, and this happens very very rarely for him. maybe something is truly going inside?
The Rockets are officially playing some of the worst defense imaginable. Philly had a lay up drill. Some of their players were actually laughing about it. It was just too easy. When you are struggling offensively the only way to play out of it is too lock down the defense. Right now, the Rockets are bad at both ends. They look like any team in the league could beat them silly any time, any place. Give it to Scola and Landry, they are competing hard, not always effectively, but they are going all out. Especially Scola. And we are playing WHO tomorrow night? Oh my, put your helmet on, rough going ahead.
IBM- Good stuff, but my problem with yao is he didn't establish himself tonight. He had 5 rebs and the soft double shouldve been easy pickings for him. Instead, he took himself out of the game. Don't know if he's hurt or something, I chalk it up to one of his 20 sucky games.
The philly announcers said tonight that the Rockets were "an average offensive team and an average defensive team" -- I think they hit it on the nose. Boys and girls, we have a mediocre team.
leebigez, you can certainly look at things that way. but a big center like yao needs to be fed with the ball (even moses and akeem, too), and then you talk about AFTER a center gets the ball, how aggressive (or not) he handles the ball. if yao didn't establish position, then that's another story. tonight that wasn't the case, since philly never gave him hard doubles. he was single covered for most of the 31 minutes he played. our guards just didn't look for him enough.
You are so wrong. We are a below average offensive team and POOR defensive team right now. We lost our defense edge gradually and unfortunately people do not care enough about it (or not wiling to face it).
ibm- look how hard dream and moses worked for the ball. Also, their 6th yr in the league, how many times did they play 31 mins and have 5 rebs? Hell 28 yr old dream and moses would have have 5 offensive rebounds.
fronting does give yao problems, but tonight he scored on ratliff a couple of times as well. i believe yao has more confidence in beating ratliff than in beating other philly defenders. ratliff was yao's biatch back to yao's rookie year. remember that first tech in yao's career? and broadly, how to solve the fronting should be a team project, not just on yao. for every measure, there's a counter.
Don't you notice Yao rarely has dominant games anymore? Under JVG he was the focus (together with Tmac) but now everybody is equal (AB can jack up 1-11 tells a lot), big men need plenty of practice, which they cut down this season, and a lot of touch early in the game to get going... I bet Yao is very mad right now, but the sad part is he does not even know who should he be mad at, himself? Tmac? Rafer? RA? Basketball god...? Anyway, this team's problem goes far beyond Yao, or Tmac. One key word: DEFENSE...
that's a line you often cross. don't set your expectations at the same level of a peak moses or akeem when think of yao. i'm not comparing yao to either moses or akeem. i was just talking about centers need to be fed, in general. yao's great, but not THAT great.
