The last time the Rockets played under coach Rudy Tomjanovich, they scored a huge home win over Phoenix, their rival for the eighth playoff seed in the West. It was their fifth win in a row. But a five-game road trip followed, as well as the news that Tomjanovich would sit out while he gets treatment for bladder cancer. The Rockets have not responded well to assistant coach Larry Smith, who filled in for Tomjanovich, going 3-5 through last weekend. The offense has bogged down in motionless, one-on-one play -- which happened even with Tomjanovich -- but the biggest culprit is the defense. The Rockets were giving up 91.8 points per game before Smith took over and have allowed 97.9 since. "What I see is a lack of effort," says one Western Conference assistant. "Same system and all, but they are not putting much into it." . . . http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=insidedishrocketsdefense&prov=tsn&type=lgns
we were starting to play bad D before rudy left. we just had a really low PPG against total early in the season so it makes the total D under rudy look better than the D that we had the last 10-15 games under rudy. we started the trend of giving up the 50% shooting games and 100+ games well before rudy left. it has just continued under larry. at least we made it farther this season than last season before we gave up on D. maybe we'll make it the whole year next time. as for the 3-5, that is exactly how i expected it to pan out. 2-3 on the road trip, lose to SA and LAL, beat denver. 3-5 just as predicted and expected. same as we probably would've gone with rudy.
Points per game allowed (Rudy's last 5 games) 89.2ppg* Points per game allowed ("Mr Mean"s first 5 games) 100ppg * Includes one overtime game.
I think this is because of Yao sitting on the bench and not being as aggressive as before. Whenever he is in the game, the other team's offense becomes scared and Yao has a much greater influence than what can be seen in his stats. I hope Mr. Mean gets through to Yao and makes him more aggressive, but I worry that he might be alienating Yao and making him lose confidence.
This is where Rudy may be missed most. Rudy T always tried to put his players in a position to succeed even while improving their weaknesses. Rudy didn't try to make Yao a pure banger. Rudy (as he would say so often in his radio show) understood that he had to leverage Yao's strengths while not wearing the big guy down. Mr. Mean is asking Yao to to do things he physically and skill-wise may not be able to do, which is bang all game long. This has the effect of putting Yao in a position to fail which then results in a lack of confidence and lack of effort.
He hasn't coached enough games to have a statistically meaningful average. Plus, points per game is a very crude and inaccurate way of measuring defense. Besides giving up more points per game, his team also scores more points per game -- 98.75 compared to 94.2 over the season. Does this mean the offense works better under Larry Smith? No, it might mean they play at a faster pace under Smith. Or it might mean they've played some high octane opponents. Or it might just be a statistical anomaly resulting from the fact that he's only coached 8 games. Btw, if we're giving up 97.9 but scoring 98.75, that's good, right?
