Rockets looking for offensive fit Hey guys, hope this han't yet been posted before. Good read. So many people here are criticizing the Rockets offense, maybe this could shed some insights into their troubled minds. Personally I think we could become a very good post-up/pick and roll team. From game to game I've noticed that Yao has been making an effort to improve his picks. This was very apparent in the Utah game where Yao provided a lot of picks for Mobley in which Mobley was able to get a lot of points from. The post-up game right now is ok. Yao still needs to improve but I'm positive it will come soon. In an ideal world, we should also be a very good transition team when we have one of the fastest backcourts in the NBA. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. Can't wait for the Hornets game. Go Rockets!
How do you attract DT's on penetrations, key word attract. This is the core of his "dribble, dribble, dribble against a zone" offense. How do you attract it on a pick and roll when the guy picking is 7'6" and the pick is at the top of the key? WTF? What kind of made for the press jibberish is this clueless "hopefully" statement. The guy hopes he gets some offense. SF, CAT, Yao, MoT and he hopes he gets some offense. Po-thetic...
RR (or is that A-Train, using RR's account? ), penetrations do attract double-teams. Since it is hard to defend Mobley and Francis on a drive, they force a low-post player to help, hopefully opening Taylor, Yao or Cato up underneath. The pick-and-roll also attracts a double-team since the common defenses are to either switch defenders or have both defenders follow the ball-handler. Though Yao is a center, he has a decent jumper, which would be uncontested if he's covered by a guard. I think they should use Taylor to set more high picks as well since he can knock them down. In theory, I think both plays are promising. But, in each case I think the ball-handler has to prove to be very effective at scoring if the defense decides to stay with single coverage. Otherwise, why double?
Now I'm really offended... The penetration (!) doesn't attract DT's because you penetrate into a zone. JVG doesn't get that.
What are you talking about, my friend? You are sadly mistaken! Kobe was constantly drawing double-teams by penetrating Dallas' zones last night. And although it was Kobe, Dallas does rune the zone defense pretty effectively.
As always I like when I discuss something on this board, the topic shows up in the Chron. We all on the same wavelength; on the other hand, fools seldom differ. Unlike yesterday, today I am confident from this article that JVG has a good handle on the various factors; however inretrospect he may have made the wrong personnel moves. We are clearly in a transition and it will take time. We have the ability to play a number of different ways and we will see that as time goes on, assuming we do not have too many injuries and other setbacks. I am surprised that he said he wants the team to run but it is not running. I still believe that Posey, Hawkins and Tmo was a mistake. The team is much less athletic at this point and I do not think that is the direction we want to go in. Boki is now our only high flyer in the front court. There is no way our fast breaks would be that terrible if Posey was here. So in hindsight I would have preferred this team: C Ming PF Cato SF Posey...taller, faster, younger that JJ PG Francis OG Mobley C Ame PF EG SF Taylor PG Moochie SG Daniels....instead of Pike..right now we would have been able to get him to play some pg. 11 Tmo....instead of Padgett.. and we already have Boki 12 Boki 13 Hawkins...instead of AD...last thing we need is another slow guy 14 Ford...size and muscle 15 Davis/Bragg. size and muscle
I still think the triangle is the perfect offense for our players. It's built to give good looks and good spacing, and allows our guys to do what they do best. Ming is post passer. Steve can drive. Cat can iso. We'd be better off if Taylor could work the two man game with Cat, or make the post pass back to Ming, instead of also trying to iso every time; or if we had a three that could make the entry, swing it round to the two man attack, or nail the open j. Swap Cat and Steve in and out for the two man game on the left side and run a triangle on the right block, corner and elbow. It's very different from what we're doing, but should work well for cuts, jumpers, and get our guys good opportunities. Better than pretending we can dump it left block and force jumpers. We obviously can't. Triangle will get motion, angles and opportunities. Bring in assistant coach Cleamons. some basics : http://www.y-coach.com/CD/Track_and_Field.htm http://www.bbhighway.com/Talk/Coaching_Box/Clinics/Triangle/triangle_intro.asp good diagrams : http://espn.go.com/ncb/2003/0128/1499926.html
