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Rockets: Yao, Not McGrady, Determines Fate of Team

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by prodigy08, Aug 15, 2007.

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  1. prodigy08

    prodigy08 Clutchfans Lurker

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    When Yao Ming came to the Houston Rockets in the summer of 2002 there were questions about just how good he might be in the NBA. He had established himself as a dominant force while playing with the Chinese National Team and for the Shanghi Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association, but the humble Chinese culture was seen as a potential roadblock. After all, to be a dominant big man in the NBA requires a certain amount of aggression and even attitude - two things generally frowned upon in the land of Yao's upbringing.

    In his first season as a Rocket one of the knocks on Yao was that he passed too much. He has outstanding court vision and showed a knack for hitting open teammates with passes - some of them similar to what you might see in a Harlem Globetrotters game. But what the Rockets needed was for Yao to take the ball to the hole with authority, not catch it and start looking for someone to pass to.

    It wasn't until Yao's third season in the NBA that he really started to realize that his job was to be the first option on offense and not to constantly seek to defer to other players. It helped that in that same year he had Rafer Alston and Tracy McGrady playing with him as opposed to Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley. The Francis/Mobley backcourt brotherhood never really figured out that there were three other players on the team, and neither of them truly understood how to find the big man in the paint - this despite the fact that Mobley had played with Hakeem Olajuwon in his early days as a Rocket. When McGrady and Alston became the Rockets' backcourt tandem Yao began seeing a steady diet of passes, and it enabled him to find a comfort level on the offensive end.

    Over the past three seasons Yao has set new career-highs in terms of scoring average each year and has progressively shown that he can dominate with the best of them. The "soft" label has completely disappeared, and teams are beginning to fear Yao the way they used to fear Olajuwon. In a workout earlier this year Hakeem told Yao that he still needs to come into every game with the mindset that he is the most dominant player on the court, but the young man from China has certainly made significant and steady progress toward that goal over the last season and a half or so. Now he's being asked to take that one step further.

    Tracy McGrady is a fun player to watch at times. At times he looks like Michael Jordan out there, draining three after three, making big plays to bring his team back from double-digit deficits late in games, and flying through the air with the greatest of ease. Unfortunately, he also goes through mental lapses, where he forgets that he can get to the rim at will, preferring instead to stand outside and take quick, ill-advised jumpers. He doesn't have the consistency of a Jordan or a Kobe, and for that reason new head coach Rick Adelman and assistant coach Jack Sikma will have to make sure that Yao is the focus from the start of training camp until the last second of their last playoff game. McGrady's fine in stretches of the regular season, but when the playoffs are on the line he disappears. This year Yao will need to be the focus all season, so that when he is needed to make a game-winner in an elimination game he won't be a stranger to the scenario.

    Consider this account of the Rockets' Game Seven loss to the Utah Jazz
    In the first half, when the Jazz took control of the game by building a 16-point lead that was 10 at intermission, McGrady touched the ball on 43 possessions but only got to the paint with aggressive drives on seven of them. Aside from an stretch of forceful play early in the third quarter that helped the Rockets get back into the game, McGrady reverted back to passing and jump shots in the fourth. Among 19 fourth-quarter possessions on which he touched the ball, T-Mac got to the paint on two. The staggering totals indicate why McGrady needed to get to the hoop. For the game, he touched the ball on 81 possessions and used aggressive drives to get into the lane on 17 of them. Those 17 trips resulted in 12 field-goal attempts (10 makes), three drawn fouls and two assists. On all other shots, McGrady connected on 2 of 13.

    In other words, Yao should have been the one taking all of those shots. McGrady should have deferred. Now it will be Adelman's job to pull McGrady aside when he's having one of those nights and instruct him to find Yao. The Houston Rockets are officially Yao's team. The sooner McGrady realizes that, the sooner this team can go about the business of being something other than a first round casualty.
     
    #1 prodigy08, Aug 15, 2007
  2. lastopsuburb

    lastopsuburb Member

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    Yao COULD have taken a lot of late game crunch period shot, he did too...

    He just needs to cut down his turnovers and reserve his energy enough to play without going to bench constantly during last 2-3 minutes of the game
     
    #2 lastopsuburb, Aug 15, 2007
  3. blazer_ben

    blazer_ben Rookie

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    He dissapears in the playoffs?. what stupid statement. he might dissapear in like 5 minute bursts, but to say he disspears in the playoffs is stupidity. he was the only one who actually showedup for us.
     
    #3 blazer_ben, Aug 15, 2007
  4. Pringles

    Pringles Member

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    if yao played like the game against wizards, then hell, he can take any shot he wants. but after that surgery, his stamina wasn't that good as before imo. and his shots were off.
     
    #4 Pringles, Aug 15, 2007
  5. doublehh03

    doublehh03 Member

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    um okay. tell yao to be a superstar in the playoffs then we can talk. regular season is nothing. yao has not been a stud in the playoffs where he is the best player of that series, regardless whether it is won or lost.

    until yao can literally dominate an opponent in the playoffs, then we can talk.
     
    #5 doublehh03, Aug 15, 2007
  6. prodigy08

    prodigy08 Clutchfans Lurker

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    im excited to see what improvements yao will show this coming season knowing he trained with the dream
     
    #6 prodigy08, Aug 15, 2007
  7. doublehh03

    doublehh03 Member

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    and again, i stand by this. if tracy is still the guy taking most of the blame, he's still the best player on this team.

    until yao gets most of the blame when we lose, then he's our guy.

    the best player on any team gets the credit when a team wins and gets the blame when the team loses.

    tracy is that guy still.
     
    #7 doublehh03, Aug 15, 2007
  8. blazer_ben

    blazer_ben Rookie

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    When yao ws in that amazing zone, the offense was running through him. i cant see how anybody can complain the rockets didnt get yao enough touches.
    Dont get me wrong by any means, i do think that yao needs to remain a focus on offense due to he's amazing skill skill for he's humongus frame. but to complain he dosent get enough touches is ignorant.
     
    #8 blazer_ben, Aug 15, 2007
  9. doublehh03

    doublehh03 Member

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    look at yao's usage rate. tmac only is 3 pts higher than him and he's a perimeter player. yao gets PLENTY of touches. his usage rating will be 29-30 next yr also b/c he'll be more of a playmaker.

    people need to relax. yao will have his best overall year next yr.
     
    #9 doublehh03, Aug 15, 2007
  10. ekim

    ekim Member

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    Yao sucked in the playoffs, whoever say otherwise didn't watch the series and probably just looked at the box score. His defense sucked ass except for the first game. Well at least he admitted it after game 7 unlike the fan boys who kept defending him.

    I don't care about his scoring, he needs to grow some balls, hustle up and grab those rebounds. The last 2 games he had a total of 12 rebounds... what kind of "dominate" center record 6 rebounds on game 6 and game 7 of a playoff series...
     
    #10 ekim, Aug 15, 2007
  11. cmellon

    cmellon Member

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    Yao always and still has turnover problem until now. For him to be the focus of the offense, he will get more than 5 turnovers each game.
     
    #11 cmellon, Aug 15, 2007
  12. SupermanSK

    SupermanSK Member

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    I think Yao is gonna come into camp overweight due to his recent wedding/honeymoon. :eek: Just a prediction. I hope not.
     
    #12 SupermanSK, Aug 15, 2007
  13. SmitingPurpleEm

    SmitingPurpleEm Member

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    That is false and you know it. Kobe was blamed for the failure of the Lakers to win the championship in '04, not Shaq. Besides, in the end it doesn't matter whose fault it was for the loss because it is still a loss and it counts as a loss for everyone involved. Stop coming up with arbitrary criteria for why McGrady is better than Yao which don't hold under a quick fact check.

    Oh, when the question is posed as to whether Yao or McGrady are better, we're not talking about 2002-2003 McGrady, we're talking about what we think will be 2007-2008 McGrady. McGrady is not the player he once was. Last year neither McGrady nor Yao were the best player in the Utah series; Carlos "Loozer" was. Bringing up what McGrady did back in Orlando is a poor argument because it is extremely unlikely he can ever get back up to that level.
     
    #13 SmitingPurpleEm, Aug 15, 2007
  14. SmitingPurpleEm

    SmitingPurpleEm Member

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    McGrady disappeared 3.5/7 games in the playoff series. What kind of "team leader" is that? Should the "best player on the Rockets" do this?
     
    #14 SmitingPurpleEm, Aug 15, 2007
  15. Cook1ez

    Cook1ez Member

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    best post i have read in my life.
     
    #15 Cook1ez, Aug 15, 2007
  16. doublehh03

    doublehh03 Member

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    kobe got blamed b/c he was selfish, ignored shaq, and basically ballhogged his way while shaq got single coverage dude. did u watch the series??

    even laker fans and vick the brick here in LA said kobe was so selfish during that series.

    u can get blamed for different things. but both yao and tmac played below their standards and tmac got most of the blame for the loss.
     
    #16 doublehh03, Aug 15, 2007
  17. doublehh03

    doublehh03 Member

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    i never said he was the team leader. best player does not mean leader. shaq isn't the leader during those laker years. fisher and horry were.
     
    #17 doublehh03, Aug 15, 2007
  18. OGKashMoney

    OGKashMoney Member

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    How about find some players who can do something other than watch Yao and T-Mac play 2 on 5 in game 7! Superstars can only take you so far, just ask Kobe
    "81 PTS" Bryant who is hands down the best player in the game.
     
    #18 OGKashMoney, Aug 15, 2007
  19. doublehh03

    doublehh03 Member

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    exactly. tmac and yao should get the brunt of the blame, but our role players were BEYOND awful. if awful is a 0, they were a -10.
     
    #19 doublehh03, Aug 15, 2007
  20. The_Yoyo

    The_Yoyo Member

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    totally agree.

    unfortunately the hard thing with yao is because he is a post player. getting him the ball in spots to score is not an easy thing to do with the swarming defense and trying to establish position. its a whole lot easier to take yao out of a game than it is tracy. saying he should have shot more is easy to say, but in reality hard to put into practice.

    its hard if he came out a bit further it would be easier for him to get the ball since there is more space but that takes him out of the area jvg wanted him in.....we'll see how adelman uses him this year.


    btw not sure where the article is from but it seems like a total tracy bashing article. not cool
     
    #20 The_Yoyo, Aug 15, 2007
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