That zone defense looked bad. Portland was picking it apart and often Ming would end up nowhere near the shot or the rebound. I can only hope that is not by design... We need to stick with man and let Ming help out in the lane. Unless the other team can't seem to move the ball or make outside shots. Damn. That's it. This defense must look outstanding in practice!
What??? I thought the zone kicked ass. The only problem was that they got a few offensive boards which led to some 2nd chance points. Other than that, the Blazers were completely flustered.
You must be nuts. They hold Portland to 83 points while running the zone almost half the time and it sucked??? In fact, before using the zone starting in the second quarter, they were getting torched by the Blazers. You picked the wrong game to complain about defense.
Make a statement then. They only ran the zone when Ming was in...15 min or less. And it looked bad. Too many open shots and offensive rebounds.
the defense was monster tonight particularly led by hawkins once again. i want him in there as often as possible.
This zone held Portland to 83 points and you're complaining!? Lets see Rudy runs a man-to-man and the Rockets get torched for 48, so Rudy drops back into a zone and holds Portland to 35 points and you're complaining? 35 points in the second half, that's 17 points per quarter. If the Rockets held teams to 17 points per quarter they would be giving up 68 points per game. So how was the zone a bad thing!?
AT: C'mon, spare us. You got this one wrong. Let it go. The Rockets played tremendous defense at times tonight and the zone was a big part of their success.
The zone was, I believe, almost exclusively used when Ming was in the game. Supposedly to take advantage of his 7'6"... And the Blazers were picking it apart. Don't blow your cheerleader smoke at me. This thread was supposed to illicit intelligent commentary on whether or not the zone was working. I didn't think it was very well.
To someone without a television, lurking on this bbs can sometimes be slightly confusing. I'm blind, man. Is that elephant a wall or a snake?
So people are cheerleaders because they disagree with you? Bottomline they gave up 83 points. You can talk about picking the zone apart, rebounding, people being cheerleaders, Ming being in during a zone, whatever, the bottom line is that the team only gave up 83 points so they obviously were doing something right. Portland only scored 35 points in the 2nd half, I wonder if they thought the Rockets defense sucked.
Don't they replay the game at midnight on Channel 51? Watch the 3rd quarter and I think you'll see us play zone effectively...without Ming in the game.
To AT's defense he is making a comment for discussion, not to have posters pick him apart for his opinion. I agree the defense was good (above average) but I will concede the Zone D in the 1st half of the game wasn't working when Portland was shooting above 50%.
didn't we play man in the first a lot and wasn't that when rice was getting abused by everybody. the zone definitely gave up some O boards but it kept portland outside and allowed us to steal numerous post-entry passes that could not have been stolen with man. when portland finally started shooting like they normally do, all the outside shots caught up to them and they didn't score as effectively. plus eddie closed down the friggin lane. that was wallace that came in their strong and got rejected by eddie with about 2 or 3 minutes left right?
What happened to being happy that we won? I thought that that was why Calvin Murphy was a color analyst. The zone worked some and didn't work some. Why are you people so angry? I understand that you pick apart the game, but do you even realize that we won a tough game? I'd really like to know.
don grahamleone, My simple answer: I'm sure Rudy is happy we won a tough game as well; however, I'm also sure he is analyzing the game too. Personally, I enjoy the analyzing the tactical aspects of games to a)learn from other posters, 2) play quasi-GM.
