I hope this article clears a lot of smoke. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sometimes, the rep isn't right By Sean Deveney - SportingNews.com Steve Francis can't quite figure out how it all got started. One assumption led to another, he figures, and by the time all the assumptions had settled, controversy was on his doorstep. There is no way, the first assumption went, that Francis will pass the ball to Rockets center Yao Ming. There is no way, went the second assumption, that new coach Jeff Van Gundy will want a point guard to be his primary scorer, not when he has the most promising young big man to come into the league in a decade. Francis is a high-scoring point guard who needs 15 to 20 shots each game; Van Gundy is a conservative, dump-it-in coach who made his reputation by feeding Patrick Ewing in the molasses-quick Knicks attack. The third assumption was predictable: Van Gundy will demand that Francis pound passes to the 7-5 All-Star center, Francis will chafe at the reeling in of his game, and the Rockets will devolve into a clutter of bickering unhappiness and, if things get really juicy, some kicking and slapping. We're not even a month into the season, so there still is time for some Francis-Van Gundy fisticuffs to develop. That seems unlikely, though. For now, the Rockets -- who haven't been to the postseason in Francis' four-year tenure in Houston -- look strangely like one of the best teams in the league. What's stranger is that, just hours before a game in Chicago last week, Van Gundy approached Francis and gave him not a kick or a slap but a pat on the back. He also gave this advice: "Shoot more." ADVERTISEMENT Sitting at his locker after getting the advice, Francis shrugged and said, "That's what he told me." He then went out and shot 9-for-14 in 27 minutes of a blowout win. Van Gundy wants Francis to start the offense. The only thing he'd change is to make Francis more efficient. "One thing that I thought when I have watched Steve either from afar or now, coaching him, is that people have made too much about his shot selection," Van Gundy says. "He actually takes quality shots. The only thing I asked him to do is to take the same shots on less dribbles. He is talented enough; he can get his shots. He does not have the problem of shot selection." Houston opened the season with a new arena, new uniforms and a new coach, so this seems like a good opportunity for a new assessment of the Rockets' biggest gun. If Francis' reputation is that of a selfish player, it is rooted in his rookie-year insistence on not playing for Vancouver. For Pete's sake, that was more than four years ago, when Francis was 22. It's about time to give him a pass on that. (The Grizzlies have certainly moved on -- literally.) Even when Francis finally was traded to Houston, the talk was of potential problems. Francis, many were sure, would not share the ball with Hakeem Olajuwon. As Olajuwon was marginalized in Houston over the next couple of years, fingers pointed at Francis. What rarely is mentioned, though, is that Olajuwon probably should not have been on the floor at all. He was playing with respiratory and blood-clotting problems and missed 35 percent of his possible games with Francis. Rockets coaches, reacting to the lack of an interior presence, did what they could: set up the offense to feature isolation plays for Francis. Francis got a bad rap then, and he can see the parallel to the present. "When I first got here with Hakeem, I was in a no-win situation," he says. "When I got here, it was, 'He is not going to pass the ball to Hakeem.' Before I played one game for the Rockets, people were already saying that. But we did what we could. Look at my stats. I averaged (6.4) assists for my career. That's pretty good." Not great, but pretty good. It's better when you consider Francis is consistently in the top three in scoring among point guards and should be again this year. He still turns the ball over too much, and when Van Gundy says he wants to see Francis get his shots on fewer dribbles, the goal is to cut turnovers. High-scoring point guards are scorned by hoops purists, but, as Van Gundy says, Francis gets his points on good shots; he made 44.8 percent of them in the season's first four games. Francis wants to get more touches for Yao, but the center is in only his second season and still is adjusting to the league. Francis knows such details tend to be excluded from assumptions. Thus, he hears rumors of his impending feud with Van Gundy and his unwillingness to share with Yao. "Of course, I heard it," Francis says. "But that was people just trying to make up something. Something else to say. Like the Yao situation. When did I ever say I would not pass to Yao or did not want him more involved? It never came out of my mouth. "And I never said I did not want to play for (Van Gundy). Coach never said he did not want me. Nobody has ever got a quote from me, and nobody has ever got a quote from Jeff Van Gundy saying that we did not like each other. Nobody." Sounds like there's not much room for assumptions there. Sean Deveney is a staff writer for Sporting News. Email him at sdeveney@sportingnews.com.
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