I know a lot of fans were confused with that. I understand we finished out the game great, we won it, stars played great but it may be a bigger problem. I mean look at the touches for Yao, McGrady, maybe even Ron. Yao had 18 points on 9 attempted shots. McGrady had 20 points on 12 shots. I mean, are you kidding me? Those are key guys on this team, you wanna give them the ball simply most of the time. Even if one of them starts 0/4 you still wanna go to him. 12, 9 touches is way not enough. I don't even know if 18 would be enough. Tracy is not always gonna score 20 on 12 shots. Yao is not always gonna score 18 on 9 touches. Those are you KEY players so damn give them the ball!
yea give them the ball but as soon as one of them has an off game theres tons of people posting trade tmac/yao lol
Touches - I meant touches where they can score the ball. As for Yao I can understand this. When he is doubled he passes it. But McGrady just passing the ball around the 3pt line or something like that. I still think we don't use him enough on the post. Maybe I shouldn't post thread like that after a game like that when team plaed well but one night they will, the other one they won't. It is important to establish your stars ealry. You don't score when you don't shoot. For me, 9 shots for Yao, 12 for McGrady doesn't get it done.
yao got PLENTY of touches. he controlled the offense tonight. tracy is not ready to control the offense so right now he's playing off others, rather than creating, which is a good thing. this is overrated. we complained for a few yrs with the lack of help for our stars b/c they get to do too much and now they do less, and more complaints??? this is a good thing. a balanced offense -> more unpredictable offense.
Go look at how many shots the "big three" in Boston attempted last season. Or go look at how many shot attempts they each took in their game tonight. Out of 75 FGA, their big 3 took 30 of them. When there is a balanced scoring attack that's when a team is at it's best. If they are really all stars they can be more efficient with more weapons on the floor. Plus they all three played just around 30+ minutes... so of course their attempts will be down a bit. I'd much rather have this balanced attack with more efficiency than 15 shots for Tmac and Artest and only 8 makes between them. Tonight of our 73 FGA our big three took 30... sounds about the same as Boston to me. That's a pretty good model to follow since it worked for them last year.
Shot attempts and efficiency aren't independent. If the Rockets consciously try to force feed the offense through Yao and McGrad the entire game, you can't assume they shoot the same percentages.
The JVG offensive ball moment dominated in the fourth quarter tonight. Just get Yao the damn ball and let the defense dictate our offense. I have no problem with star touches in the fourth quarter. We just gotta play the same way more often when Yao's in the game. I hope this fourth quarter serves as a confidence booster for a tougher matchup tomorrow at orlando.
TMac...7-12 Yao.....6-9 Artest..5-9 Scola...3-6 Alston..1-8 Brooks..6-11 Landry..6-7 Hayes...1-4 Barry...0-4 Wafer...0-3 40% of our shots were taken by our big three. 28% were taken by yao/tmac. now who did you want to take shots from? keep in mind that hayes, barry, and wafer played off the bench while yao/mac were resting. someone has to shoot..
lets not forget tmac played 30 mins tonight, so its understandable that he has less attempts and yao got to the line often
they got plenty of "touches" In the 4th they played how they were supposed to. Tracy took (and made) open shots and created for his teammates. Yao worked it inside on the smaller guy and kicked it out when the double came over. Landry and Brooks played well and they were getting good looks, no point in going away from them. Thats what opened it up for Tracy at the end of the game.
also people gotta understand both yao and tracy are playing in limited minutes until the team is comfortable of playing them 35+ mins. tracy is gonna play 30-31 mins for at least another month. yao looks like to do the same after the MRI. so those stats may be skewed. but hey, if both can score 18-20 pts in just 30 mins of play, that's fine by me.
It doesn't matter if they barely touch it. I'm sure some of you will disagree with me on that, but if the rest of your team is rolling, and you are a star like Yao or McGrady (by that I mean you have the confidence to get yourself going anytime or have a go-to move that is money) then you should keep feeding the hot hand always. You know why we came back and won? Everyone was a little hot. We were on fire as a team. You single-cover Yao with a rookie and you get a poster on McGee (I really appreciate that kid's game though- no diss to him). You double Yao? He makes a great (I cannot emphasize how critical Yao's passes were - brilliant) pass to the outside which leads to a wide open by 3 by McGrady. You're burned either way. You rotate on McGrady and Yao? Alston somehow hits a 3. You rotate to Alston? He penetrates and finds Artest for another 3. We won that game because we caught fire as a team. Of course it wasn't one man. That's what made us so dangerous. Although in some cases, McGrady and Yao do need more touches, but both of those guys can get themselves rolling pretty quick (in general, not always) so they gotta get the role players involved.
