get your facts straight first. we had Yao in our home game against Boston. and their game plan was exactly the same as last night, don't let Yao beat them inside. as for me being a Yao only fan, what make you think i am? i didn't mean to bash steve in my previous post. the truth is Boston's over committed defence on Yao made our guards' life easy. so i think maybe Yao deserved some credit too. when Yao had a great game, i'd also give the guards some credit for getting him the ball.
For the record, the last time Houston faced Boston he was 26-9-5. That not even a double-double. Celebrating the win too much?
hell the way some of you talk we could win the championship but if SF misses one pass to Yao . . . You will say it was because he was trying to get the MVP for himself I mean in another thread. . . they said SF SHOULD THROW *INTO* A TRIPLE TEAM TO GET YAO THE BALL that is just ridiculous. Rocket River
Steve Francis still makes the game, offensively, too difficult for himself and his teamates which is something we cannot say for Kidd, Stockton or Magic. I appreciate the game that he had but he did not speak back. In fact in his own words he agreed with us. I called him out yesterday for many things including questioning the workings of his brain. I questioned it because he choose, foolishly, to go for two uncontested dunks when he supposedly has a bad back. He did it again last night and in this morning's paper he called it a stupid move. In fact he said that, like us, his grandmother must be real pissed.
What numbers? 33/9/9? Not even McGrady or Kobe put up those numbers consistently. And, if he takes over a game, he's called a ball hog. The guy can't win.
Couldn't have written it any better. I guess I'm in the minority in that I wasn't overly impressed with Steve's performance last night, regardless of his stats. Many of us feel that Steve should play SG, and last night Steve looked like a SG trying to play PG. Too many forced shots, too much ball-handling, blah blah blah, we all know the routine. To his credit, he played solid defense last night, and he had a solid game all-around. I just hate to see a player with his talent, who's talented enough to make the game look effortless, play so inefficiently and inconsistently. Or maybe my expectations are too high.
I really think we should be more thankful of Steve's effort and performance last night. Sure, I also don't think Steve had an A+ type game. More often than not, he dribbled the ball far too long and he did do his usual "in-traffic" routine. I doubt anyone can argue that he could improve from yesterday's performance by being more consistent. I don't know about you guys but that makes me absolutely giddy because I stll feel he played at a very high level last night. About the whole Yao thing, I feel Yao just had a bad game. Just look at his rebounding and defensive numbers (Battie went off). This team, for better or worse, is presently better equipped to overcome a bad Yao game than it is a bad Stevie game. To me, this means that this is still Stevie's team and, at least for this season, Rox go where Stevie takes them.
You know the thing that kills me is that every player has a bad game, and I don't know that they are mauled like this. I would go as far as saying that if Steve was in a major market, his numbers warrant MVP consideration. Sure the team is in the eighth spot and that's another reason why it won't happen, and don't we all make mistakes? I can not see another player on this team that has his type of all-around talent. Ming is great, don't get me wrong, but the only player who is close to him offensively on this team (albeit inconsistently) is Mobley and he is bashed like there was no tomorrow. And you know the same thing goes for Yao Ming, I see him getting bashed all of the time and he doesn't deserve it. let me bottomline this for some of you, these 3, not 2 players make up 54.3 of the teams 91.5 points per game. I like Eddie Griffin as much as the next Rockets fan, but honestly do you want Mobley to defer his shots to him? I know that I don't, these three also collectively gather 18.6 of the teams 40.9 rebounds per game. What else do you want? Please, someone tell me, I don't know.
The things we want Steve to do is to recognize that he has high-priced teammates. Under no circumstances could our frontcourt be considered a weak rebounding unit. So if Steve is spending, in my humble opinion, too much time on the defensive boards, then our rebounders are not able to rebound and get that ball out. Instead he should let them rebound and he should position himself accordingly to fastbreak. The thing that makes it even worse is that even when Steve get the rebound he transitions to the fast break very slowly. This is clearly due to his thirst for and preoccupation with an opportunity to break his man down in the half court set. If he was not able to do that he would, like Kidd and any top flight pg, be more opportunistic on the fastbreak and early offense. The funny thing is we are not dominant in the half court set and even with the slowed down game he has a bunch of turnovers. So what is the justification for slowing down the ball and allowing the defense to get set. It does not help Posey, it does not help Cat. I feel if you are going to force the action late in the shot clock, heck, force it early. What the hell! We cannot have more turnovers than we have right now. At least we would be getting more out of our thoroughbreds including Wink, himself. To me there are very few teams in the league that can keep up with Posey, Mobley, Francis, and Moochie. If Dallas who has a more accomplished half court set still runs non-stop why would we not run at all.
Rotfl come one. Yao is our best rebounder because of his height and Cato's our most agrressive rebounder, but neither of these two are really good rebounders and don't even get me started on MoT and EG. Yao is good but rebound is something u got to just want, Yao because of fatigue problems or what not does show the same fire in his eye a guy like Charles Barkely does. Barkely is a guy that fires u up with his rebounds, a 6'4'' guy out grabbing a 6'10'' guy through pure hard work is amazing. That's why I loved Charles's play, he not only scores but he does the dirty grunge work with a passion. Suprisingly Cato's getting there this year but I don't know how effective he'd be will be if he'd play starter minutes. MoT and EG are just soft, but I saw MoT with a little more fire than two years ago. I don't want Francis to run more fast break though, I think we need more Yao and Cato in the game together for that to happen. Not only does the big man needs to get the board but he needs to run down the court and jam it home.
