He played two guard tonight, dude. His job was to score. Additionally, when you have *four* forwards out and Eddie Griffin shoots as miserably as he did tonight, you can hardly accuse Steve Francis of padding his stats. Check yourself (or at least your basic basketball watching skills ; ). Please, people, stop with the Winning Basketball lectures. Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson would blush at the pontificating that has gone on on the BBS about one lousy game. Yao and Nachbar are not ready to play and you are basically left with Cato, Collier, an ineffective Griffin, the first game back for Moochie Norris and bench scrubs to go along with Francis and Mobley. Do the Lakers suddenly suck because they lost at home to the Spurs and Kobe struggled? There are people here that are blowing this loss way, way out of proportion.
Yes, they do suck! The Lakers are unbalanced and don't know what to do. The whole NBA has been geared to "beat" the Shaq/Kobe lead Lakers team. The Blazers and Kings have taken a Shaq-lead Lakers to the brink of a 7th game elimination. Take Shaq away, subtracts 30% of the scoring, and massive amount of shotblocking! The Lakers are the Orlando Magic of last year. You watch. Kobe will try. He will get little help. Shaq = 3 Laker role players
if nobody hits a shoot you can keep on passing, but if you are on fire.,and steve was on fire,you can also take over the game,why do a lot of people like iverson and think that al he have to do is score, and hate steve after a game like today, he shot almost 50% iverson shoots not even 40%. steve stepped up but nobody else did.He does passes but if he can hit the shot why should he pas? he needs to get his teammates involved you say,i agree but i think he tries, but if grifin shoots 1-11 yoou can't get him involved. it is better for the 50% shooter to take the shot. i can't believe peole bash steve after tonight why don't you say you think cato should rebound better than tonight come on people you always find a way to bash steve don't you. what should he do for you not to bash him? 8 point 26 assists?
Stevie played great tonight at the position he was playing, SHOOTING GUARD!!! What I question is this, why is it that Francis gets so offended with the idea of him moving to the 2 and bringing in a pass first point guard? It's obvious to me me that Francis is a pure scorer. Mobley could be a great 6th man and Francis could be relieved of getting other players involved and do what he does best, SCORE!!! I know it's the first game, and I won't bust out some crazy trade scenario, but if this trend continues, which it has now since last season, the rockets need to start considering the idea of trading or drafting a point guard that will get everyone involved. Steve shouldn't be blamed for his lack of playmaking ability, it just isn't in his nature, he is a scorer.
On fire?!? He shot 13-28 from the field! 28 damn shots!!! And 5 turnovers!! These are Iverson numbers!! And now we don't need that ****!! What game were you watching?
Are you sure about that? Throughout the game, Francis brought the ball up or would control the offense while everyone would stand around and watch. Man, we got a total of 9 DAMN ASSISTS in that game!!! Now that's sad...
I think the Rockets should be bold enough to experiment changing the starting pont guard position. Why doesn't Rudy try starting Tito Maddox at point? Then Steve moves to shooting guard, and Mobley moves to forward. Bench Rice. Early into the season, they ought to try something to make the offense run more smoothly, while Yao Ming learns NBA basketball. They got to try something new! This losing streak should be stopped early.
All i have to say is that our offense sucks as a whole. Look at Indiana's offensive game plan, then look at ours. We have no movement at all. Steve comes down the court, tries 15 crossovers, 4 spin moves, then shoots. Meanwhile, 4 other guys are picking their asses on the side of the court. I dont blame any players on the team. This is Rudy's fault. The fact that he still doesnt understand the concept of passing the ball around is sickening. He still goes with these ISO's. Motion offense?? LOL. thats comedy.
The ball movement sucked! I hated watching it! Steve is going to need to get the ball moving if the Rockets are looking to be a true contender. However, this isn't going to help if the Rockets frontcourt continues shooting 5-25. That's right! 5 for 25! That's 20% for you math majors. All they had to do was shoot 10-25 from the field and we would have won. Is it too much to ask that your front court shoots 40% from the field? And don't give me, "well, Steve didn't give them the ball in position to shoot." Eddie had shots he should have made and he bricked thim, simple as that. In my opinion, his poor shooting performance is what really cost us this game. He looked like a rookie out there. I'm just as disappointed in Eddie as I am with the lack of ball movement. Blaming the loss on Francis is asinine. Fact is, they would have lost by much more tonight if Francis didn't take things into his own hands. But, I totally agree with some of you. In the long run, the only way the Rockets are going to REALLY get better as a team is if they start moving the ball around. You just have to realize that if they do that, and Steve starts giving up the ball, we're probably going to be losing games by a lot more than 9 points for a while, and it's not like there's going to be a guarantee that the Rockets will start having more success. Of course having good shooters like Rice and Taylor back is going to help tremendously.
I believe he is a great player but......39 points doesn't mean anything----->we lost<------- If he tried to pass more, maybe it will be better
It's pretty good if your a shooting gaurd, not a point gaurd. Lance said it best this morning on 610. He said that they ran the motion offense twice to start the game and it looked really good and exciting. After that, the motion offense was described as the Rockets team chasing Francis down just to get a crack at the ball. Lance described one play as the Cat went down and double teamed Francis one time just so he could get the ball away from Stevie.
Correction...I-Sore. Where is the Rudy Haters thread??? Actually I don't hate Rudy, but I don't like his coaching...or lack of it.
If Steve is hitting almost 50% then keep throwing them up. Who else on our team is hitting at that percent. Eddie, 1-11. Cato 2-8. By my calculation Steve's % is just a bit higher. Lay off until he has a true Iverson night and goes 7-25.
By definition a point guard.... sets up plays distributes the ball where others can score gets everyone else involved in the flow of the offense is a good assist player quarterbacks the offense finds the open man The Rockets do not have one point guard on the team Steve Francis is a great player- but we would be better with him at the 2 guard and finding a legit point guard
Steve got to understand that with only him and Cat scoring for the team won't lead to anywhere. This has been already proved last season and the one before that. If others are struggling like Griffin did last night, try to set him up for some easy basket.
