Steve Haters: Shut Up

Why not? Steve's been throwing it to Cat on nights when he was shooting poorly.

 

i don't know how many people are just looking at box-scores. if you watch the first-half again the whole team made an effort to include everyone and with brick after brick it became clearer that the only 2 people who could put the ball in the basket were sf and cat. now is it possible that with 4 big men out rudy elected to go to steve and cat's pet plays and try to win the game like that? i think that is exactly what happened.

 

Francis had an excellent game IMO. He scored 39 freakin points! I don't know if some of you Francis bashers know this our not but Francis is the best player on our team! He was getting a good look or getting to the FT line whenever he wanted, why would he pass the ball to Boki or EG?

Look, our Front Court (as usual) was horrendous. Why is it that Griff can go 1 -11, but get a free pass? The starting 3,4,5 combibed for what, 13 points w/ 9 of those coming from Cato. No team can when with a frontcourt playing that poorly, NO ONE! Leave Francis alone and go call out Karl Malone for being selfish and leading his team to only 75 points, or hate on Kobe for going 9-29 the other night and his team being 0-2.

 

My, my, my, I sure have missed a lot. Took me some time to read all 5 pages, but I read them all. Here's my opinions on the game, most of which were already stated:

1. Steve did pass to his teammates, but they couldn't get it done. And just because they shoot more doesn't mean they'll gain confidence. To me, it looked like Griffin lost a lot of confidence in his shot. He seemed to begin hesitating, but would then shoot it after. That does not make a good shot. And Griffin probably didn't gain confidence either. More than likely, he would begin questioning himself and would have missed 15-20 more shots, had he gotten them.

2. For the Yao and Steve thing, Yao didn't really play much to get oppotunities from Steve. He did only shoot once, but he also almost shot 2 more times but got stripped. He also became a liability on defense and on the boards. Sure, we could have kept him in and passed it to him, helping him score say 15pts. But his play on D and the boards would have put us down even further. Cato played very well on D and the boards, and I would have kept him in there despite his limited offense. (btw, he did get some passes from Steve. I think Steve could have had 2 more assists, but problems by Cato took them away.)

3. Steve was the SG. I hear all this about him handling it all the time, but AI and Kobe handle the ball a lot too. They still shoot 25-30 times, usually in the low 40% range. Most offenses I know try to get the best shot available. If its a Steve iso or whatever, it was the best shot avaiable. And with Steve's 48%FG, that was a pretty good shot.

4. This kind of goes with 3, but I'll give it its own number. ISO's don't necessarily have to be all just 1 player. To my knowledge, it attempts to get a double on one player, freeing up another. Steve drive or shoot all day in an ISO if they didn't double. If they did double, but too late, Steve should go with the score. Now, if they double at just the right time, Steve can pass to an open man. However, the man can't just stay in the same spot. I saw Moochie pass during a ISO and throw one heck of a bad pass. Once a man leaves a Rocket, that player should try to get open and call for the ball. Does Steve have to give it to him. No, if he's not confortable with the pass, he can still take it. It would still be a difficult pass.

5. I don't get this thing about Steve not being a leader because he tried to keep the team in the game. (which he did.) Had this been a NBA Final game, and Steve kept the ball in his hands the last couple minutes of the game and we won by 1, I don't think we would have seen any complaints. We would have seen praise because Steve stepped up. I heard talk about it doesn't matter because we didn't win, but he kept us close. Also remember Miller's stats in the Clipps game, or the Jason Kidd reference. As for padding his stats, this kind of goes with 3. Had Steve been shooting terrible, but still shot alk the time, I'd call it padding. But he shot the ball very well.

That's about all the thoughts I got. All of these are just my opinions. I do think Steve COULD have passed more, but I think the loss goes to other reasons, not Steve's play.

 

I have to agree with RCCOLa. We lost because we simply didn't make the shots we needed to. Francis played great. He shot 48% and scored 39pts. That is great. He tried to pass the ball, but no one was hitting their shots. As a leader of the team Francis has the responsibilities to get the team going. When he realized that all but the cat were missing, he took it upon himself to get some points up. I don't see a problem in Francis taking 28 shots. I hope he averages 35ppg. That would be great. That is what he does best. SCORE. People we lost because we played like Sh*t. It happens, even to the very very best of teams. So lets move on. They need to play the motion offense, and Eddie Griffin just needs to play his game and he'll put up the numbers. I think that he was nervous, Ming looked nervous. Now that we got the first game jitters out of the way, lets take out the lost to the Pacers on the Nuggets.

 

Hmm..this almost makes me think a little more about the other players. We all know Yao was nervous, and I'm sure Griffin and Boki were somewhat nervous. Do you think they wanted to go out and look bad? They could have fought against that and played well, but its very easy to stand still and not take shots. They may have been a little afraid to get into the offense and maybe Steve knew. He didn't want them to look bad, so he took up their load. Just another thought. Not neccessarily true, but possible.

 

The starting 3 was Cat and he played a heck of game, all 6'4" of him.

 

Jay Williams had 7 assists in his very first regular season game.

 

Go back and do a search of my posts during the summer advocating that very trade and you'll have your answer.

 

I was just looking over the box score and would like to make an interesting point. Mobley, Moochie and Francis shot a combined 25-56, which is 45%. Not too bad I agree. However, they also had 11 turnovers between them. So really, you can look at like they went 25-67, because those 11 turnovers mean just as much as a missed shot. Thats 37%, which is not good.

Ive gotten onto Francis' case on this thread. However, I was just watching a replay of the game, and noticed that, objectively, he made 6 passes to his teamates that I considered to be good passes. Out of those, had had 4 assists. So that proves that when he makes the right pass, he can be a playmaker. Looking at the replay, Steve made more of an effort to get his teamates involved than I gave him credit for immediately after seeing the game the first time. The problem I saw was some of the passes that Steve gave to his teamates were either stolen or were poor in that his teamates did not receive the pass in a favorable position, and they had it taken away and were credited with the turnover instead of Steve. So Steve's passing, or lack thereof, was a partical factor last night. But to his credit, he did try. Unfortunately, hes just not a good passer and thats why he averages a ton of turnovers. Last night was a good example of this.

On the other side, we have Mobley and I am suprised to see that Francis is getting ALOT more heat on this board than Mobley. Mobley wasnt even considering passing the ball in this game. 3 of Mobley's turnovers were because of forced shots that were either blocked or stolen and resulted in a turnover. Moochie was the same way. So to sum up, personally, I think Moochie and Mobley deserve more blame for last night's loss than Steve.

 

Jay Williams also played point guard.

 

i admit that i haven't read all the responses to the subject. but here is my 2 cents anyway.

STEVE IS DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO BECOMING STEPHON MARBURY!!!!!!

WE NEED MORE OF A JASON KIDD

 

rc cola - great post.

codell - thank you for watching the game again and changing a little bit of your opinion. the immediate reaction after seeing the rocket's lose the very first game of the season is understandly, frustration. however the two most significant facts are that steve scored 39 points and we lost. that automatically brings up images of clear out iso's and steve waiving away all his teammates. it wasn't like that. people were involved until it was shown that steve was clearly the best option.