I have to say that i kind of agree with him on this one. Like tonight, there were a number of people in the chat room during the game typing over and over to give yao the damn ball. The rocks apparently put it through Yao alot, but he was doubled/tripled teamed almost immediatly. It was very fast. I am not saying that they gave hime enough touches, but the swarming defense tonight kept Yao from getting comfortable/holding hte ball more than 2 secs. The thing that i also agree on is tonight, he was overmatched by Rasho Nesterovic tonight. He forced Yao to hang around the perimeter never alowing him to go in down low and have a stance he wanted to post up. There were arms flying around whenever Yao tried to. The defense tonight was just too fast for Yao, and the rocks guards, did take a bunch of il advised shots, especially when they should have slowed down the tempo/the "fast" break and wait for the big man and play through him. But it jsut was not working tonight for the rocks, which is typical for them on the road this year. Yao needs the offense run through him so he can throw it back out to the guards, but when a defense is swarming the big guy like they were tonight, something has to be done differently in order for a win.
Actually there is some truth to what he is saying..although the Rox guards do need to make a better concerted effort to get Yao the ball ( i blame Rudy, as the Rox seem to be a team without a true identity ), Yao also needs to learn how to seal off his defender better.
it's a two way street. our guards/eg need to make the pass quicker and just assume yao will hold the position. there are many times when the guards/eg do not ingore yao yet seem afraid to throw the pass b/c they think yao will not hold position and it will get stolen. for their part, they should just throw the pass as soon as yao has position and assume it'll get there. they are too hesitant, i don't think they need to be so afraid. for yao's part, he must get better at holding position. someone said even shaq can't hold it for long. please. shaq plants his ass just outside the lane and doesn't move. hakeem did it, mourning did it, ewing/robinson/any great center did it. i'm not saying yao should be able to at this point, but he must improve if he is to become truly dominant. many times he'll try to run to his position but his man will simply stay on his side so he can't get there or they push him out too far to do anything. this is yao's fault, not the guards, not rudy's, not the equipment man's, not the waterboys. it's simply yao needing to get stronger which he one day will. people act like yao just establishes position and should always get it. as i said, it's a two-way street. take tentative passers and combine them with an average-at-best positioner and you are going to have problems. these problems will get worked out, but they take time. oh there's that word again, patience. and maybe it's also partially a 3-way street and rudy needs to have more plays where the guards pick yao's man and allow him to get position down low. i've seen it work at least once this season. so really it's an entire team wide strategy thing that has to be ironed out. but it's no one groups fault entirely and yao is included in the problem.
what the rockets can do is run more pick-n-roll with yao or pass him the ball when he cuts to the paint. defensively, yao is doing a fine job, just stay infront of the offensive guy with hands up. if he were trying to block all the shots, he would have foul out in my games. yao needs to box out his man. i know he can't jump, but he should get more rebounds than what he's currently getting. what do y'all think? everytime, i see yao play; he looks more and more like duncan.
Did you see Nesterovic hold his position any times? But he got lots of balls and made many easy shoots.
Good point. The guards don't have to wait for Yao to get to position. They can also create easy shots for him. Sometimes they have to drive to the basket to get his man off a little bit, and then let Yao reset. It's not just about standing there waiting for Yao to outmuscle his man.
I agree that Yao needs to get better positioning. But if Rudy wants to get him the ball with good position, he can do it easily by setting picks as you mentioned. Rudy's got to mix up his plays. I'm really tired of his double pick at the the top of the key play of his. What happend to our new 'motion offense'? He's got to mix up our play calling and discipline our guys to get everybody involved. If we pass the ball around and go inside out, we are unstoppable offensively (see previous two games). We did none of that during the game. We've got to realize there will never be any consistency if we don't pass and not go inside out. That's why we lost the game, its because of our inconsistency. Our passing was horrible all game. We were hitting our contested shots in the first half and the game was tied. We were missing our contested shots in the second half and we got beaten. If we go inside out and pass the ball like the two previous games, you get more wide open shots and easy layups consistently.
Yeah, right. Yao was tired, so Cat got 1 assist, right? And Yao was tired so Cat threw up 16 shots, right?
Thank you. I was just about to post this fact. I'M SICK OF THESE MORONS THAT DEFEND CAT BECAUSE HE GETS DECENT NUMBERS!!!! Face it, Cat is selfish. Yao is a great passer. He turns it over a few times, but it's a fact that we have a center who gets as many assists as a guard.
Do you guys actually believe that Yao cant touch the ball because he is tired? Running around and setting screens is also tiring. Boxing out and rebounding is also tiring. Inbouding the ball is also tiring. I dont understand that logic. If he is ABLE to play and is OUT on the floor, he should get touches. I am not saying that we should pound it inside to him like Shaq but he should definitely get more touches than he did last night.
I don't know if Yao was tired or not last night, but he definitely was not himself. To me he seemed kind of "out of it". He wasn't being aggressive offensively or defensively. He was dropping some passes that he normally would have caught. He mis-timed a lot of his jumps on rebound attempts and blocked shot attempts. I just don't think he was himself for one reason or another. Yao's a rookie, so he'll have games like that from time to time. I think it was the fact that he wasn't playing his "normal" game that kept him from getting as many touches....well, that and some very aggressive double-teaming defense by the T-Wolves.
you can't have a 6'11" guy strong side with yao. of course eddie's man is going to double. we need some shooters. relying on eddie griffin to beat other team's doubling efforts on yao by throwing up line drive 3's won't win us too many games. i'm not getting on eddie, but that's not his game. you could see last night that he had no choice but to shoot. he was wide open. bring back bullard!!
hikanoo, one of the most tiring things to do in the NBA is fight for position against strong and super quick guys like Garnett. You don't recall the strategy to make Jabbar work, beat on him, to tire him out. When Yao is tired, he is not as quick and strong. When Yao is not as quick and strong, he looks slow and weak at fighting for position. Here is what Yao said yesterday, <blockquote><hr>Yao Ming's recent surge in scoring has in some ways started before he got the ball. The Rockets increasingly have let him set up in the lane and take passes toward the basket, or roll off high screens to a low post. The different paths to low post position have helped him get the ball in good position without taking as much of a beating. "<b>The couple of plays we use let me get to places on the floor I'm more comfortable more easily," Yao said. "There's not as much need for me to push in the paint. "It saves some energy, but it doesn't save that much. It saves a little bit. Of course I'm still tired. I'm always tired."</b> Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich said he has used the same plays to get Yao the ball inside all season, but has based his play calls on the recent trend. "It's effective. That's why (we) do it," he said. "There's only a couple things you can do (defensively). They can't just limit him. How do you play a guy going right down the middle? You can't get in front. If you go one side, he rolls off the other way. He has options." <hr></blockquote> Notice how Yao never makes excuses and has been rejecting any notion that he is tired enough to change his game. This is the first I've read about strategies to relieve him of poundings that sap his energy. Rudy has also remarked on the radio that sometimes Yao comes out not moving and pushing properly. When he gets bent over by a guy, that is a tell-tale sign. Thing that is important for big men is to constantly move their center of gravity to shield people and get leverage for positioning...you need your legs fresh to do that. It's tough. I am convinced that I see Yao very often unable to move well enough in possessions to fight for an entry pass. Defenses are designed to make entry passes to 7'ers difficult.
Heypartner, Good post. I agree with what you that it is getting harder and harder for Yao to get good post position. Whether its due to fatigue or better defense is a different debate. But I jest that it is a combination of factors. But to get more touches than last night was definitely possible in my humble opinion. There were many times when he had position and the team opted to shoot long jumpers. There were also instances where Yao had position and they would reverse the ball. Lastly, we both agree that it is tiring to get position. With that said, our guards/fowards should make a better attempt to get Yao the ball when he does have position. Afterall, he did exert alot of energy to hold his ground. That is the part of the offense that frustrates me the most.
i just cant understand what the hell some of the posters are thinking sometimes. The initial thread comment was not bad. People always complain about yao not getting the ball enough. Yesterday, wether he got the ball or not, our initial play was to get him the ball. But why he didnt get the ball was explained quite nicly by heyPartner. Also, there is another thing called 'strategy' that the t-wolves used. constant double and triple teams, w/ KG and his long arms involved, causing Yao to turn the ball over 3 times, and him constantly getting fronted. yes, it was partly our guards fault for not lobbing to yao, or getting him easier shots, but to say things like 'what a dumb thing to say' when a guy posts that yao did get involved, just didnt come through, is just ignorant. people should seriously stop looking at Yao as if he can do no wrong!! The guy is going to be a legend, and we tried to get him the damn rock yesterday, good things just didnt come out of it.
<blockquote><hr>Originally posted by francis 4 prez for their part, they should just throw the pass as soon as yao has position and assume it'll get there. they are too hesitant, i don't think they need to be so afraid.<hr></blockquote> Allow me to add another observation to this combined with the quotes I already posted...(btw: going down the middle from a double high post set is Yao's favorite play, according to Rudy on 610...thx again edc). When you see Yao go from high post and push his way straight down the middle of the lane and turnaround, that is not really a PnR. That is what Rudy is calling getting Yao a play that is hard to front (see his quote). When they do front this, watch how it is done...this is always an interesting little skirmish to figure out. When they don't front, the best defenders will play Yao to one side; the ineffective defenses will passively stand behind Yao. So, standing to one side can prevent a direct pass from Francis...well, like F4P says, it can sometimes still be made, but is the point man the best one to make it. What I've seen is the Rockets hesitate (or fake an entry) then pass to the wing or other high post player to get a better angle...remembering that these are situations when the defender is on Yao's side. imo, the "hesitation" has been shown sometimes to be a matter of one guy faking a pass to Yao then passing it to the guy with the better angle of entry. This is why we are seeing wing guys and corner guys make the entry (from triangle positioning Point-LowPost-Wing/Corner). In the Kings game, I even saw the 2 perimeter guys play catchwaiting patiently for the deepest position and the best angle, while Yao works his man. Afterall, when a guy plays you on your side closest to the lane, you can shield him to the hole if the ball goes quickly to a guy in the corner. The defender has to get back behind you or circle around to the front, then it becomes a matter of Yao trying to shield the guy as you find the passer with the best angle of entry.
It's both ways, the combination of the big man's positioning and the passing of the perimeter players. As HP points out that fighting for position, offensively and defensively, is very tiring. Yao is not strong enough to do it well for long stretches. The entry passing is also important. It's not as simple as "just throw it in to the 7'5" guy" like many people assume. The timing and angle are crucial. If you look at the Lakers, the entry pass to Shaq often started BEFORE Shaq got into position. (Contrary to common perception, Shaq does not just PLANT himself on the block. Nobody can do that, not even Shaq.) When Shaq makes a move to get his position, the ball is already in the air, and it gets there just as Shaq arrives at the spot. It takes a lot of skills and good chemistry to do that right. It's almost like the alley-oop pass. The timing is important because that's crucial for beating the double-team. IMO, our guards don't have the skills down yet. Yao doesn't have the strength to get the position consistently throughout the game. And they don't have the chemistry to make it work all the time. It's not the fault of just one person (Yao, guards, or Rudy).
This is absolutely correct. Our guards are very pedestrian passers. Their entry passes are average sometimes horrible. Yes it's true that Yao needs to get better position. However, there are times when Yao is open with good position. When someone is fronting you, the lob pass is a perfect opportunity to counteract this. If spacing is good, the defense will have a hard time rotating. And if they do, someone is wide open. Another play they run way too infrequently is Yao moving to the top of the key and shooting the 15 footer. We've seen this about 4 times the entire season and he's made all of them. People are so concerned about pushing Yao out, when he's at the top of the key, they just drop back waiting him to make his move to fight for position. If they let him shoot the face up jumper, we should take advantage of this. When Yao was drafted people were very concerned we would be getting a 7 ft jump shooter. Now we've done a 180 and try to run every one of his plays down low. One of Yao's biggest attributes is his smooth jumpshot. He's been having problems with the turnaround because people are bumping him thus throwing off his timing. When he faces up, he rarely misses because defenders are sagging back. He has a clear shot. I feel much more comfortable with this than Eddie jacking up a 3. Also, if he makes the defense respect his face up jumper, they will be forced to play him much tighter which will allow him to roll towards the basket with the defender a step behind. These are all posibilities that should be utilized. Yao will never have the athleticism that Hakeem had but at this stage, he has a much more consistent jumper. The fact we're not utilizing this more is downright criminal.
