Notice at the end when they ran a play for him we scored in less than 4 seconds. And it looked easy. We need a little more of that.
Yeah, it seems that everytime he's gotten the ball in the post, he's been effective...the hard part is simply getting the ball to him in the post.
It's hard to get the ball into a stationary post player in today's NBA, unless you have a wide body like Shaq. You need good passers, and the big man needs to keep moving. Unfortunately, Yao is too slow to react to the passes when he is moving. This reminds me an inccident with the old Bulls when MJ used to send bullets passes to Bill Cartwright, which caused a lot of TOs. So, PJ mandated all players have to send the pass right into Cartwright's CHEST, otherwise don't pass. Maybe JVG should issue the same mandate to his players.
I agree that Yao and T-Mac have a heavy and unfair burden this year. It's going to take some time for both of those guys to get on the same page. At the same time I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the Rockets to win about 50 games and for Yao to average about 20/10. Our team has enough talent to win 50 and Yao definitely has enough skills to get 20/10.
The word-by-word translation is "rolling and crawling". Ming probably means that the games are not going to be easy and will be UGLY.
Hell, Yao's getting (illegally) doubled in the post without the ball, so I think that has more to do with our problems feeding the post than anything else. We need to spread the floor a little bit better so defenders can't cheat on Yao like that.
It's actually NOT illegal. A defender can go anywhere they want in the current defensive rules. As long as the defender is within arm's-length from an offensive player in the paint, they can sag down and pretty much prevent any pass going to the post. Before, a defender coming down from the weak side even before the post pass is thrown, was indeed "illegal defense". But, not now.
Well, you really cannot call that "illegally". The rule of NBA is that once you establish your style of the play, the refs will adjust to you, not the other way around. I know it's a pity, but that's the life in the NBA. The bigger your name is, more favor you'll get. Too bad, Yao is not there yet. We did spread the floor in several instances, one of them resulted a TO by Yao when JWilliams(?) stripped his ball from the blind side for a fast break; a couple other times, the defenders did send additional help before he got the ball. The problem was that we don't have anyone who has a great court version, who can see the floor well, (other than TMac, maybe). If our post-feeder can swim the ball fast enough, or send the ball cross the court to the weak side promptly, it usually results an open shot. This is the time BIG guards really have an advantage with the height since they can see over the defenders. The Kings do this masterly.
You're right. My bad. I just spent a freaking half an hour searching for the rule book. I didn't know they allowed anyone to just double anyone, but it's in there in black & white. http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_10.html?nav=ArticleList c. Any defensive player may play any offensive player. The defenders may double-team any player.
Yea, sucks doesn't it? Makes you WISH we were playing against that bogus Seattle 'D' back in the 90's. At least that would be better than what the league allows teams to do now. I HATE it!! The league and fans talk about how low (college-like) the scores are now, but what do you expect when they installed college defenses? I mean, these are professionals. Make them play defense and make the coaches come up with an actual defensive strategy (ie: who and where to double, taking advantage of mismatches, etc.), rather than zoning everyone. But, I guess I'm alot like JVG in this way. I love the defensive side of the ball and think, those getting paid millions to play at this level, should be able to play some one-on-one 'D'.
