The Suns made it plain. The Rockets can't compete with a team like them. There is good news and bad news. The good news is the Suns are one of a kind. No other team plays the way they do. The bad thing, we better find a way to win against them, or you can just cash it all in. The Suns showed the Rockets have problems due to coaching and player development. The Suns had the Rockets number all night. The reason... they play everybody out of positio. They had Boris playing the five. This was perfect for them. Why, Yao would not come out and guard the three. If he did, that left the lane wide open. I watched the game for about 10 minutes and I saw him get 4 open 3 pointers... ouch.. Yoou can't really blame JVG for that. He knows what Yao can do. Yao has never been a perimeter defender and he never will be. But back to my point, Marion is a 3 but he plays the 4. Amare (when he returns) plays the 5 but he is really a 4. No wonder why the Suns get som many fast breaks. They are an athletic team. JVG has to take some blame for this becasue he assmbled this team. But realistically, there is no other team that plays the way the Suns do. Te problem is not really with the coach or the players. we just got to come with something different against them. We are okay.... and please stop the damn FIRE JVG threads.. Im pretty sure you guys are the same ones who backed him last year in the playoffs. We will be okay!!
I agree with the idea that the league has changed. Big men are valuable but I think speed on the perimiter has gained in relative value. With the new rules, it's becoming a guard's league. We need to be like the Spurs and get quick perimiter guys like Parker and Ginobili. Guys like Wesley are just slow and one dimensional on offense.
The problem is, the whole league know who the suns are and the way they play 12 months ago. All the posters in clutchfans.net know it. JVG definitely aware it. But does JVG has any game plan against the suns? Does he has any offensive sets to counter the suns? Does he has any defensive sets to deny nash the ball? defense the threes???? No, he doesnt. He is using the same game plan he's been using the last 10 years. He refuses to changes costs teh rockets' game!
No game plan in the world would work if your players are playing as if they are ready to enjoy this all-star break. They just looked completely lazy out there. Inexcusable, but understandable.
Did JVG have a game plan when we blasted the Suns by 20 points in Phoenix last season? Did he have a game plan later when we won AGAIN in Phoenix? Was it "the same game plan he's been using the last 10 years"? Give it up! The players didn't come to play. Game plans don't leave you down 45 points after three quarters. Quit blaming everything on JVG. This bad loss may end up being good for us because the maybe players will be more focused after the All-Star break instead of coasting on what's happened the past 10 games.
You cannot play the Suns game against them, you have to play in the opposite style. They want to run on every play, you have to slow it down and turn it into a slugfest. They want to shoot threes all day, you have to force it into the post. Thomas, Diaw, etc should not be able to stop Yao Ming. Hell, they shouldn't be able to stop Juwan Howard. In this case, none of that mattered though. This loss was about effort, and was perfectly captured by the play where the Suns got the ball on a dead ball out of bound under there own basket and it turned into a fast break layup at the other end. You cannot fail to get back on defense when you know the other team is inbounding the ball. This game was an embarrasement, and if it were not a pro team, the players would have been held after to run suicides or something after that sorry effort.
I don't know if u guys have noticed, if T-Mac is not special against above average teams, the Rockets lose, even when both he and Yao are healthy. The Rockets will go as far as T-Mac takes them. The Suns are tough on a half court team (doesn't translate in the playoffs) ask Miami.
Its the coaches job to have his players dictate the offense. We were actually trying to outrun the Suns! JVG was great for an undisciplined team like we had with cat, sf3, and mooch. This team needs a players coach that knows his offense. This team has NO offensive Identity.
i totally agree, the spurs and detroit can play either half court or break. we need a versatile guy like robert horry. i remember that rudy t moved horry to PF and mario elie at SF when they played the suns and that was genius.
101- Obviously he is talking about the Rockets when he says "you". The Spurs are a much different team then ours. They have the youth and athleticism to be able to have a more uptempo game. With our current active roster. We don't have the athleticism or speed to to do what the Spurs did. Too many times i saw the rockets run up the court on D and think just getting there is enough. They didnt have any alertness on D to see the easy bucket that nash drops off for an opponent slashing hard to the rim. I attribute their horrendous offense to them getting winded trying to keep up. Even if they had the endurance you could tell hey had no fast break IQ.
Every team is different, that is what we all agree on...However, each team has different strengths and weaknesses, ours being last night, we can't shoot...Didn't like the loss, but it does show no matter how good Tmac and Yao are, we don't have the complete package like other teams... Not to derail the thread, but I'm not sure what type of team we are...JVG has a lot to do with this...
I did not understand the game plan last night. The suns are fast and athletic, but have a very small front line. The Rockets should have been pounding it in to Yoa and JH on every possession. Wear the small guys out and get them in foul trouble. Play to your strengths. Instead the Rockets were shooting jump shots early which plays right into the Suns game. They are a good jump shooting team and quick to long rebounds due to their smaller size. We missed the jump shots and they got easy transition basket.
The Suns are not a weak defensive team this year. That's a myth. The Suns were smart to double team Yao early. They swarmed him if he got anywhere close to the basket. As a result, he was forced to take a lot of tough fadeaways from 10 feet out. The Rockets simply didn't play smart on offense. Their best playmaker (McGrady) seemed lethargic all game, and they all seemed to settle a lot of quick jumpers instead of penetrating and moving the ball to the open man (quickly). The quick-shot offense worked great against the Clippers, but obviously we're not the kind of team that can do that on a nightly basis. Defensively, we were simply outmatch. Transition D is pretty much all effort. But we were torched in the halfcourt as well. I just don't think we have the quickness to defend them when they're executing the way they did.
I think the real problem with the rockets against a team like the Sun's, who in my opinion are dramatically better than last year, cause they play alot better defense, is the rockets have the slowest frontline in the NBA and JVG's defensive scheme is to protect the paint. This team for most of the season has started out extremely slow in the 1st quarter and Doug Collins pointed that out saying how the rockets start the game is usually a precursor to how well they will play. JVG is going to have to make some changes, the Sun's completely undressed the rocket players and some of JVG's faulty coaching schemes. Mailing it in or not, no way a T-Mac and Yao team minus Amare Stoudamire should get run of the arena like that. If it was me I would start leaning towards a youth movement.
It's not the coach and his schemes. Our game plan was to force it inside. Boris had Yao playing at the TOP of the key. JVG can't really do much about that, other than take Yao out. But then all of people would ask "Why was Yao out the game". You can't just look at basketball so black and white. Just becasue you loose doesn't mean you were not prepapred or you were outmatched. We were just flat.. big time flat.
You mean Yao and Swift. That would have been the better mismatch. Howard's feet are nailed to the floor. He would have ate the basketball 6 or 7 times against Marion and Diaw. Why do you think he's standing out top all the time? But, you are right, we should have been pounding the ball inside down their throats. Play with Yao at one low post, Swift the other, and McGrady at the high post area. What happened was, we were so scared of the run out and them getting a fb or two on us, that everybody stayed outside because Van Gundy's gameplan is unbending. You cannot give up the fast break. Every shot we took on the offensive end, you can see one red shirt anywhere near the paint area for the offensive rebound. Everybody else is hightailing it back to avoid the dreaded fb and the scream out from JVG. The shot comes out long, because we are short arming it. Suns grab it, run down to the timeline, throw it around the horn, because we've got 3 guys in the paint to cut off penetration, and bingo line up the 3 ball. When that happens 8 or 9 times in a row, it is devastating. Then whenever we actually made a basket, we've got 2 slow big guys on the floor in half court defense. How many teams have to expose us with Yao and Juwan on the floor together before he gets it? Yao and Juwan on the floor together is TERRIBLE. I don't care how much of a professional Juwan is. I don't care how consistent he is and Stromile isn't. Doggone it, Juwan should not be on the floor with Yao. It does not work and we will continue to be exposed by it over and over and over until he does something about it. We've got to play Swift with Yao, no matter if he is a bimbo that can't remember plays, and he gets in foul trouble, etc. etc. etc. We have NO chance against quicker, smaller teams with both Juwan and Yao on the floor. Why can't he see that? And if Stro isn't the answer, then get Hayes on the floor or make a move. There are players available. Instead he goes to the bench and brings in Bowen, when in those games we need our offense the very most! Then he brings in Luther looking for more defense. Luther was toasted all night. He is too inexperienced to defend effectively against a team like that. A good, young player, with a decent future, yes. But you've got Bogans sitting over there, a bigger, stronger, more experienced player. And you gonna go with Luther in for Wesley???? We don't even see Hayes until Bowen has run around for 10 minutes and we are out of the game. Why is Hayes playing scrub minutes all of a sudden, after lighting a spark under us when we signed him and he was first or second off the bench??? Do we not like the spark? Even if we squeek into the playoffs, we are toast. We cannot hang with teams like Dallas or Phoenix this year. Dallas will chew through us in 5 or 6 games, I'm sorry to say. They are better and we are worse than last year. They'll do the same thing Phoenix did to us last night, go small and run and force the ball out of Yao's hands. Van Gundy better come up with a strategy by then, or else we might not even make it there.
Beginning of the 4th, I still honestly thought Phoenix was going to double our score for the game. Even without a game plan, that's inexcusable. There's no way a team should ever be in a position that late to double another team's score, unless you're allowing them to do it. The Rockets didn't come out to play.
