Well, LScolaDominates, I never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed.... ..but that's never stopped my from making my own hay (lol). For me, again, you have to define what it means to STOP a player. And how stopping that player affects the way your team is able to play. And to me, stopping a player has as much (if not more) to do with how neutralizing him affects his team, moreso than limiting any of the other valid points you made. The game is played from possession to possession. Ideally, if you're a better offensive than defensive team, you manufacture enough possessions in a number of different ways in order to get the rates of efficiency you cite. And the opposite is true of a defensive team. Sometimes, like with the Phoenix Suns earlier in the decade, the function of the offense rested on everyone who played major minutes. But Steve Nash, offensively, made it work. You found a way to contain Nash, or the Suns ran you out of the gym. The interesting and fun part of watching the Suns/Spurs rivalry the last few seasons (for me) was the in-game chess match Gregg Popovich played with Nash. Popovich knew to keep Nash off-balance with different defensive looks as often as he could, usually from possession to possession. Watching Nash adjust from being a playmaker to a scorer and then back to a playmaker and then back to a scorer was more fun than anybody should have the privilege to watch. You couldn't realistically or consistently take out the Suns if you couldn't take out Steve Nash. The fact that Nash understood and adjusted on the fly most times tells you what kind of player Nash is. If Nash was playing with the Knicks now instead of the Suns, they'd be at the top of the conference. Nash's INFLUENCE far exceeds his production, which is prodigious enough on its own. Kevin Martin is nowhere close to that type of dictator of game flow. What Martin's numbers tell me is that he's a finisher of offensive opportunities. But those opportunities depend too often on factors that Martin himself cannot create or influence. Part of the mystery with that lies in the assumption that, in the latter stages of games, a large part of Martin's offensive efficiency is tied to his ability to draw free throws. I've always preferred for the players to decide the end of close games, rather than the officials, all things being equal. I understand that Martin and Nash are different players in form and function. But the premise is to affect the game in more than one way. In form and function, Kevin Martin has more in common with Reggie Miller, or even Richard Hamilton, than he does with Carmelo Anthony or LeBron James, whatever the extrapolated numbers say. If Martin is a player that cannot be stopped on offense, then he really doesn't need a call from an official to manufacture offense for himself or his team. Scoring has to take on a dimension with the opponent that "one player HAS to be neutralized if we have any chance of beating this team". And neutralizing him means doing whatever you can to take the ball away from him, and make another player beat you. Stopping the offense isn't supposed to stop your best offensive player. But I believe if you defend the Rockets' offense well enough (meaning, staying at home on the outside and not overcrowding perimeter players), you handle Kevin Martin. You generally don't need a system to for a great player to score, for himself or for his team. It sounds funny, but not being able to stop Kevin Martin from scoring isn't quite what it may seem...particularly if your team doesn't defend well enough to take advantage of Martin's offensive efficiency. You eventually wind up giving up whatever points Martin scores for you if Martin has to play extended minutes. The Rockets are transitioning into whatever team they hope to become, but if Martin is in the team's long-term plans, and they intend to get as much usage out of him as you would a Carmelo Anthony or a LeBron James, then there are other areas of the team that must be balanced out in order to complement him. Any play with him in an iso situation that demands he create space for himself in order to get off a shot (not draw contact) that takes more than a couple of dribbles is a problem for him. CREATING A SHOT means getting enough separation from a defender to get a good enough look at the basket (especially under duress) to make a shot. If a player on the perimeter has the ability to do that with the ball in his hands consistently, the game belongs to him. Not to the referees. Not to the defender. Nobody did this as well as Michael Jordan. Nobody's comparing Martin to Jordan for obvious reasons. But that's what you need an elite player on the wing to be able to do—create a shot for himself where the only defensive option is to concede the 18-foot shot to him. It's just as lethal to leave another player wide open in order to take the ball away from him, so you're picking you're poison, in essence. It's a make-or-miss league. Not a foul-or-not-foul league. And in the postseason, that truism gets magnified 100-fold. It's going to be a little while before we really see if Kevin Martin can do that, in my opinion. But here's hoping I'm wrong, LScolaDominates.
Even though I don't necessarily agree with everything that you said, I really respect your efforts to write one long post after another about the Rockets. You obviously love the team and the game of basketball in general.
i wouldnt call him clutch either. he's been non existent in all the previous games this season and the same last season IIRC. he is not a choker by any mean either. . The only one that seems to choke up offensively during crunch time is Lee.
He did a good job following his misses a couple times and made a huge 3-pointer in transition (he may be the best in the league at that). Nice 4th quarter, and great win for the team.
Mostly on free throws. He was choking like himself but got some breaks. That missed lay-up was a classic choke but he got the rebound and put it back so no biggie. I give him props he wasn't nearly as invisible as he has been in the past, but I still don't want to depend on him in the 4th.
Man, i'm really starting to think that the Rockets players actually read Clutchfans!! In the last two games, back to backs mind you, Kevin Martin has been coming on in the 4th quarter. Is he trying to prove a point??? :grin:
Martin's issue seems to be energy, or a lack thereof, he doesn't seem to be able to give it for much past 30 mins. His previous issues with defense seem to be related to it too, like trying to score and defend will wear him down, nowadays Adelman seems to be playing low 30's and he seems to have energy in the 4th.
just like martin play well against bad teams. hope he can lead this team to the playoffs and really show what hes made of
I don't think he made a solid 1-on-1 move in the 4th quarter, but no matter. He was active and ultimately he helped the team seal the deal with timely plays and he's automatic from the FT line. I have no complaints at all with this win.
That's a good point. People compare him to Reggie Miller a lot, but the big difference between the two is stamina. Miller could run hard for 40 minutes and still drain 25 footers with ease in the 4th quarter when his defender was huffing and puffing.
The Rockets have transitioned from the failed Yao/McGrady experiment into this current group of guys. They did so while keeping the playoff dream alive - the team has continued to be compeitive. I will say that Yao/McGrady showed great promise, but it didn't work out. We have a GM that turned McGrady/Landry into Martin/Hill. We technically should be in rebuilding mode. The Rockets should consider themselves either "extremely luck to keep teasing us with a quality product" or for those wanting the #1 pick in the draft, "totally bummed out". Martin, Scola, and Lowry to me are the catalyst. They are a team... And heck if Martin has the ball, he is efficient. Sure he isn't the best creator on the basketball court, but isn't basketball a team game? Efficient is the word I describe Martin. And if you see his PER on ESPN, he is 22 - on par with superstars. http://espn.go.com/nba/team/stats/_/name/hou/houston-rockets I think Rocket fans just don't know how to appreciate Martin with his style of play. An ultimate team player. Or it might be that it's the Houston fan syndrome of wanting to be talked about by the National Media there in New York....
No. Chase Dudinger would have surpassed Jordan as the Greatest Player of All Time by now if that was the logic.
that's just a product of our great ball movement and our ability to find the open man. i feel like the team has really been getting adelman's philosophy on offense these past 3 games. now that i think about it... kevin martin's past ineffectiveness in the fourth quarter could be because of martin's stamina. now before you say duh, my real point is that his increased effectiveness in the fourth could be because he is understanding the motion offense better so he doesn't have to work as hard and expend as much energy to get his shot off.
Totally agree with your post. When Martin tries to dribble past players, sometimes it works, but the TOs and traveling violations will also start to happen. This is especially important when the shot clock is winding down, and there's not enough time to set up a good shot for him. He's still a great player to have on offense, but his lack of dribbling skills leaves him below the superstar level.
Martin played great in the fourth tonight. He was playing in a triangle with Scola in the post and Battier up high making the entry pass. Then Martin would curl around Scola from the wing and either clear out the lane for Scola or shed his man and get a layup. A couple of times he played a two-man game with Scola, with Martin making the entry pass and waiting for the kick-out. The Warriors couldn't stop it. Good coaching tonight from Rick.
