If I were adelman i would be going bananas right now. Dare I say it, but this team has a lot more potential than that Kings team EVER had. Remember brooks killing the jazz defense and getting to the hole everytime he wanted?
Agreed on New Orleans. Chris Paul is still going to kill us for his 35ppg. The difference though is that that is Chris Paul going off. That's not nearly as lethal as an entire team going off against you like Phoenix and Golden State would. You are always going to get destroyed by one guy, that's the nature of the game. The key is not getting destroyed by a system. Furthermore, New Orleans already had no chance against McGrady. Now they will have to match up with Artest too? Are you kidding me? How is that fair. This deal is ingenius in so many ways. There's no issue of losing defense because the acquired player is one of the best in the league. There's no issue of building chemistry because you are keeping intact a quintet that has been together spanning back to 3 seasons now in Yao, McGrady, Alston, Battier, and Hayes (don't undervalue Chuck Hayes). You almost always have massive turnaround when you add talent - it's almost unheard of to add starters the quality of Scola, Artest, and even Landry while keeping your core together. I personally compare it to the time Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell, Otis Thorpe, and Hakeem spent together before finally adding Robert Horry, Sam Cassell, and Mario Elie as the infusion of heart and talent to get them over the hump. Don't get me wrong. There will be bumps and so much could go wrong. But so much can go right with this team. It has been perfectly constructed.
I don't think New Orleans would give the Rockets that much trouble, if both teams are at full strength. Remember, right before Yao went down, the Rockets simply demolished the Hornets by 20 points. And now? New Orleans added James Posey and the Rockets added Ron Artest?
I hate to say, but I still think Utah can give us trouble and is prolly the team we match up worst against. Yao will still have to guard boozer because he can't guard Okur in the perimeter, but yet he has trouble with boozer down low. Not to mention Deron Williams doing his thing with the pick and roll. I'd rather face the lakers, spurs, NO, in fact any other team than the jazz. Their offense simply causes us too many problems....we will have to outscore them. It would be demoralizing if we somehow end up playing them again in the first round and lose. they are to us as the sonics were to hakeem in his hey day.
Agreed. I don't think there's any team out there, based on personnel, that you could say would give the Rockets "trouble." There's noone they can't match up with. The scarier part of that equation is the fact that it was always talent that was lacking. We have always been almost unmatched when it came to execution, intensity, and concentration. Since the end of last year, after seeing how far the triumvirate of PHX/DAL/SA fell off, I've felt the West was wide open. LAL and NO don't impress me. Only health and instability can derail our chances this year. Atleast one part of the Big 3 will go down for an extended period. Some sort of incident with Artest will occur. The challenge will be responding to this adversity. It can kill them or make them stronger. We will see what happens.
To shot the 3, you need your legs. Centers like Okur have to guard Yao as well and that will take away his legs.
the sad thing about it is...you would think that yao would abuse okur....but he didn't!! And if he can't abuse okur one on one, then he's a liability against the jazz....yup. Part of was crappy officiating, but part of it was Yao just wussying out. Just being objective, but i hope that this year, yao abuses him.
The end of game/end of quarter lineups will be really interesting. Imagine a perimeter of TMac, Battier, and Artest containing dribble penetration. Get past them, and Scola, Battier, or Hayes are looking to draw the charge. Yao or Dikembe will anchor the paint, blocking or altering shots. On pick and rolls, Hayes and Scola are great at showing on the pick and turning the ball handler back the other way, while recovering to their own man. With TMac, Battier, Artest, and Hayes, you've also got four defenders that have the lateral quickness to switch on pick and rolls without creating huge mismatches, as well as the height to contest jump shots. The defense is going to be awesome
Am I the only one who isn't enamored with Artest at the 4? Look at what Phil Jackson does against small ball, he stays true and blows out the gimmick opponent.
Bro...did you watch that whole series? Okur took him one on one a lot of times, and he just flat out stopped him.
Yao averaged 25 ppg in the series. That was a higher ppg than Boozer. Yao's FG% was better than Tmac. Did you watch the whole series? Okur was so tired guarding Yao he could barely shot till game 7.
Bro, you are smoking something..i watched every F'n game. Boozer torched yao, and Yao ming wussed out, damned the scoring average. I'm talking about one on one isolation against okur, not put backs, free throws watever. Tmac played just fine. Yao ming was the reason we lost that series.
I assume you mean with Yao at center. If so, I don't get that either. The advantage to playing a small forward at power forward is that you gain offensive potency. However, replacing Scola with Battier in the lineup actually makes you worse offensively. Yao, Scola, Artest, McGrady is far and away our best quartet from 2-5. It still remains to be seen if Brent Barry will be a better closer at pg than Alston, but I have my doubts. If you were referencing my earlier post, I meant in the now unlikely event that Yao is rendered ineffective, you still have Scola at center with Artest at power forward as a very capable lineup.
1. We won't play them in the first round because we will be a 1-2 seed. The past year was an aberration, the 7-8 seeds this year (probably two of Portland, Dallas, and Denver) will be nowhere near the level of talent of the top 6 teams in the West. 2. If/when we face the Jazz in the SECOND round of the playoffs, we will murder them. On Defense: The past two years we've actually done a great job shutting down Boozer. Okur and Kirilenko have been off and on, but the main damage dealer has been Deron Williams. This year Rafer would be on Deron to start like usual. But when it comes time to sub for him, imagine the possibilities. Neither Barry nor Brooks are great defensively, but with Barry in the game we could switch off on defense and have Artest or Battier on Deron and Barry on Kirilenko or Brewer depending on who T-Mac wants (or doesn't want to) guard. Artest on Williams would be nasty; Williams isn't fast enough to get by him I guarantee you, and Artest's length will make shooting the outside jump shot extremely difficult. In the frontcourt, Yao can switch off with Scola/Landry when Okur goes outside and act as a pick-and-roll-killer when Boozer tries to cut in. He really made good strides in his paint defense last year, but we unfortunately did not get to see what would have happened had he been in the playoffs. The talent disparity will be too great next year for the refs to be swayed by Utah's flopping ways, even in Salt Lake City. On Offense: They would simply put have no answer for anybody. The fact that we can surround Yao with T-Mac, Artest, Battier, and Barry on the three-point line means that Utah would be extremely hard-pressed to double him, or anyone else for that matter. When Yao is out of the game, Utah will have to divide their perimeter defenders (Brewer Kirilenko Harpring and Korver) among T-Mac and Artest, when last year all four had T-Mac as their only target. If they want to keep doubling, Battier Barry and Alston will invariably be open a ridiculous amount of time, and unlike Head they have no history of choking. Finally, Artest will lay a pounding on anyone he matches up against. Just like JVG said, Artest commands a double team against any team in the league. He's way too strong for Kirilenko Korver or Brewer. I understand Harpring got under his skin with that forearm-punch in the other game, but if he has his head screwed on he will be able to take Harpring on the dribble-drive. Among our role players, Brooks and Landry both proved that they are Jazz-killers when given the opportunity. Williams isn't fast enough to chase Brooks around, and Landry can out-jump Boozer Millsapp and Okur so long as they stop punching him in the face, kicking him in the jewels, and elbowing him in the eyes. He and Scola are sophomores next year so hopefully they stop getting BS fouls whistled on them (or omitted when Utah commits them).
The Jazz and Hornets will probably still present major matchup problems for us, if not the Lakers as well. Yao becomes a liability if the game goes to the perimeter.
Yao Ming was the reason we lost the series? And you need to use F'n? Yao averaged 25 ppg which was higher than Boozer's ppg. Yao's FG % was a lot better than Tmac's FG%. Yao averaged 10 rpg in the series. Only Yao and Tmac came to play in the series. Tmac scored 1 pt in the first half of game 1 while saying "it's on me". The series lasted 7 games and was decided in the final minutes but it was Yao's fault they lost the series. Well Yao didn't play this year so why didn't they win. You need to get glasses. And the topic was, A 3 point shooter needs his legs to shoot 3s.
execution often involves talent. we struggle to score at times b/c the lack of talent, which equals the lack of execution offensively down the stretch. we've been as good as we have b/c of our 2 stars, and the role players providing the intensity and hustle that no other team has.
we lost last yr b/c alston didn't play outside of 2.5 games. tmac and battier were also injured. even without yao, had alston played, i truly believed we would have won in 6.
