I agree with your assessment in general, but that was more of a reflection on 1) the lack of a serviceable play maker besides McGrady, 2) the inability of knocking down open jumpers by our guards, and 3) the admirable jobs done by Juwan and especially Deke in the absence of Yao in the past.
Partly true, but also how many times has McGrady just made the right play? Yao down the stretch, if he's not taking the shot, seems to just commit turnovers. It's like his passing savvy..ness isn't there like his rookie year. On this team, the best play for Yao is to take the shot. And perhaps that's why he's not as impactful as Tracy is on the offensive side. Maybe if Yao had better shooters, it'd be different. Ah, the days of Wesley, Barry, Sura, and company from outside.
Yes, but the key question in this thread isn't "who's better", but "who's more valuable". And, the value of a player very much depends on this talents of his teammates.
Where are you getting your information from? Yao is usually great in 4th quarter....some of the best games he's played in the last 2 or 3 years, he was dynamite in 4th. Let's see both Laker games this year, the Spurs game, in Utah, and in Charlotte game, he is always one of the equalizers or comes up with a game changing play at some point in time. Last year, in his last game against the Suns, the game in Washington against the Wizards, 2 against the Lakers, and few others......he was the main reason the team won and snucked away with marginal victory. With all that being said, it's not all his fault, some of it is, but most isn't..... when your team is shooting under 40% for the game and taking some of ridiculous shots that you could ever. Not attacking basket. When you have so much open space to the lane, against a weak defense. when your team letting another team shoot over 60% for the entire game, letting them shoot open threes, not putting pressure on them whatsoever, let their point guard do whatever he wants (I don't care if it's Steve Nash or some NBDL player), they way the Rockets defense was atrocious the last 4 games.
I posted Rockets stats by quarter last April. Some games from the end of the regular season are missing, but it gives a good picture of efficiency by quarter: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=126870 Actually, the only Rockets starter who really stepped up his game in the fourth quarter was Rafer Alston!
Good job pulling the games in which Yao played well and then implying that he's more valuable. So what if he played well against division rivals? That's 2 teams out of the whole league. Sure, you'll say, well that's what counts when you're in the playoffs. But when you can't even make the playoffs (Yao-led McGrady-less Rockets), what does it matter how you play the big guns? Seems like you don't even want to see how valuable McGrady is to the team. It's really annoying to see people ride Yao's jockstrap and ignore how important T-Mac is to the team. You forgot to mention, btw, that all those wins against the SW division teams had Yao AND T-Mac in the line-up.
Uh, tell me when the McGrady-led, Yao-less Rockets made the playoffs? Semi-liquid rookie, you need to brush up your debating skills by 1) improving your reading comprehension, and 2) sticking to the facts: 1) I clearly stated McGrady was in the line-up in the victory over the Mavs. 2) McGrady did NOT play in the blowout Rockets win at San Antonio on 12/22/2006.
I didn't really think the thread would go past one page myself b/c I thought the same thing. Now rook at et!
Why don't you tell me when a McGrady-less, Yao-led Rockets won more than 5-10 games? While you're at it, why don't you look up the record without McGrady. That should tell you a lot of things. My bad, I should have searched the archives at clutchfans to find Yao's amazing 22 point 7 rebound effort against the Spurs. So one game where Yao, along with a great team effort from the Rockets, beat the Spurs without McGrady. Didn't McGrady do the same thing last year? I'm sorry if that doesn't scream MVP to me, wnes. Just to clarify, I like reading your posts...usually. But lately, there's a been an awful lot of unwarranted McGrady bashing from you that serves no other purpose but to make Yao look better. I think you can make your arguments without putting McGrady down.
Are you kidding????? Last year Mcgrady-led a Yao-less Rockets to the playoffs. If McGrady hadn't of done that when Yao was out, we mightve not even made the playoffs. As for McGrady not playing in the blowout win in San Antonio, Yao really didn't play much either. I went to the game, and Yao was pretty much out the whole game becuase of foul trouble. We won that game because of very rare but incredible play by our guards. I will never say it again, but Rafer couldn't miss from the 3. Shows you if we have a good guard, we are unstoppable. Yeah, but not in the playoffs last year. Did you see how many times he turned the ball over when we needed a score the most? Thats what I didn't get about JVG. Yao would turn the ball over 5 times in a row, and he would still keep him in the game and give him the ball. In times like these, you give the ball to T-Mac.
The fact that teams can take Yao away without much effort says alot about him. Cant blame the lack of entry passing, when Jason Kidd or Steve Nash would not be able to complete a lob pass to Yao with the way defenses play him.
Much like the Franchise fans have done with Rafer's missed 3 pointers, I sense Yao fans will start calling T-Mac's missed jumpers turnovers.
McGrady is definitely still our MVP, and probably will be for the forseeable future, but I think that this year especially, we can still be a good team even if he is out of the lineup... these past couple games were not necessarily a great metric of that, though.
If we are relying on Tmac to take the Rox to a championship, uh, it might not be a good idea. Have to be more like the spurs- balanced, smart, great role players. Anyway, the one who truly gets the MVP is whoever puts rafer on the bench. That could be a lot of people, including Adleman, Deke's elbow, a houston judge, Yao accidentally plowing into him, etc etc.
Posts like this always polarize fans. Everyone has a favorate player in this team, whether Yao, TMac, Scola, or Steve. You can argue forever who is the most valuable player to this team, but the bottom line is it takes the whole team for them to get to the next level.
Even with players who make minor contributions on a game by game basis, its really tough to just say switch so and so for so and so and this is the result. At the end of the day, its all about putting the ball in the basket. While player X might give you a better chance than player Y, switching them out does not put the ball in the basket by default.
Not limited to this year... hmm... so I guess it was just a coincidient that this thread was created right after we lost 4 in a row AND w/ tracy out of the lineup for the last two games this year You made it sound like I'm going out of my way to write off Tracy's performance; but all I was trying to do is to put the losing streak into perspective. Historically the Rockets just don't win without the guy (Tmac). - that's your statement, it looks all true and reasonable until we break it down, game by game, so it doesn't surprise me that you would try to stay away from game by game analysis. So on what ground are you basing your statement on? It's common practice to have stats & analysis to back up your statement, you know?
