Houston's offense ranks in the middle of the pack among NBA teams, I think that's misleading, because the offense consists of polar extremes, when Yao is established and entry passes are simple, Houston's offense is amongst the best and most efficient in the league, when Yao is taken out of the game, it becomes a game of russian roulette. Let's examine this problem with a breakdown of a 24 second possession with a focus on a fronted Yao. shot Clock 24-16 - It takes about 8 seconds for the ball to get up the court into the correct wing position and for yao to be in a position to fight for position to get the entry pass. Shot Clock 16 - 10 - Here Yao is actively fighting for position when he is fronted, a lot of wrestling going on, everyone is standing around look at the action, if he succeeds in getting position then great, the entry pass is made and a good possession ensures, if he doesn't then we move on to the next phase. Shot Clock 10 - 6 - The swing to the weakside, usually with Artest holding the ball for at least 2 seconds before making a decision on what to do. either a) Yao has established position by sealing his man on the weakside, so the entry pass gets made. b) dump to scola at the free throw line c) dumo to brooks to creat a shot 3 feet beyond the 3 point line. d) create a shot himself. Here's the problem, I don't care how good your players are, basically when Yao gets fronted, our shot clock goes from 24 seconds to 8 seconds, we basically have about 8 seconds every posession to create a shot when Yao get fronted, so of course our offense is going to struggle. You have no safety valve, no margin of error, you usually get bad decisions by all players on the court if you consistently trying to beat the shot clock on a majority of possessions. People focus on Artest and brooks, but Scola is just as guilty of overpassing when the shot clock goes down. Basically it doesn't matter what players you have, you can't afford to spend the majority of your possessions in the red zone on the shot clock. If you watch the Portland series, we won it because we essentially played 4 on 4 for large tracts of possessions. As soon as it was clear that the front is happening, we immediately made the skip pass to the weakside without even giving Yao a chance to get position, I agree with this because even if you are playing 4 on 4 at least you have 16 seconds to create a shot. Players tend to make better decisions if they are not worried about the shot clock. I've already outlined several ways to fix this in my previous posts on the sort of players to get, but in my opinion we should get to a position where we love the front. Instead of dreading the front, Yao shouldn't even fight it, it will preserve his energy and reduce wear and tear on his body. Essentially we are running a pick and roll 16 feet from the basket. Most teams struggle to defend a pick and roll 23 feet out from the basket, a 16 feet pick and roll possession should be almost unstoppable.
cann we stop making this more difficult than it is...it seems like recently there's all these posts about in depth analysis of the team's problem...but it's all the same thing we've known for most of the season. Over complicating it isn't gonna change it. Get a back up center get healthy resign resign resign Well be surprised how having someone like tmac solves alot of problems...yes he may not be himself, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Planning for a broken down tmac is like planning for the team that played game 7, that's not our complete team and therefore it creates temporary holes, not long term holes.
You need a star who consistantly draws double teams ala a healthy McGrady who can exploit a fronting defense.
Tracy or not, we need a player that can run a pick and roll on the perimeter, because Aaron, Shane and Ron are awful at it... Steve Nash will do
trugoy, You are easily one of the best and most knowledgable posters I've come across at ClutchFans. I never read any of your stuff until your last thread. Since then, I actually skimmed over some of your older threads. You seem to really know the game and I feel like I'm actually learning something when I read your posts. There are only a few posters I can think of off the top of my head who I can say the same thing about (leebigez, A_3P0, durvasa with his in-depth, stats-based arguments). There are others for sure but those guys stick out. Please post more often. We need more posts from guys like you around here.
I assume you are taking McGrady out of the equation and just concentrating on our playoff players i assume? Im happy Tracy Mcgrady coming because of one reason. He makes really sound decisions with the ball passing wise. His turnovers are not as bad as the brain explosions Artest or Brooks has and he manages the movement. People can say Me Mac as much as you can but running the pick and roll is one way of busting open fronting defence and only Mcgrady can run it the way our team is built. I think Brooks needs to work on the pick and roll this off season, he can do it. If he can do it it'll bust open our options because his more of a three point threat then Mcgrady is off a pick
UGH !!!!!! In Rick Adelman's system, everyone is a passer...... Repeat after me.... It is not the PG, it is not the PG...say it 1000 times and then you might have a clue. DD
hey thanks, your comment prompted me to look up some of my older posts, and I think I can claim to be the first Rafer alston bandwagon fan back in 2003, check it out! http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=49700 it really makes me laugh to see how things panned out
I have to agree. There have been a couple of posts where I don't think I agreed with you, but you take the time to say what you want and at least try to reason it out. I can't agree or disagree with this without actually watching the games again (especially the 8 second argument), so I'll just say "nice post" and move on...
Nobody's perfect. You just seem to understand the game and post interesting stuff. Even if somebody doesn't agree with you, I think they should still recognize the quality of the post.
This is why the shot clock is longer in college hoops. Because they recognize if you're going to allow a zone defense, it takes time to swing a ball around to get guys down low open. Otherwise, you neutralize the effect of big men in basketball.
One factor here is Yao losing weight. I was hoping he would drop 30 lbs this offseason. He is going for 15. But the obvious play to beat the front is to bring Yao out real high and spread the offense big time, then simple let Brooks or Lowry drive the ball to the rim with the space, driving right next to Yao and on through to force a defender to come off somebody. I actually saw this one time........count it.....one time during the playoffs where Lowry got the ball and was dribbling almost at halfcourt. Yao came out to the top of the circle and Lowry made the perfect move right down the boulevard for the finish. The Yao problem is the fronting problem. And we still aren't playing it efficiently and still aren't spacing properly to allow our quick smalls to operate against it. It really requires Battier and the PF to be spotted up in the corners and the other guard to be at the opposite high corner leaving Yao moving up high with his man creating the space for any kind of back door play you want to run. Yao is not the liability. Our lack of experience and failure to implement effective counter strategy is the true problem.
Good OP. I've said the same thing before. One counterpoint is the Rockets cannot give up so quickly and allow Yao to be taken out of the offense so easily. Still, how many possessions were totally blown because they waited until 5 seconds were left in a possession to finally try another option? They must pick up a slashing SG/SF who can take advantage of the vacuum in the paint when Yao gets fronted. (Don't tell me Von Wafer is good enough; he ain't). jopatmc, I disagree with you. Two coaches, two systems and several seasons have proven Yao is indeed the problem when it comes to fronting. His lack of vertical and horizontal make him a much smaller target than his height would indicate. Sure enough the other players miss him sometimes, but that happens. I agree with Yao losing weight, but that will make it even more difficult for him to establish post position. 15 lbs may not seem like much but the effect will be significant. 30 lbs is far too much.
