Not me. I'm happy with the new team oriented T-Mac. Yes, he's still working his way into the system but the Rockets as a whole are much stronger with McGrady looking to pass first. Give him time to learn and adjust. There's every possibility that his scoring will go up as he gets more practice and as his teammates get more comfortable playing with him.
I disagree. He's too explosive of a scorer to become strictly a set up guy. You would be negating one of his biggest strengths. He should not look to pass first, he should look to be agressive first and all of the time. That may mean scoring or driving and dishing. It has nothing to do with whether he shoots or passes and everything to do with how aggressive and alert he is.
That's not the way Adelman's offense works however. The ball can't end up in Tracy's hands and just stop. It's got to keep moving from player to player. Adelman's system is all about unselfish, team play. If T-Mac wants to fit in he's going to have to move the ball, like everybody else on the squad. The Rockets as a whole are much more effective when all five guys on the floor are on the same page and working together. What team wouldn't be?
Team-oriented McGrady? That's an oxymoron statement. This is not football where you can play just one side of the ball. There is a thing called defense. He might be "sharing" on the offensive side more, but his ass is being "shared" by the opponent. Artest just DEMOLISHED this guy on both sides of the ball. The most frustrating about this guy is that he can have more of an impact on defense than on offense. I can take the fact he walks his way up on offense but what I can't take is his lack of commitment on the defensive side.
I think you are right for the most part, but at the same time, we need to give McGrady the ball in a better position to score (not all the time, but ocassionally), just like we give Yao the ball in the low post and get out of the way at times. Right now, McGrady is finding his way it seems, and also you have to wonder about how that knee is feeling. I don't think I've ever seen him take only one shot in the 4th quarter EVER. There needs to be better balance with him scoring and distributing. Right now, it's too much the latter. We don't really need McGrady getting 30 on a regular basis, but we will need more than 10, 12 pts against the better teams, IMO. I just can't see us doing much in the playoffs with him scoring in the low teens on a regular basis.
His numbers from last night are a bit misleading. He actually got good, open looks for the majority of his shots and just couldn't put the ball in the basket. If his shot had been falling he'd probably be closer to 20 points. As for his performance in the fourth quarter, that was a bizarre quarter not only for him but for the entire team. Again, McGrady's personal numbers may be down but the team as a whole looks a lot better when he's sharing the ball. Give the guy some time to adjust and fit in. He does need to drive more though. In the Atlanta game where he was having his way with the Hawks it seemed to me that most of his assists/setups came off of drives.
JVG predicated ball movement as well, every coach does that. What do you mean by "Adelman's offense"? Do you mean the one he was running in Sactown? Adelman already said that he will not run the Sacramento system, but rather a hybrid. He never had a dominant big man or explosive wing man in Sacramento, so he has to make accomodations in his playbook to take advantage of his 2 biggest assets.
Yeah, his shot has just been way off the last few games. His shooting woes at TC are just inexplicable. I'm more than willing to give they guy time, I think he's gonna fit in great, and once he finds his shooting stroke, well watch out. Especially because Yao has been really playing well. I thought he did a great job pushing the ball in the first half and driving which created a bunch of nice looks for his teammates.
Technically the offense he ran in Sacramento was a hybrid too. I don't think anyone's ever run a pure Princeton offense anywhere in the NBA. That said I don't think it's debatable that ball movement is going to play a critical role in any Adelman offense. Even under the current hybrid system the Rockets are just a much better team when they move the ball and play unselfishly. Listen to T-Mac himself. After the last game against the Blazers he said something about how his scoring might be down but he and the team were playing winning basketball. In his interview after this last game he talked about how much easier it was to play basketball when the burden of scoring had been lifted from his shoulders.
Give me a break. You are a trip. I guess you haven't been on the forum in a while as my opinion of Tracy has changed gradually over time. One game by itself doesn't mean anything. Once again, you are guilty of what you accuse others of. Try coming down from the pedestal. By the way, I'm against the Iraq debacle, not that the subject has ANY RELEVANCE in the GARM.
You said last night's game pushed you over the brink. That's what I am referring to. IN that sense, last night was the turning point regarding the way you perceive Tmac as it relates to the Rockets
If Tmac bashing and whining could keep us winning, Clutch should make an official thread for that kind of crap.
McGrady is going to get the brunt of the blame for the 4th quarter collapse. For the past month, all I've been hearing is how T-Mac is "strangling" the offense and not getting others involved. How we're a better team when we play as a team instead of relying on him to bail us out. How we need to seek out Yao and play through him; that's the key to our success. You know what? That's what we tried to do throughout the 4th, and it wasn't working very well. But no one is talking about that. No, this is on T-Mac, as usual. Nevermind that in the final possession, the Rockets relied on T-Mac to make something happen. They didn't go to their "motion offense", they didn't try to get the ball to Yao in the post, and they didn't "share the ball". They gave it to T-Mac at the top of the key and asked him to create something. And that's what he did. He was able to drive to the basket and create a good scoring opportunity. Did he make a mistake by trying to drop the ball off to Yao instead of laying it up? Perhaps, but that's an easy criticism to make after the fact. If Yao caught it cleanly and layed it in, we'd be singing the praises of that play. Or, conversely, if T-Mac took the shot and it bounced off the rim, people would be criticizing him just as they are now. After the game, T-Mac said in retrospect he should have taken the shot. Fine, but I'm not going to murder him for looking to get Yao the ball right at the basket. And, for the record, that was not a turnover. They tipped the ball away, and we got a second chance. And, again, what did we do with that second chance? Same thing. We got T-Mac the ball at the top of the key, and asked him to create something. Again, he's able to get into the lane draw in defense, and he makes the right play by getting the ball out to Novak at the top of the key. What I'm saying is that if we want to find fault with T-Mac, let's not talk about the final possession. He did what you expect out of your go to guy on that possession. As for the rest of the quarter, yes there were some plays where there was indecision on T-Mac's part. He wasn't as aggressive as he could have been on a couple drives. More than that, though, this game showed that our offense, as a team, is not where it needs to be. Guys were taking too long getting into the offense. Open shots were passed up, terrible passes were made. Several possessions were wasted away trying in vain to get Yao the ball. But this is how people wanted it. It's how we won the last 3 games at home. Play as a team, and when it really counts down the stretch T-Mac needs to step up and make a play. Well, that's what happened. We played as a team, and we sucked as a team. And on the final possession, we relied on T-Mac and he made the play.
Look fellow rockets fan...... nobody is bashin tracy. we are basically saying the same thing about him. His game surrounds his feelings way too much. Can you honestly say that he does'nt play with his feelings on his arm? If u love tracy then you have to accept the whole package of his personality......no matter how moody he is.
It's nice that the whole burden is not only on him, but he should have a good share of that burden. Tmac has diarrhea of the mouth. Look at what he does, not what he says. He never blames himself, so if he had a bad game, he will say I played team basketabll and if he has a great game, he'll say the defenders were at my mercy. I have never been of the opinion that Tmac is selfish. I think he has been too unselfish all along. If he takes a lot of shots, it's not for the glory. If he takes a lot of bad shots it's bad play on his part. But again it's because he thinks he can help the team by scoring, not because he wants to score a lot of points.
I don't think T-Mac had anything to do with the fourth quarter. Ever since he rolled out his team oriented game the Rockets have racked up some pretty impressive wins. They should of carried that into last night's game considering that they had a 19 point lead going into the final quarter. What happened after that was just bizarre. It should never have come down to that last play by McGrady and Novak. But the Rockets, as they have in the past, had a mental breakdown and took their foot off the gas pedal. I'd say that has a lot more to do with Rafer Alston than T-Mac.
What the Rockets need is a balanced attack, team ball and unselfish play. The basketball the Rockets have played through this last home stand has been some of the most impressive out of the whole year, minus the last quarter against Sacramento. Give T-Mac some time to adjust. If he keeps playing pass first and he gets his ppg back up to around 20 the Rockets will be very tough to beat.
That's becoming more noticeable by the people who aren't blinded by hate by the day. The PG position is EXTREMELY important and for the fact that our PG cannot create or think straight to make good decisions in the 4th qtr is telling. How Rafer survives as a starter in this league is beyond me, and he gets more passes than he deserves.
You know what I don't get though, when he does that people say he's not aggressive and isn't playing hard. Last year they criticized him the same way even though the Rockets were winning, until Yao went down and he led the team keeping the winning alive. People look for things just to look for them.
