Scola actually looks for too much contact instead of just laying it in....... comes with having no hops....
I think he avoids contact at the wrong times lol. He's a bruiser and a battler. He doesn't avoid contact on defense and on offense he avoids contact at the wrong time. He makes easy layups harder by going under the rim or something like that and into defenders. Then he wastes golden foul opportunities (like catching Boozer in the air) and avoids contact and gets himself into a tough shot. He definitely doesn't avoid contact, just when he does it's at the wrong times.
glorify tmac, after his pathetic display to start the 4th, i was ready to crucify him if he didn't step up. there was no excuse if he sucked it up tonight (he did suck until the last 3 minutes of the 4th) b/c rafer helped him out a lot with ballhandling. the point of the matter is scola shies away from contact OFFENSIVELY. did i ever talk about his rebounding in my post? dude can make an easy layup into the toughest layup in the world. even collins said that today. in 2 attempts against okur in the 3rd quarter, dude could have easily gotten a foul but instead contorted his body in a way that is just pathetic to not get contact and shot a horrible acrobatic layup. scola needs to make those shots b/c they're EASY shots. he's 6-10. nobody on the jazz is a shotblocker. go hard at them. that's my only complaint with scola. im really angry b/c THOSE ARE EASY POINTS. we're already overmatched talent-wise agaisnt utah. we can't be wasting points like that. it's already bad him and tmac are pathetic ft shooters. we need to get all the easy points we can get. look, the criticism on tmac in the first 2 games were really unfair b/c he was given too much responsibilities. that's why i defended his 4th quarter performances. if you read the game thread, i was about to pop a can of hate on tmac after how he started the 4th. he didn't have to do as much as he had to do in the first 2 games. so there was no excuse for him starting 0-4. i respect every rocket players b/c they play for the rockets. i will defend them if they have a reason to be defended. if scola makes all those layups, he would have the best series out of every play in this series. that's how much he has sucked in finishing. scola is shooting 38% dude for a guy who takes ALL OF HIS SHOTS IN THE PAINT. imagine if that goes up to 49-50%. we could be looking at a 2-1 lead rather than a 2-1 deficit. i never knock his hustle or heart or passion. he's the hardest working player i've seen (that is effective) since bobby sura.
T-mac played better in then 4th he is best with a lead. HOWEVER I remember earlier in the season . . . before the trade and before Steve was hurt there was a definate feeling that T-Mac *tried* harder when rafer was in the game Almost a Francis/Cat kind of connection i guess Rocket River
when you try to avoid the block -> you try avoid contact. that's why guards do acrobatic layups or use the rim to protect their shot. that's why yao fades away a lot of the time last yr against okur. tmac does that a lot too and you see in his pathetic finishes this year. our players need to just go up STRONG. eff getting blocked. scola already got blocked and he tried not to get blocked. that includes tmac (like tonight on that breakaway, he did get fouled, but had he force the issue a little bit more, it would be more blatant). JUST FORCE THE ISSUE.
He doesnt purposefully try to dog players, but its a natural reaction to say why him? He did this and this and this well, but maybe not this and this. This other guy did this and that, but didnt do this. And this guy just flat did nothing, so dont try to put it all on T-Mac. When every stinks it up you can't point out one player and say that player quit or didnt try hard or whatever. Its as silly as saying Bobby Jackson opened up a can of quit in game 1. Or Chuck Hayes. Or Landry. But agree on Scola, he tries to get the cleanest shot up IN CASE the call isnt made. He doesnt want to rely on the ref to bail him out, so he tries to get a clean release. Sometimes that means going around the guy trying to block it.
It could be that McGrady doesn't have to be the sole instigator of the offense when Rafer is playing.
That too, but don't you remember the whole "T-Mac sulking when Rafer wasn't playing" or something along those lines? T-Mac likes Rafer a lot, and Rafer will talk to T-Mac when something's wrong.
the reason i'm mad at scola is that he EASILY could average 22-23 pts in this series if he just makes his layups. that's why i'm so pissed (he's avg 14 pts for this series). that's worst than our players missing open 3s. layups is freaking right around the damn basket.
Scola does not take all his shots from the paint--he shoots jumpers from the elbow all the time. As for his shooting efficiency, anybody can have a bad game. In fact you can pretty much guarantee that every single player in the NBA will have a bad game. That's just a given, and blaming Scola for going through what every other player in the league, including T-Mac, goes through is just nuts. Do I really need to point out that his fg % on the season is over .500? Your response to the OP's opinion that Rafer and Scola were the leaders of this team was to reply that Scola couldn't be the leader because he shies away from contact and he misses easy layups. Again, he doesn't miss easy layups most of the time. And the idea that he's shy about contact is nonsense. He rebounds like a fiend and he's more than willing to step up and draw a charge. Once again, in response to the idea that Scola was a leader and T-Mac isn't you run down Scola, with bogus criticism I might add. Finally, what do layups and physical contact have to do with leadership? That's all about heart. T-Mac, for all of his other fine qualities, is not a leader on this team. He's too laid back. Strangely enough given his deficiencies the player who comes closest to being a floor leader is Alston. Whatever else he's got tons of attitude and grit.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean he's shy about getting hit. Like Battier he's perfectly willing to step in front of a guy to try and draw a charge. And if he pump fakes a guy into the air he's more than happy to have the defender land on him to draw a foul. I don't think T-Mac deserves as much criticism as he gets and I've said that plenty of times. But one thing that does genuinely tick me off is how some people respond to any criticism of T-Mac by running down other players on the team. I mean, this was all about T-Mac was the "leader", or whatever. I don't think it's really even criticizing the guy to say that he's not the leader of the team but some people perceive it that way.
badgerfan, out of scola's 13 shots tonight, probably 8-9 of them are in the paint. and like i said, contact via rebounds v. contact to score is TOTALLY different. if you don't understand that, then go play some basketball. tmac, i agree, is not the best leader in the world. but scola is not our leader. he's not the guy our players listen to. he's not the guy that will tell other players what to do in a game. our team really does not have a leader truthfully on the court. adelman is our leader. he's the guy that keeps the team composed throughout a game. teams don't need a leader on the court you know. look at the spurs. tim duncan doesn't do jack vocally. pop criticizes everybody and he's their dictator. look at pat riley with the heat. adelman is our leader.
ak47 takes charges, but does he initiate contact offensively? battier takes charges, but have you ever seen him throw himself into the opponent when he penetrates to the basket? defensive contact is completely different from offensive contact. all our players are physical defensively and that's why we're so good. but trust me, our whole team can be more physical offensively (from tmac down to chuck hayes).
You know what . . . I might take that *IF* all those folx that were THROWING THE SUPPORTING CAST UNDER THE BUS TO PROP UP T-MAC will eat some too Rocket River Rockets are every bit as talented as the Spazz!!1
So tonight Scola took an overwhelming majority of his shots inside the paint. Who cares? One game is not necessarily representative of the season. I seem to recall in a couple of games against SA Scola draining jumper after jumper. Yes, he operates inside the post primarily but don't pretend that the jump shot from 12 to 15 feet away isn't an important part of his arsenal. As for contact from rebounds versus contact from scoring, I don't know what the difference is if you're getting hammered and you definitely get hammered going after rebounds. Don't forget that a big part of Scola's defensive game is trying to draw the charge--that's got to be some of the roughest contact in the game. And again, I think the guy who comes closest to being the leader on the floor is Rafer. Kind of ironic for a player who wasn't even supposed to be a Rocket this season.
You said that Scola "constantly shies away from contact" and for that reason he couldn't be a "leader". Absolutely not. He's willing to bang inside for rebounds. He's constantly stepping in front of the guy he's guarding to draw the charge. On the offensive end his arsenal in the post is mostly made up of spin moves. He's trying to get around a stationary defender to get to the basket. "Throwing" himself into a defender in that situation is an offensive foul.
i'm not talking about the season. the season is done with. that's the thing people have to understand. players play differently in the playoffs. players are more aggressive. i have said in every post scola has been MAD aggressive in the playoffs. he has sometimes been overly aggressive. sometimes he has that mid-range J and passes it up and instead go into the paint. i love that. but when he gets inside the paint, he avoids contact (which means avoiding the block) and thus misses A LOT of layups. that has happened in EVERY GAME THIS SERIES. it's inexcusable. that compounds with our pathetic ft shooting from him AND tmac. imagine how many easy points have we not capitalize on and now consider how close the games have been going down the stretch (including game 1). again, i don't know how to explain it but when you play offense, you avoid contact b/c you think about charges or turnovers or getting blocked. a lot of our players do that. scola right now is thinking too much about trying to avoid getting blocked/charging into guys so he's trying to avoid as much contact as possible when he does go up for the layups. he's a very physical player defensively (like i said, i never criticize his rebounding or defense). i just feel he has missed a lot of easy layups in this series and that is very frustrating.
a leader is some guy other players follow and listen to. scola is not that guy. i don't know why you can't understand that. scola cannot tell any rocket to go to their position on offense or defense. it may be b/c he's a rookie but he can't do that. only tmac and rafer can do that and coincidentally, they're the 2 guys that control the team offensively. but even i don't think they're our leaders. it's obvious it's adelman. look at what rafer said tonight. he's the guy that keeps this team composed and confident after 2 losses. he's the guy that was so composed when we started 15-17 that everyone in our organization thought he didn't care. he's the guy who made the team believe we can still be a great team when yao went down. basically, what i'm trying to say is adelman is the only guy EVERYONE listens to. that's our leader. like i said, our team does not have a leader that is a player, that includes tmac and yao. they never were great leaders to begin with. JVG was our leader when he was here. adelman is our leader now.
