Rockets played well last night against Dallas, but with five minutes reamaining in the 4th I couldn't help but get that same feeling from last year. When will we learn to close a game?! Now we have a very deep team full of weapons, unfortunately they are not getting plays set up for them. I did not see 1 play set-up for bonzi last night. I would like to see coach get all of our weapons into the rotation and expose how deep we really are. I would have liked to see everyone get some plays last night. Think about it. I believe that if we can let scola learn our system through numerous games, why cant we let francis do the same. Just 5 or 6 minutes a game? anything? Nothing against scola, I think he is really good and will only improve. We just have to show teams how deep we can be. a couple other things off topic... I hate terry, but i hate who was guarding him even more. Why did luther play last night. He had no defensive role in the game and was getting mismatched all day.
The Houston Rockets' offense has picked up the pace noticeably from last year's system. New head coach Rick Adelman wants to move the ball much faster, as evidenced by the Rockets' offseason acquisitions. The only one having problems with that idea is Yao Ming, who is the focal point of much of the offense, but sometimes struggles to keep pace with this new Houston offense. "It's quite simple," explains Tracy McGrady. "When we get out in transition, he gets the rebound, kicks it to us, and we run it. But you can't do that the whole game. We got him involved in the offense and they double-teamed him right away. Sometimes he took advantage and sometimes he passed it out. We're definitely making a conscious effort to get him involved. He's our guy and we're going to need him to establish that low post presence in order to be successful." Of course, Yao has been most successful when playing against another big man. At least then he can use his size and relative quickness to his advantage. "At least when I play a big man is a little bit slower, so I can catch up," says Yao. "When I have a small guy matching up with me I feel like I'm going to have 48 minutes of running. It's like a marathon or something. Whether it's a big man or a small man I still need to run and match-up, but between the two I still prefer playing against a big." As for new head coach Rick Adelman, he's still looking for exactly the right way to use Yao in his center-oriented offense. "I think that's something I have to work on. I've played him both ways, where I've given him short rests without such long minutes and other times I've played him a whole quarter. Pretty sure he's better when he doesn't play a whole quarter when I get him in and out of there, but those are all things you find out as you go. Against Portland, for instance, he got tired in the second half, so it's something you have to get a feel for and adjust as you go." Yao Ming has to make some adjustments, too, one of which is to be more aggressive when the double-team doesn't come. "He's got to learn that if they're not going to double him and we throw it in to him he's got to be aggressive and take the shot," says Adelman. "There were two or three times (in Dallas) where we passed it into him and he passed it off one time and handed it out one time. That's the time when he's got to be a real force for us. We've got to go to him if they're not going to double him. Sometimes it's tough to get him where we want to get him in the flow of the game and that's something we're going to have to keep working at." As good as Yao is, he understands that he has to continue to work hard and improve his overall game – not just in terms of the adjustments needed to run the Adelman offense. "When I first came into the league I saw Shaq ahead of me," says Yao of his motivation. "Then year after year I see young guys like Dwight Howard come into the league and I feel like I don't want to get beat up by them. I've gained almost thirty pounds since I came into the league, so I'm not slowing down too much." Of course, it helps to have plenty of help from your friends. Yao pointed to the bench when he talked about the early improvements we've seen from the Houston Rockets this season. "The reason is we have so many back-up players who can score, like Bonzi and Mike James," says Yao. The key in Utah was, of course, T-Mac's big night, but also our back-ups scored like 30 points. That's much stronger than last year. It gives us a lot of help. Our opponents can't just focus on a couple of guys." Finally, Yao likes what he's seeing from his fellow All-Star. Tracy McGrady was named the Western Conference Player of the Week for last week, and Yao sees that Tracy has turned things up a notch. "He's playing with huge confidence this season. In the first game against Kobe and particularly the second game in Utah he really put the team on his shoulders. Particularly in Utah – we struggled there last year, but this year we've turned it up and we looked totally different in that game." On a side note, Yao was so eager to see Yi Jianlian's 16-point outing for Milwaukee that he asked for a copy of the video clips early. "I heard about it and before I left Toyota Center yesterday I asked our video guy who was preparing Milwaukee Bucks CD's to give me Yi's clip. He did pretty well. He looks nice." Yao will see his old teammate up close and personal on Friday night, when the Rockets host the Milwaukee Bucks. Before then, however, the Rockets need to come up with a big win against the visiting San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday night. Yao will have an advantage against the smaller San Antonio front line. It will be interesting to see how he handles that very different kind of defensive pressure.
Bonzi was 1-7 with 3 turn overs last night. Those numbers don't exactly scream out give that man the ball down the stretch. Because Scola is 2nd in the power forward depth chart and Francis is 4th on the PG rotation (5th if you count Tmac as part of the guard rotation). They are not close to the same situation. James and Rafer were on Terry most of the time. The bigger problem with Head defensively was when he was stuck on Josh Howard where he had no chance. But Terry was on fire and most of his shots were contested and he hit them anyway regardless of who was on him. Offensively Head went 3-3, made both of his free throws and commited zero turn overs. His defense needs to improve, but putting him on Josh Howard at all was a team defensive mistake. That being said Francis is not exactly considered a defensive stopper.
Rockets must win opportunities need to Frances (I come from China, my English well, but I also wish to express my views, the following is the use of machine translation, it is inevitable that some mistakes, please forgive friends.) Look at the Rockets game to the Mavericks, losers in the last few minutes, some regrettable. Looking back on the non - Han nationalities game. Also last few minutes consecutive errors. Almost failure. The goal is a championship team, and has always been crucial moment. Impossible to control the situation, certainly not. Rockets must solve this problem. Analysis of the causes of the problems, that is a major in Alston. For Adelman system, Alston is the most matching candidates. But in the final moments, the team will no longer be determined by the outcome Adelman system or other system, but rely on the player's personal capacity. Desperate defense in the face of excessive ball can only cause unnecessary mistakes. The holding capacity of poor players will become lambs to be slaughtered. This time, the players start to rely on instinct. It is precisely this moment, the achievements of the great Michael Jordan, Miller extraordinary, magical McGrady, Bryant luminescence. But the Rockets the ball to Alston, he lacks the ability to fight on their own, nor the physical advantages of forming self-confidence. To understand this point, Adelman should be in the final crucial moment, let Frances to fight. Although the game can give Alstom's playing time as much as possible, so as to obtain the entire field advantage, but the crucial moment, we should Frances. Frances and rocket many fate. He is drawn to help the Rockets first draft pick, Yao Ming coming election. Also he has earned with McGrady. To outstanding and the feelings of a possible championship rings, Frances has returned to the rocket, if God has brought Frances rocket, then he will take the hand of Frances gave the Rockets a championship? Hope this legend occurred. If coaches only let him sit on the bench, it seems that this championship will not come. Because such a champion on the inaptly named Frances, a boss is the heart of the heart from the recent championship, Frances should not be ignored!
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and some ppl have the nerve to say tmac didn't want to get yao involved. yao has to be aggressive v. those double teams. i think tmac seeing yao passing out, he felt he had to be more aggressive on his part. we just gotta start establishing yao early. in this offense, it's obvious tmac can get his ANYTIME. but pound it to yao early. let him get into a rhythm. and make him be aggressive. we'll forgive a few TOs
I agree with u, T mac's great in this system. But Yao's wasted, honestly i'm not very happy with the way Yao;s used in the recent games, however, i think this is only the experimental stage, i hope adelman finds out a way to utilize both Yao and tracy to their maximum soon, at that time, the Houston Rocket will fly.
I disagree! I think the basic reason that we lost to Mavs because our bench is lesser than their bench. We still don't have enough USEFUL weapons.
Let's face it, Terry was hot last night. Twice he was covered by Yao and he still managed to shoot the ball.
Yeah for real. If Mike James and Bonzi Wells play somewhat like Terry and Howard did last night, we have Dallas beat everytime.
Plenty of minutes. Adelman has a great advantage in that he can find and settle on the right combination of guys from night to night based on matchups, who's hot, and which group is clicking together. IMHO, he had the wrong guys in there twoards the end of the game (~ 4 mins remaining, when we went from leading 88-87 to falling apart and finding ourselves 9 down). He had Yao, Scola, Shane, McGrady, and Mike James out there. Scola got an assist, but otherwise just blew defensive assignments, allowing at least one wide open Dirk 3. Mike did a terrible job getting the offensive sets going and had a hand in a turnover or two (no assists on the night). People are calling on Luther's poor D, but he was the ONLY guard that shot worth a crap. James, Alston, and Bonzi were a combined 8-28. We needed Shane or Chuck on Dirk. I wouldn't have minded seeing us experiment with McGrady at PG (point forward) with the way he was playing, let James hound Terry, sit Scola and stick with Battier or Chuck on Dirk, send Yao lower in the post, and have Luther out there to feed Yao and set up for kick out 3s. Rick's offense is great for 3 quarters, but in the clutch, it's crucial to have set plays that are your bread and butter. For us, it needs to be Yao in low with shooters spread out alternated with Yao setting a high screen & roll for McGrady. Last night ended with chaotic perimeter chucking on our part, and that's got to change. Evan
As far as Adelman works with the starters id the subs are going to play significant minutes and rol into the game he will need to also coach them, last night the SuperSub trio of James-Wells-Scola almost had no prepared play, first of all i will insist, Scola needs to play more of the pick n roll and James and Bonzi need to play more the inside-out game with him. Now for Bonzi the bigs need to create some space for either him to penetrate or post up to smaller players. But what i think is a key, is that you cannot James "fire at will" every time he hits the court, he is shooting more than Tony Parker in San Antonio. Adelman should put some order on the way the reserves play.
Rockets is becoming a perimeter players team. All inside players (including Yao) are blue collar now.
I think they are good. Of cause Rafer ain't good but without Rafer we have pretty good perimeter players. They just need time I think
