Adelman a very good offensive mind hence his impeccable record during the regular season BUT when it's time for the playoffs his teams usually are very good at scoring but very soft on defense. Adelman will win a lot more games for the rockets but you can forget about this team being any good in the playoffs with such soft defense. Yao is not a good defender just tall. Shane will probably be traded next year and is getting older. Martin though a very good scorer cannot play any defense, does not like to play defense, Brooks Cannot stop anyone and everybody can shoot over him. Scola tries but he's very limited when it comes to getting up to crash the boards and his lack of athleticism makes him very vulnerable. Hayes is way too short, if this guy was 6'10" he would be a rebounding machine and average at least 5 assist per game because he assists even better than Brooks. The rockets is a good team don't get me wrong but it's just not close to championship caliber nor will it be in the future as long as they keep banking on Yao to stay healthy; it's just not going to happen. Unfortunately game by game this team is getting softer defensively and that only reflects on the head coach. He's a player's coach and does not have the big ones to demand more hustle and tenacity from his team.
Well after seeing the way the season goes, but I think the main problem on why the defense "goes soft" is because RA gets so frustrated with refs calling ticky tack fouls he lets that discourage him from instructing the team or running plays that would involve a more fierce and up close and personal defense. Its very easy to catch this, if any you can go and look at as many games as you can, notice how AT FIRST its not that lose until the refs start calling these nonsense fouls. I notice it affects our players too, some of them just get so frustrated they loosen up on cover. I seen this on almost every game. Just wanted everyone to understand I am NOT blaming the refs but, in turn, the player and the coach need to go for broke on D even if they get in foul trouble, at least at that point the team knows they are not gonna get in our lane easily.
It's related to being a soft team, soft teams don't get the benefit of the doubt from he ref, neither do soft players. I remember last year, Artest would be hammering people all over the place with no fouls called because refs give him a lot of leeway. The jazz are famous for playing hard and getting away with a lot. Then you got other players like david andersen who get called for breathing on somebody.
We weren't really tough to begin with you guys make it sound like we were the bad boy pistons or something. But basketball is a finese game, and that's what are team is, a finese team for a finese game.
Not soft more like short. Look at the offensive rebound last night in addition to point allowed in the paint. We really miss the big fella this season.
We won the game two days ago because this team was so tough. We lost last night so the whole team is so soft. Right. I have always supported equal right for everyone to make a post or to start a thread. But, this kind of knee-jerk threads after every loss is getting more and more annoying. Now I think it's not a bad idea to forfeit the thread starting privilege of a poster for a period of time after a knee-jerk thread.
I can't believe so many people here are listing so many reasons why we lost our toughness without mentioning that we lost our toughest player in the offseason -- Ron Artest. Before we had him, we were the softest team in the league, we got him and became defined as a tough gritty team, and he leaves and we're now back to how we were before we had him. I know everyone here likes to hate on Artest but the guy was a huge reason why we got out of the first round last year. His tough attitude spreads to the rest of the team and my guess is we will see that with the Lakers in the playoffs this season. Artest took bad shots sometimes and is far from a flawless player, but he brought a swagger to the team that we no longer have.
My All Time Houston Rockets Pitbull Team would consist of: G: Vernon Maxwell G: Steve Francis F: Ron Artest F: Charles Barkley C: Hakeem Olajuwon whats yalls??
I don't think we have won a tough game since last year, all our wins this year have been blowout wins where we shot really well. I don't think we have won a grind it out, nobobody shoots well, close game in the 4th quarter game this year.
