This isn't a pic thread, no not even a Clips thread. Actually it's about the Jazz and Rockets. Seeing the competition up close, they were blown out by 30 by the Clippers. How? Well, get physical and play them close and their weakness comes out. Just some observations The Jazz have a hard time recovering if their jumpshots don't fall. This is their main weakness, and usually results in the 2nd half. Once the jumpers start clanking around, they don't dig very hard trying to get rebounds and they don't have much of a post up game so it exposes some of their soft spots. One thing we must do is not let Deron Williams get a good start. If you can limit his effectiveness in getting to the hole you are causing Utah a problem because when he doesn't, they don't move around much. Guys like AK and Brewer don't enjoy shooting jumpers so when they drive, if you stop them from getting to the bucket easily, they don't put a great deal of effort into rebounding the ball. I can see Deke getting quite a few blocked shots this series. Elton Brand demolished a ton of drives and they looked to have gave up on the play after being blocked. Stop Memo from shooting at the top of the key, make him shoot from the side, or at an angle and his effectiveness wanes. Harpring, usually can hit a mid range J but for some reason they don't fall for him much in the 2nd half. I've seen this happen to him quite a few times. Tmac can handle him on defense. Occassionally they'll leave a man wide open near the left side of the arc (shane), so Battier will probably see alot of open 3's as well, as long as he doesn't hesitate to shoot because they will close in if he doesn't. Yao will be doubled no doubt about it, so look for Tmac to take some 3's folks. The Jazz crowd the paint very well so this team will have to be creative and not stand still much. If they stick anyone on tmac other than AK he should immediately post them up... ie D Fish, the name escapes me, but the short guy with the braids (pg). Put that guy under pressure and he starts trying to pass cross court and down court even if the defense is there. Its late and im tired but maybe i'll add more later. I will say the Rockaets will need to buckle down and get physical with Utah and they can rattle them right out of their gameplan.
I think this is key factor....Don't let him set up his team with rhythm passes. The first game of the year I saw that to be a problem and we pretty much let the jazz offense dictate what we wanted to do instead of having there offense on there heals.
Watched the game on FSN. My first impression was that Utah lacks ball movement. Early in the game, they swing the ball to two blocks let Okur and Boozer operate. Okur had a horrible game. The guy is a streaky 3 point shooter as far as I know. Sometimes he takes 3point like he's 7 foot Ray Allen. Like I said, if he parks his azz outside, it's heavenly good news to us. Dont know why Milsap doesnt play much? I thought he brought good energy when Boozer was down. As for Deron, if he shoots like 4 for 14, 5 for 13 like he's been doing last several games, Skip actally can offset him. In terms of keeping offsen flowing, Skip is far better than Deron. The Utah team is def in a funk right now. Hope they never figure it out.
Our in/out game is far better than Utah's. I think Hayes can check Boozer. Boards is the key. They are the best rebounding team in the league, we cant afford to let them have multiple chances.
Wow, thanks for the scouting report ! If we want to get physical with them, we'll probably need to use Mutumbo, Hayes, Snyder, Battier more than usual.
Why are you so down on Hayes? He played J.O pretty tough the other day except for giving cheap fouls too easily. Boozer is a quick PF, I think Hayes CAN, not saying will, check Boozer. I guess we will find out.
I don't think it's completely out of the question for Hayes to cover Boozer, but like the issue with Deron, it's a challenge not an absolute. Chuck is MUCH stronger than people think he is, and if Boozer doesn't hit his first 4 or 5 shots, then we can combine Chuck and Deke on him, and I agree that we need Battier and Juwann to chase Memo as long as he's on the outside, and switch to Yao and Deke if he's down low. And as I've said in other posts, (mostly about Rafer) I think the Rockets could limit the finesse and quickness of teams like Utah and even Phoenix if we used just a little more muscle early on. I think Utah's ripe to be bullied a little bit... Hell I would't mind seeing one of ours getting a flagrant, or getting a tech for muscling up on Deron or Harpring (especially Harpring, he's a little hot-headed to begin with) just to get inside their heads before we match up in the playoffs. Sloan teaches his guys to play hard, physical (and a little dirty, ala Stockton and Malone) but I'm not sure they can take it (just like Stockton and Malone)... If we give as good as we get in the hard play department, I think we can absolutely psych these guys out!! The bigger issue will be Deron Williams. He's absolutely abused Rafer in both of our prior games with the Jazz. The first game, everyone on Utah was burying their shots, but in Houston, we did a better job of limiting the perimeter shots and also Boozer wasn't as effective (if memory serves....). Anyway, great scouting report... and now, bedtime for bonzo... G'night mates!!
Tonight rockets has no game, so I watched the Jazz lose on mms streaming. I am more than happy to see Jazz play like a loser, they down by 30 pts, they don't seem even wanna fight back.
If we had a different coach who believed in playing to matchups and using players for specific roles against those matchups then we could put in Vspan to D up on Deron to the point of even drawing some offensive fouls and getting into his game and disrupting it. You could do this for short periods when rafer was on the bench and Tmac was running the O. You could even ask V to play a little jazz like and foul DW hard a couple of times. But JVG is all 7 man rotation and JVG system, so probably not a chance.
No way, Deron would murder V-Span. You don't send in a rookie to defend one of the game's best up and coming point guards. He is too inexperienced to be able to guard him effectively. Deron would blow past him every time or get fouled.
Boozer is a power PF who has some quickness when he slashes. He's a lot stronger than JO and can back Chuck down near the basket. We must help Chuck out or it will be ugly. On the other side, since Boozer doesn't believe in defense (I exaggerate only slightly), Chuck should get a few layups by rolling to the basket when Tracy and Yao draw double-teams. Deron Williams is the other key defensive matchup for us. If he's on his game it will be impossible for Rafer to stop him or slow him down much. I like Williams better than Chris Paul. I was under the impression the Jazz like to clog the paint, but after watching Elton Brand (and sometimes Kaman) operate on them last night, I don't know. Maybe we should throw last night's game out because the Jazz played so bad. I have to believe they will pull it together in the next 3 weeks.
Defensively it is going to be Hayes on Okur and Yao on Boozer. That's because Okur will stand at the 3pt line and we don't want Yao out that far. No question that Utah is a jump shooting team, so our JVG defense that closes the middle will be key to stopping penetration. No doubt, Deron Williams is the key for stopping Utah. Great point about Okur and the top of the key 3pt shot. That's his favorite spot.
I watched the game last night too, and I agree with a lot of the points above, but one thing to consider is that Okur had just come from the hospital and had no sleep in 2 days due to the birth of his daughter. And his jumpers were short all night......I am glad they lost last night but I believe it was more of an aberation than the norm. DD
Didn't know that but there are other reasons they have lost 5/6 this time of year. The Eastern road trip killed them and they only beat the Warriors by 4 points at home on Tuesday.
No doubt they are struggling big time.....and I hope it continues. I was listening to the Clippers announcers, and during the game they switch color guys with the other broadcast team, and the Jazz announcer came over. And he was talking about the Rockets and how he feared them in the playoffs. It was refreshing to hear. DD
Okur has a sweet spot though DD. The top of the key, and if we can force him to shoot from that spot he'll wane. Remember, when Utah starts missing jumpers they don't know what else to do. That's usually a sign of their collapse. Make Fisher shoot contested jumpers and he won't be that much of a factor, especially if you make him shoot it from the corners like the Clippers did last night. Stealing money Tim Thomas even had his way with them. Remember, the Clips did this with no Sam Cassell dictating the offense, and EB not going totally wild. Heck even Maggette didn't get a huge number of ft's although they do seem to panic and foul when a driver gets deep in the paint. (Hint Kirk) From the looks of it, their backup pg's aren't able to contol the team like Deron does, and one in particular blames his teammates evertime he tosses a bad pass to him (no joke) Boozer will be a tough matchup for Hayes, and that's just how it's going to be. Only thing he can do is again, make him continue to shoot jumpers. They just aren't a great shooting team so eventually things stop falling for them. I've seen them lose several times this way. As far as AK, I don't know what's wrong with him, you see him on the court but his prescence is nothing as it used to be. I think his confidence is way down this season. As Harpring said We need to get physical with them.
this guy really does steal money... back with the bucks he had that one playoff series against the pacers and cashed in and dogged it until the bulls cut his ass... then with the suns he had a decent playoff run, cashed in and now hes back to his dog ways
