What Are Rox' Strengths and How Do We Play To Them?

Intro
I thought it useful to start thread to discuss what strengths that YOU see in the Rox, thus far into the season, and how best to showcase these strengths in games. I was originally going to title this thread, "What Strategies Work and Don't Work for the Rox," but I'd like to touch upon some of those issues here too.

To all interested posters, feel free to discuss:
1) What strengths are worth highlighting (and not just individual player strength mind u! but rather, what strengths give us an "unfair advantage?" e.g. select pairings or groupings of players, textbook plays, intangibles, etc.)
2) What plays that we currently use are best taking advantage of these strengths?
3) What plays that are currently unused might be best to exploit these strengths?
4) What strategies or plays are clearly not working (i.e. they are so inconsistent, that it probably doesn't fit with our group of guys)

Clearly, with the emergence of Yao and the reshuffling of our offense, there's been many growing pains on the part of the Rox. Nevertheless, I figure, like most things, we can either see it as a blessing or a curse. Personally, I prefer looking at it from the former vantage point. What we have is essentially an offense that joins the center-less guard-oriented style of old with a more traditional inside-out strategy. Best of both worlds? Or a pot of confusion?

Interestingly as I think about the Dallas/Rocket game, I'm fascinated at how much teams like Dallas and Indiana and New Jersey have won despite having unorthodox sets. Notwithstanding Bradley on Dallas, none of these teams are all that traditional with a solid PG and C at its core. While Dallas and New Jersey have stellar point guards, they also get some solid producitivity and get mismatches created at the forward positions. Two decades ago till today, we rarely hear of forward oriented offenses (think Dominique all the way to Carter), who can carry a team to the championship. Yet today's teams use the likes of Brad Miller, Dirk Nowitski, Jermaine O'Neal and Richard Jefferson to get some sort of "unfair albeit unorthodox advantage."

So What are Our Unorthodox Advantages?
1) Two Shooting Guards
Well, to date, there's lots of great posts on cc.net about our lack of a pure PG. Yet should this really be a disadvantage? Or can we somehow tweak this team to make it an "advantage?" After much thinking, I for one, think it CAN be done. Somewhere between the speed, agiliity, hops, and range of Mobley and Steve Francis are some heavy duty mismatches to be made. On that note, I am kinda surprised that we don't see more of the two-man game btw SF and Cat. To have two prolific shooting guards as opposed to one should be an advantage, not a disadvantage.

2) A Monster Center AND a Monstrous Backup Center
I've said this before and I'll say it again. How come we don't see a Houston version of the twin towers in Yao and Cato? I have to believe that Cato has above-average stamina, and that any period of "rest" for one can be covered by the time put in by the other. These two would be monstrous, IMO. Cato, is clearly, the better rebounder who Yao is clearly the more prolific scorer. How could you ask for a better marriage?

What Hasn't Been Working
We do not have an inside-out game b/c we have no consistent outside shooting. This team is NOT blessed with pure shooters. Even Rice, our best purported shooter, has been inconsistent in recent memory. Meanwhile, EG is just learning to expand his range and Mobley has been, well, like himself, Mobley. Steve's a great shooter, but my sense he likes to create off the dribble. So who's left?

The Strengths of this Team
1) Oversized Center who gets more mismatches than not
2) Great guard tandem who should be scoring more
3) Flexibility to play both the half court and transition game well

How We Can Play Up to It
1) We need more on-court maturity in knowing how to make the most of our half-court vs. guard ISO/transition game
2) We need to develop more pure spot up shooters
3) We need to show more flexibility in bringing different combinations of players out at different times - depending on the situation. i.e. player substitutions should be more fluid based on the needs of the game.

Those are my initial thoughts. All comments would be much appreciated.



theSAGE

 

That last bit is so VERY VERY TRUE. Question for me is, "if that's the case, how many FGAs should Cat be getting?" b/c, clearly, for whatever reason, Cat is not helping the team much in terms of overall offensive productivity. There was a time when I felt like we could count on Cat to "offset" any bad night by SF, but outside of PHX, it's really been a while since I've seen Cat be that "balancing" force.

Meanwhile, is Cat really a great "catch and shoot" kinda guard?

With the way this Rocket team is evolving, do you see the team as a second coming of Shaq and Kobe? Should we be implementing something more akin to a "triangle" offense to focus our energies on SF and Yao? I don't know what the answer is, but while it remains early in the development of this team, I feel that our talent at the C and SG positions still aren't being maximized.

I've never seen this guy play, but as per another thread, Boki supposedly won a 3-pt contest among the Rockets. Is this guy just what the doctor ordered?



theSAGE

 

What is an MLE???



theSAGE

 

Cool. Thx Gater. I learn something new everyday on these boards.



theSAGE