I thought Skip still had some solid play tonight. Not necessarily late in the game, but he made some plays.
Lol, I was thinking of doing "we get signal" when the thread went up, but went, "Nah, nobody will get this."
Yeah it was like Rafer just went brain dead and was giving the ball away, the Warriors were putting heavy defensive pressure on him and it rattled him. I almost might say he went a little into Stevie "ooh I have to beat my man, my team just disappeared" mode. I was wondering why JVG the defensive wizard was letting the Warriors increase their defensive pressure 100% and then the Rockets were just standing around back on their feet waiting for the W's to attack. A nice full court press on their point guard for a few plays might have returned the favor and rattled their point guard. And with Tmac and Swift out we were missing some height and athleticism that could have helped us with JRich. This was probably one of the few situations where I would have considered one of two strange lineups to try to rattle JRich (JVG never seems to consider the aspect of getting inside the opponents heads). One put Chicken man Rybo on JRich for a while. Two put Mutombo in with Yao, let Deke guard the paint and have Yao chase JRich and harrass him. Yao on JRich worked on the last play of the game. Not saying this was a 48 minute solution, but with the people we had, and using both earlier in the game it could have messed with JRich's head just enough to get him out of his flow.
Rafer didnt play his best game last night but I'll give him a pass. He's been almost rock solid lately.
The part about Rafer cheering for his teammates after being benched is quite a compliment of his character and his attitude for this team. I didn't notice him doing that, but that's good to hear he wasn't pouting SF3 style.
