Exactly, Rox's big hole is offense. There is no offense in JVG's little playbook, he is a stupid defensive only coach. Period.
We have 2 players in our bench, luther head and juwan howard. And sometimes dikembe. and once ina blue moon that little guard. Wow, very threatening!
Thats the Thing. You look at this current rockets 8 or 9 man Rotation and its purely built for the regular season. Not the playoffs. I dont care what anyone is selling me, Id still take a team of Rafer Bonzi TMac Stromile (given a fair and legitimate shot with the team, not reduced to rubble after good games like he was) Yao With Head Juwon Rudy Gay Over what we got now. All JVG had to do, was shut his mouth, and use the tools given him, and not be so damn stubborn with the harder to deal with players.
I agree. JVG should go no matter if Rockets win or lose G7, but the most likely case is that JVG will stay, so will Yao, and so will Tracy. Unless some major change, this team is doomed.
exactly. i swear i could read almost every rocket play tonight. Yao tries to get as close to the post as possible. guard dumps it in to yao. everyone else stand at the 3 point line and wait. no offensive rebounds, second chance points...you get the picture. christ...
as much as i admire JVG, he really suk offensively. i really dun understand why we are force feeding yao so much when he's struggling. we should have yao pass more. Yao really need more hook shots with the defense being so physical. those turnaround jumps is affected as people is pushing him around
All this confusion and staleness on offense is because JVG chose only one type of role players to pair with T-Mac and Yao. An athletic shooter is to be a star in the NBA. Generally, a role player cannot both be athletic as well as good shooting. That's why guys like Mike James as an athletic shooter were a great fit for the Rocks. For this fact, the Rockets have two types of role players. The first type is the non-athletic shooters who can't create on their own, like Rafer, Battier, Howard etc. The second type is the athletic players who tend not to be good shooters, like Snyder, Wells and V-Span. On the Rockets, this type of players are ignored or traded. The current Rockets are like a three legged stool. One leg is Yao, another is T-Mac, and the last is the non-athletic shooters. When one leg of the stool breaks, the stool becomes unstable. It can still be seated on, though, if the two other legs can hold the weight. unfortunately, they cannot. So the current Rockets is a fickle team. One leg breaks and the two other legs have a hard time to support the burden on offense. Let's briefly see what happens as chain effect when just one leg breaks. First, when the shooters fails, there is no two men game between Yao and T-Mac to hold the forte. Two men game between 111 has been an occasional decoration. The end result, 111 can't create because defense collapse on them. It's 2 on 5. Struggle. Second, when Yao fails, there is no team game between T-Mac and the shooters for several reasons. Bad spacing, no clear role for Yao on offense, lack of supporting plays(there is not a single bread and butter play T-Mac can resort to), lack of supporting creators(they just stand there making it easier to stop T-Mac). T-Mac is playing one on five, and he's not Jorden good at this stage of career. The end result, struggle. Third, when T-Mac fails, it's all on Yao and the shooters to both step up. However, the low post game of the Rox has never been solid enough to carry the burden of offense, especially in the playoffs. In the same case that T-Mac is not Jordan, Yao is not Shaq. Also, our shooters aren't reliable. Their flow turns on and off like bad neon lights. The end result, struggle. JVG has built a team with three legs, and the failure of any one leg causes the other two legs to shake and creak under playoff pressure. Not to mention, there has to be time when any two legs fails at the same time. Watching the Rockets play offense is like watching a lost kid searching inside out for the last penny to go home. It's no coincidence, this offense has little anti-disruption ability. JVG is satisfied with a weak three legged stool. It's time, after the playoffs, to build more legs for this team. The second type of role players, the athletic slashers who are neglected because JVG is stubborn, should form a lineup to play with Yao and T-Mac, Yao should move out the paint. The high post offense is the only way for Yao to have a clearly defined role outside the low post offense. T-Mac and Co. will have better spacing, passing, better off the ball movement and help each others out on penetration. After all, although Yao and T-Mac aren't Shaq and Kobe, they have things that Shaq and Kobe don't have. Yao's shooting and passing, T-Mac's play making shouldn't be wasted along with the athletic non shooters. When the shooters don't work, try the dunks, layups and fouls of the penetrators. We can pray that Yao, T-Mac and the shooters work like Shaq, Kobe and Derek Fishers, but before they reach those levels respectively, there's no excuse to put all the money on a watered down Lakers model(without the triangle offense). The Rockets can still win this series, but winning or not, the holes in this offense must be fixed.
How did T-Mac puss out tonight? He was driving to the hoop almost every possesion in the first half when they had single coverage. I think you have to realize that at halftime, Jerry Sloan figured Yao could be guarded effectively by any single player they put on him and that the role players weren't going to hit jack sh*t. All they did at halftime is gear their defense towards stopping McGrady and, guess what, it worked. McGrady got hounded again, and the role players didn't step up.
And what happens if they drag their man as close to Yao as possible by cutting to the basket for an offensive rebound? 8 TO's speaks loud enough. He becomes useless. Only Chuck Hayes can do that effictively because his man is already on Yao, all he has to do is get the offensive rebound. For all the b****ing people do about the Rockets slow game, we have Yao Ming as a center. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT GENIUSES? OF COURSE WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A SLOW GAME. You can't blame JVG for having a slow tempo game, Yao would become useless if we played any faster...
I have to agree with Panda. I never watched the Rockets much during the regular season, but every time I watched and these playoff games, it's been like pulling teeth on offense. To be honest, it looked better last year. I am so envious of the Dallas, Golden State, and even the Spurs offense. At least they had a few backup plans when their main superstars don't bring their A-game. All we have are Yao and McGrady who are off and on, and a few mercurial shooters who tend to fail when we need them most. We have a small set of overused offensive sets with no room for creativity. Even as someone who didn't watch many games during the season except towards the end, I quickly picked up the offense and could identify what the offense was trying to do every time. If I could do it, any NBA coach with half a brain could give our offense fits in a series. Sure, when everything runs smoothly, the offensive numbers it produces looks fine, but any offense looks decent when all the shots are falling. Looking back on the Francis days, I think the offense ran much smoother. Not because of Francis or anything, but because Rudy T's offense carried over with Francis and Cuttino. With both those guys replaced by McGrady, JVG had to redesign the offense. Unfortunately, he's only a defensive genius and has serious issues with offense . We need someone, whether a JVG replacement or an assistant coach (assuming JVG allows it), that will design a better offense. Slasher types like Mike James or Francis, if we can get them, would provide a much needed extra facet to our offense that should give defenses pause. I just hope that if we replace JVG that we can maintain our defensive intensity to some degree.
What talent is there after TMac and Yao? Wells? That's about it... Everyone else is a backup-caliber player for a title contender.
even if we lost in the first round, I still think we are fine.. what we need is to have some BADASS player, mean, tough, take no **** type of player....a guy like stephen Jackson, back down from nobody... to inspire everyone else.. we had it in Bob Sura 2 years ago....we need someone like that in our team, a knife fighter as JVG puts it. Yao and Tmac are toooooo nice....
Well, I think we played 3 good games and 3 bad games. All I care about is wins or losses. So Avery was b*tch-slapped by Nelson's warriors. Are you telling me that Avery is a bad coach now?
JVG told Yao to stop turning the ball over since the beginning of the season. Last game Yao was a turnover machine and you blame it on the coach?
Dude, that's actually good lineup, it would work with Don Nelson or Rick Adelman, but under JVG Stromile, Wells, and Gay....have or would've been riding the wood the whole year.
i know people need to blame someone and the coach is usually the guy. But these games have been decided ON THE COURT. as for the complaint that the offense is "stale"...i just dont get it. What do you want with the given talent? and what does that even mean? absolutely nothing. Spurs, pistons, 94 rockets, heck even the lakers with shaq could be considered stale. The opportunities are there, they just have not been taken advantage of
That's a terrible line up. Stro sucks just admit it. He is a PF/C that can't rebound or defend. Since we don't have a legit PF, Bonzi will be a non factor.
