I got the joke. I'm just getting sick of all the negative yao bs lately. The post by tinman sounded like "hey, yao had a good night because he was guarded by a MICHIGAN POWER FORWARD who can't guard worth garbage." Regardless of how much substance is in tinman's post, Yao can and will pull a night like this against anyone. agreed?
That's just tinman being tinman. He's a goofball but pretty much harmless. And I was joking about his signature posting styles.
Well to me the Rox are playing at home and some of the shot block challenge by Yao could be called foul if he were playing at someone's else stadium such as in Memphis. But his feet and defense is better tonight. He doesn't seem to be tired when the game is on the line and when it is urgent. Yao needs to be like that in every game.
No worries. Seriously though, what do you guys think of Yao's performance tonight? Fluke or glimpse of what he's gonna become throughout the season?
One thing that I think really helped Yao Ming tonight is that he was making his move quickly. He'd get the ball, and there was no indecision. Within 3 seconds Yao Ming had made his move, either going into the lane for the hook, passing, or taking the fadeaway. He didn't stand there and hold the ball for very long. And he really stepped it up on the defensive end. He fought hard for rebounds, and he played very nice defense, guarding the lane.
with refs blowing offensive fouls like nowadays, it is hard for Yao to beat fronting. A truck is not gonna outmanuvor a car, period. Yao could extend his arms to seal the defender, but he risks being called fouls that way. Beside, when he try to seal his defender, he gets pushed at his midsection and below armpits. Refs have to call those fouls to make it a fair game.
The biggest difference was the referees making no phantom calls against Yao tonight. When they revive their habit, Yao would be in trouble again in the next few games.
Yao got fed the ball pretty well tonight, especially the fourth quarter. At one point, everybody seems to forget about Yao. Gundy had a timeout, and made some adjustment, I dont want to name the name. The focus was back to Yao, good things happend to us eventually. Kings didnt front and double team Yao much, because of Tmac. Whey they do, Yao could always found wide open teammate.
I was in the game and thought that this is the biggest change that JVG made to get Yao a good post position. Yao frequently rolled from one side of the block to the other. In between there was just quite bit of traffic that was a little too inconvenient for his defenders to get ahead of him on the other side of block and front him. Rockfan94
Well, they've been doing that in all of the first four games. The difference against Sacramento was that the Kings are a BAD defensive team, particularly in the post, and that Yao was more agressive in this game than in the first three.
I didn't read every post in this thread but there is a reason why most good teams win at home. It's much easier to get into a good physical and mental rhythm when you wake up in your own bed. Then again, as little as Yao played @ MEM it wasn't truly a back-to-back game for him. Jeff - I'm going to take this a little deeper. When they're not on a long road trip, the Kings play decent team defense. (Hence the high FB points they generate from TO's and good rebounding position). However, the Kings with the exceptions of Christie and Bobby Jackson are not good 1on1 defenders. From what I saw, Adelman chose to double McGrady as an attempt to cool him off. This opened up the floor for the rest of the Rox. IMHO, if McGrady is on and one other Rocket is shooting well, Yao is going to get lots of open looks moving across the lane from the weakside. Unlike Hakeem, Yao is not strong enough physically or mentally to fight through doubles. But when rotations are late or non-existent, he can go to the paint or turn baseline making him difficult to stop for all but Shaq. And maybe Ronnie Nunn's team.
To expand on this somewhat... It seems that all of JVG's plays this year, or at least 75%, involve some kind of back-pick / roll across the lane, either to free up TMac or Yao to post, or to free up a wingman out near the 3 point line for a post feed or pick and roll. Running TMac across the top of the key off two picks, for example, is a play they've run a lot. My contention was that they were just trying to hard. At the end of the day, they seemed to be doing a lot of work to still have difficulties getting someone the ball in the post. This clearly wasn't the case last night. So either the Kings defense overall was a lot worse, or the Rockets as a whole are getting more familiar with a basic set of 5-7 plays that they are starting to run more effectively. I hope it's the later, but who knows. JVG does seem to struggle as an offensive coach, but you can't necessarily fault him in play design. He nearly ALWAYS has a good play out of a timeout, and the inbound plays are getting better. The one they did last night where Yao picks across the bottom of the lane to a guard who catches the inbound pass in the corner and turns around and feeds a now well-posted Yao was a great play - as it was happening you could tell it was going to work. Hope they keep that up.
Maybe it has to do with the opposing center. I think most of us would agree that Brad Miller is a hard-working above average defender. And Ostertag has had a good history against Yao. Thus, Sac felt it could play Yao straight up...no fronting or quick doubles by the guards. I believe when Yao plays against a defensively-established center, the opposing team rarely employs the tactics that give Yao trouble. I'm not sure if the coach of the opposing team truly believes their center can stop Yao (which is often false) or if they just don't want to offend their center's pride. Could you imagine how Shaq would feel if he needed help guarding Yao. Now, even though I have a completely different take than other posters, my conclusion is the same: last night's performance does not mean Yao will have any more success in the post against fronting defenses or backside doubles. So, this means Yao will stink it up Tuesday against Memphis and dominate Dallas (because they now have Dampier and not Najera).
Did anybody actually watch the Memphis game. Yao playing poorly against Memphis had much more to do with foul trouble than the inablity to beat fronting defenses. Yao only had two attempted post ups in the first half of that game. One was a busted play where T-mac picked up his dribble early and had a defender all over him, so he didn't have an angle to get Yao the ball. And another time when Yao was flat out being double teammed with one guy fronting and another guy on the backside. The rest of the time, he was setting screens while everyone was shooting lights out. Then he kept on getting into foul trouble for the rest of the game. Seriously, from the second quarter until the last ten minutes of the game (when T-Mac was mostly just running down the clock), Yao probably was on the floor approx 5-10 mintes. The foul trouble is a big problem but it doesn't have anything to do with Yao not being able to beat the front. And in the Raptors game, whenever they fronted, the Rockets weren't responding with the counter-play that they used last year to beat overplaying defenses. Swinging the ball to a player flashing into the high post and providing an better passing angle and easy score for Yao. Mo did it one time which led to FTs for Yao but Howard either didn't do it at all or was terribly late in getting there. With two days until their next game, I don't think there's any doubt that JVG will work on plays to free up Yao if he gets fronted. Get a couple of easy buckets and the defense will stop fronting, plain and simple. I mean during Yao's fabulous three month run last year, he wasn't getting hurt by fronting nearly as badly as the beginning of this season and last season. Yao definitely needs to improve on holding position, but that doesn't mean that JVG and the rest of the team can't help him out too.
Against SAC MoT used the high post feed a few times and they looked a lot more relaxed while doing it, at one time the defense swarmed yao after the high post feed and he passed it back out then they repeated it again and yao scored. At the beginning of the season Yao would have fouled or got a TO the first time around, I think it's just familiarity with his teamates and/or lack of practice, we are just now getting our first practice of the regular season this weekend. Expect to see a better performance vs memphis on tuesday.
King tried doubleing or fronting Yao. Tmac was another player that need attention. When there are two players like that on a team, it's hard to defend. Several times Kings descided to double Yao or Tmac resulted wideopen shots for other Rockets, and Ward made those two big shots. King also fronted Yao several times. There was one play Ward lobbed pass to Yao resulted a easy dunk. Again, it's real hard to play us when we align Yao and Tmac on the same side. We will be a tough team to beat.
