What Went Wrong: a Critical Analysis of Before/After

We need a point guard who can distribute the ball.

Look I have said the same thing for 4 years now ever since Tyrone Lue was our starting PG. I said the same when we got James, Alston and Francis most recently. I begged the Rockets to get a point guard when we traded Rudy Gay.

I am still saying we need a floor general type veteran who knows how to run the team with consistency. Please clean the house with these combo guards and package them for a quality PG. Look I am not asking for Jason Kidd or Mike Bibby but a Chris Duhon, Andre Miller, Antonio Daniels or even Steve Blake would suffice at this point. I know it is easier said than done but every single one of our PGs is an undersized 2 lacking the court vision needed to run a team.

Blame T-Mac all you want but the guy is stuck playing your point-forward as the only playmaker on the team. Opponents don't respect Rafer cause he can't drive the ball and neither can he hit the open shot consistently. No one else on this team can create a shot for someone and half of the time can't even get Yao the correct entry pass to the post.

Face it T-Mac isn't the PG type wingman like Lebron and doesn't have his vision so he will struggle playing that role which has taken a toll on his ability. Kobe was facing the same problems for the last few years until the Lakers realized their mistake a brought back Derek Fisher who can run the team and hit the open shot when needed.

This team is going nowhere until this issue is solved and all of our moves have been short term patch ups to a bigger underlying problem.

 

I absolutely HATE it when TMAC just drags his feet and walks up the floor when a play is called for someone else. I've never seen an NBA player just casually walk up when the play is happening.

 

To ME, the difference between 6-1 and now was McGrady starting out the season "league scoring leader" style and doing all the right things to carry the team. Since he got back from injury its been "where's everyone else" attitude.

And now he feels too put-out or something to do other things to affect the score board besides shooting jumpers. To him its like I "HAVE" to pass to Battier and Chuck to get them scores but its a wasted trip down the court from me launching up a three. A slightly less selfish more talented Mike James approach.

 

ya should have been screaming for Benu Udrih all along. But who knew he would be able to play at the level he has been for the Kings. C'mon there are tons of guys out there who can distribute the rock. PG's are not tall which means that the population that the NBA can draw upon is huge. We produce tons of them in college every year. So if ya need a distributing PG, just go out and get one.

 

Well this isn't hard to fix either. If other teams are keying on T-Mac and Yao, just run iso plays for James/Scola/Battier/Francis/Bonzi. Pull T-Mac and Yao to the right or left side and clear out on the other side.

 

Besides, we should have some of the best iso players in the league. Francis can put an ankle biter on anyone guarding him and so can Rafer "Skip to my Lou" Alston. James can penetrate and so leaving these guys alone while T-Mac and Yao clear out should be able to get us plenty of scoring. If they try to come off the double teams cover the weakside, then the ball can go back to T-Mac or Yao. Bonzi can play cleanup.

 

Nicely said but none of those guys you mentioned has the confidence to take it to the rack strong and finish. It would solve a lot of problems if we could penetration by our guards but that ain't happening. For some reason these guys rather jack up the 3s instead of putting down the effort and taking it to the hole.

 

Pesonally, I think there needs to be a drastic change concerning McGrady or Yao.

We're a good team that will grit-out a game, but the Rockets lack a TRUE closer.

Yao has shown that he can hit the big shot, but his limited athleticism makes him easy to defend. This season, you can definitely see that Yao Ming has matured and is WAY more aggressive than in the past. But it's too easy to defend him. His weaknesses are glaring (fronting, weakside swiping), and teams take advantage of that. He seems to have the mentality to close out games, but his ability hinders too much of that. Which is why he's shown signs of frustration publicly.

McGrady disappears way too much as a go-to guy during crunch time. I think his problem is that the "pull up 3-ptr" is his knock out punch. He takes it way too early in the shot clock, and it's a difficult shot. When it goes in, it's a GREAT feeling. But when it doesn't go, the Rockets miss their chance at puting their opponent away. Driving helps, but their are two big problems: 1) He doesn't do it often enough late in games (takes jumpers), and 2) He's not a good free throw shooter. If he feels he can't get a shot off, he shouldn't be looking for other guys to create their own shot, he should feed it to Yao and let him go to work.

The lack of a superstar with killer instinct is evident in the way the Rockets have handled leads and late game deficits.

A 15 point lead is not safe in the league anymore, but that is more apparent with the Rockets. How many times has a team erased a double digit lead in the second half against the Rockets. The habbit of the team is to take their foot off the pedal when things are up, which opens up for their opponent to claw their way back in (the Toronto game is a perfect example).

On the other hand, when the Rockets are trailing but keep it close, and their opponent makes a run in the 3rd quarter or later, this team seems to fold too early...relying on jumpshots instead of cutting/passing/easy shots.

 

To take it to the hole, they need a lane. Our offense isn't set up to clear a lane out for these guys. They need a few plays to open it up for the guards.

 

Here are my thoughts on where things have gone wrong:

1) The offense. This is a team best suited for an inside-out structure than a motion game. Aside from Alston and TMac when he feels like it, there are no pure passers who can create for others. Other players are either post players who need the ball to be effective (Yao, Wells), spot-up shooters (James, Head, Battier), or garbage scorers who collect points best off broken plays (francis, hayes, scola). None are smart enough to read and react accordingly to defenses, which is a primary requirement of a motion offense.You're asking square pegs to fit into a hole.

2) Bench play. Our bench was supposedly supposed to be stronger this year. Now, what we do know is only Wells will likely give a hard consistent effort. That means we have no idea what to expect from Scola, Francis, or Head.

Which means...

3) Rotation. Because of the inconsistency, the rotation juggles every freakin game. But Coach has to suck it up, and stick to nine players all the time. Let them play their way into games and into a rhythm. By juggling players, you're only stunting growth and chemistry within the team and system. The likes of Head, James, Francis and Brooks don't know whether or not they'll play, and that's sad because it's their respective positions that are struggling mightily and I'm sure it's frustrating for them because they know they might be able to help somehow, someway.

Here's what the rotation SHOULD be: Alston/McGrady/Battier/Scola/Yao, with Hayes/Wells/Head and Brooks.

4) PG/PF. My biggest gripe is that our same problems entering this season were still our problem in training camp, and are still our problems now. We have no consistent power forward or point guard play. The days of Hayes starting need to go. He is just not suited to start for a contender because he has too many flaws that make it easy for defenses to cover Yao and TMac, while keeping an eye on Alston and Battier at the 3-pt line. It's four-on-five out there every single night.

As far as the PG play, James and Francis need to be benched and IR'ed and Brooks needs to be the backup. There's no other choice or option, and there's no way we get a quality caliber PG for Rafer in return. So we have who we've got. Use Francis and James as trade bait, let them lead the water boys, whatever, but they're not cut out for this system and this team.

 

Guys, I don't want to be harsh, but if you think other teams adjusted to us after only 7 games, then you have no idea. Besides the Spurs, Suns and (maybe) Jazz, pretty much every NBA team is finding itself the first 1/4 of the season. I'm not saying there isn't any game planning at all, but teams are still looking mostly inward and figuring out what they want to do, how good their squads are, determining rotations, etc.

Secondly, I usually like to focus exclusively on on-court, nuts and bolts stuff when discussing the Rockets. However, why isn't it obvious to 100% of us that chemistry is the main problem. Yes, the offense isn't being run properly, outside shooting is bad, players are standing around too much, blah, blah and more blah. But there is no other explanation for the lack of focus and effort on both ends.

The Rockets deserved props for being 4-1, no doubt about it. Then we beat the Bucks with a fairly mediocre performance, at best. 5-1. Then we laid a stink bomb in Charlotte and won because there was some focus an effort the last half of the 4th quarter. It wasn't a good game at all and was predictive of what was to come. Many, like me, complained about the sorry effort and other noticeable problems, especially coming after the not-so-good Bucks game. Many here roasted us about complaining with a 6-1 record. Adelman reacted similarly and said he was hesitant to change what got us to 6-1. But to many of us it was obvious some things were wrong.

Then the loss to Memphis smacked everyone in the face. We were 6-2, but it didn't feel like a good 6-2. A six-game losing streak left us at 6-7. Since then, we've puttered back and forth between decent games and awful games, with the win at Phoenix being the one shining moment. The 2nd half against the Raptors and the entire Sixers game were disgusting and shameful moments in Rockets history.

I'm guessing something happened during/after the Spurs or Bucks game to send us into the tailspin and it snowballed into something bigger. There is some kind of big disconnect between Adelman and the players. It seems like many of us want to ignore it, for what reason I don't know. I have to believe that Les and Morey are now questioning the decision to bring Adelman on. Most of the time it takes a lot more than 10-15 games for a new coach's honeymoon with players to end, no matter how bad he is.

Just my 2 cents. Unless Adelman makes an adjustment, gives a team speech or the Rockets make a trade or release a player or two that are killing morale and effort, we aren't going anywhere. I can almost guarantee you it isn't just a matter of players using the "system" for 7 games and then reverting back. I can definitely guarantee you that other teams didn't suddenly figure out how to stop our offense. Whether you mostly blame the coach (like I do) or specific players, the problem is internal. And remember, if the team as a whole isn't doing what Adelman tells them, then Adelman is the problem.

FWIW, I missed the Mavs game but recorded it. After seeing the boxscore and reading some of your comments, I couldn't watch it.

 

i agree.. there is no excuse for a player to take nights off and not try his best just because they might be playing an inferior team especially when your f***t a** is getting paid over $240,000/game. thats just ridiculous when you really think about it.

 

I think there's some similarity between Adelman's situation now and when JVG first came to the Rockets tried to entrench Yao in the low post. Yao at first struggled mightily while battling down low, getting pushed around and having the ball slapped away, and people on the board were jumping on JVG, saying that he was misusing Yao, Yao wasn't strong enough, etc. It took a few years but Yao was transformed into a dominating post presence.

Now, Adelman's trying to instill a new offensive approach. And so far, it has not looked good. All we see are players misreading each other's movements, throwing balls into a crowd, being out of place or standing still, uable to get into any shooting rhythm and as a result, losing badly.

However, maybe this is similar to what we saw with Yao. Yao needed to go through those growing pain to become a good post player, and maybe Adelman's system needs the same. It would be easy enough to try to go back to what we know works, but maybe we just have to grit our teeth and bare this painful process in order to make the needed breakthrough.

That said, the thing that concerns me the most with this team right now is not losing but the seeming lack of trust in the system. In the beginning of games, I notice a lot of talking and pointing to each other, trying to figure out the offensive sets. But as the game wears on, and especially if they're losing badly, it seems that panic sets in and they stop communicating. As a result, chaos ensues.

I think that the players just need to develop some discipline and force themselves to put whatever scheme Adeleman's proposing in place, regardless of wins or losses.

I mean T-Mac talks about how he "puts his will into a game" to get wins. I wish he'd be just as willing to "put his will" into this system to make it work.

 

I thought I was the only one that saw it this way . . . I completely Agree

Well Said.

Rocket River

 

I didn't see much effective running of high-post offense during the 6-1 start. I saw a lot of a stationary Yao in the high post passing to a stationary Bonzi in the low post, resulting in as many turnovers as easy conversions. I did like that the Rockets seemed to take more "risky" fast-break opportunities (i.e. 3-on-3) and convert them at a high percentage.

 

I think all the guys are thinking too much and when you do that, you hesitate. If you hesitate, you turn the ball over. Or if you think about stuff too much instead of playing with instinct, you're gonna miss the shot. That's ultimately what's forcing all these guys into shooting career lows. So you give them a few simple plays to come off screens, pick and rolls, and iso's to free them up to play naturally.

 

The way the Rockets are assembled right now, the only way they are going to be a good team is by leading the league in points in the paint. This means TMac, Rafer, Francis, James constantly driving; Scola and Hayes hanging out around the rim, Yao and Bonzi posting and scoring from inside. The problem is, we don't have guys that consistenly penetrate and when you play inside a lot, you are going to get fouled a lot. And from what I have seen this year, going to the free throw line is not something this Rocket team seems to do well at all.

 

that's amazing since mike never played with neither under jvg.

 

I don't know if it's that when they're under pressure they bail, it's just more of the Rockets not knowing what to do because of either a low basketball IQ, lack of desire to learn the offense, or just general laziness to actually move on offense. I think teams have figured out that all it takes to get the Rockets out of their offense is to apply token full court pressure and deny the first pass to the wings. When that happens, they all freak out and don't know what to do, or again, are just lazy. That causes the clusterfu** we see on offense all night. A good coach would make sure his team knows how to counter the ball denial on the pass to the wings to initiate the offense, but we have Rick Adelman.

Rafer can handle the pressure and rarely turn it over on the dribble (the pass is a different story though), and also barks out the orders a lot better than the other PG options we have or use out of position. That's why we look lost without him.

But, the bottom line that I see is that teams have made adjustments to the Rockets...and the Rockets haven't made the adjustments to the adjustments.

 

The players can not hit those jumpers anymore. That's the only difference from the beginning of this season. Looking back at Mavs' game, when we hit those jumpers, like what Battier did for several minutes, we were fine. After that, it became a disaster.