Like Charles Barkley ever worked hard in the offseason. Still, if the media suggests lack of preparation is your downfall, if the fans voice up about it, if your own coaches, player and front office believes it, and says the same thing 6 years in a row, maaaybe you should try to work out for 3 of your 6 off months and physically prepare yourself. I've played with teammates who I've questioned their effort to grab rebounds and play defense and their response it "How much did YOU score?" STRAIGHT letting the stat line dictate how well they did. Even if they ball hogged their way to 12 of the team's 15 points. I didnt think McGrady was "that" guy but who really knows...
i think with yao, it depends on where he establishes position. in the past few weeks, he's been just letting his defender dictate where he gets his position (ala the knicks last night) and thus you see the decline in production in the past few weeks as compared to the dominant december month. and you're right, we do go long stretches without letting yao touch the ball (but that's kind of attributed to yao's lack of great positioning and his man fronting him). we agree to differ. i don't think the hornets and spurs as as good as advertised. i have LP and i've watched a fw games here and there along with the rockets. sure if yao plays well, it'll be EASIER to beat those teams. but if tracy plays like he has in past playoffs, we just need artest and the role players to do their jobs. i'm sure yao will still get his relatively in the playoffs. i worry more about his rebounding in the playoffs. again, we're still only a few games out of the #2 spot and our 2nd half schedule has more home games (and we've been pretty good at home this year) so i look for us to put together a good run heading into the playoffs. whether we win the first round or not depend mostly on who we match up. if we match up with the nuggets, blazers, mavs, suns, i expect us to win pretty easily. hornets, spurs, and jazz, we might need greater play from everyone but they're beatable. but if we play the lakers, forget about it.
McGradys knee problems started a few years back when he put on more muscle. so there you go, his problem is a combo of misfortune and lack of mental strength
Sometimes you have to make your own luck. Like grabbing a crucial rebound out of your reach or staying aggressive offensively in a fourth quarter when the other team is in the penalty and not letting your tiredness keep you from your goal. And I can't believe someone would think we don't need everything clicking to beat teams like the Spurs and Hornets. Remember we don't have 04-05 McGrady on the roster ... we have the 08-09 McGrady. Those teams have experience on their side ... we have none.
Let me start by saying that I still have hope for this team to do something significant this year and come together by the end of the season for a good push in the playoffs. I think the main gripe is that everyone knows T-mac's unreal potential because everyone has seen it from time to time. The problem that arises is the uncertainty from game to game of which persona is going to embody the ridiculous athlete named Tracy Mcgrady. I've gone through two ACL repairs and still play basketball on a semi-regular basis so I understand the mental trepidations he's going through right now. I just want him to overcome those hurdles and see people like D-wade and Lebron who are hungry to assert themselves and remember how he's still at their level of owning every single game he wants to.
Good post. Mcgrady's play has been sub par all season long. It was only when the losses started coming in that people started questioning his desire. He says he's playing hurt, and when youre an NBA superstar known for scoring the basketball, if you don't have your explosiveness or your ability to make precise cuts, it will make you look worthless at times. Mcgrady is going out there and doing what he thinks he can do: shoot, pass, rebound, defend. Its obvious from watching him on tape that he just can't explode off of his bad knee. Its the NBA, Mcgrady is going to be facing premiere defenders every night. When he can't explode, he's going to struggle scoring and defending, period. Basically what I'm trying to say is that people shouldnt question the heart or desire of a player who is playing through pain. You win as a team, and you lose as a team. When we win, you dont just give one guy all the credit, and when you lose, you cant just look at one guy and say, "well he doesn't want it bad enough." Am i frustrated by the team's injury situation? Yes. But I'm not going to start doubting Mcgrady, because he has shown that when he is feeling good, he is an MVP calibur player capable of carrying a team, and every great team has one of those on their team.
Really? The only time I remember the Rockets being the favorite with McGrady on the team has been 2 yrs ago against the Jazz. You need to go back and look at the rosters of the Orlando Magic if you are including those playoff series also.
Does being the underdog excuse blowing a 2-0 lead and giving up a forty point finger-****ing in game seven? How about blowing homecourt in the other two series? How about settling for not quite-threes whenever the game is on the line? Etc., etc., etc... The problem with this excuse is that, outside of Dallas, we haven't been playing the "other contenders."
Since when has being the favorite mattered to Rockets fans? It's not like we're going into the playoffs as an eighth seed on the road, we've had homecourt for crying out loud!
I disagree completely with the that. We are not good enough to even beat scrub teams like the Raptors, 76ers, Grizzlies, etc. if we don't play well and put out effort. We've had maybe three games where we've put the opponent away easily. Apart from that, a lazy play here or there and the W turns into an L. (Also, consider that the point differential for the Rockets is something like 2 or 3 so a couple of lax plays and we go from a winning team to a sub .500 team.)
All signs of the better team winning the series. The better team ALWAYS wins a 7 game series. Do the Suns think they should have beat the Rockets in 94 and 95 with the same situation? Of course they do... but I doubt anybody here feels that they choked that series away... more like the Rockets won it and were ultimately the better team (with the better player) over 7 games. Alas, with the Rockets being the underdogs going in, the series played out just like it was predicted by the end. Utah was playing every bit the "contenders" role the last 2 times we played them... going to the conference finals one year, and ultimately losing to the conference champ last year. The Lakers have only been relevant again for the last half year, and when you're the 4th or 5th seeed, you're probably going to face a team very similiar to yourself. In all situations, however, the Rockets were never the overwhelming favorite going into the series. Only one series did they have a better than average chance of winning going in... and that was before people realized that Yao wouldn't have his way with Utah (and would look downright defenseless on the other end), and that Harpring/Kirelenko/Okur/Milsap would totally outplay our role players (which I believe was the TRUE reason we couldn't win those series).
Go back in history and see how many times the home team has won the #4 vs. #5 matchup compared to other home teams.
that's b/c we're not healthy and have had a bajillion different lineups in each and those lineups haven't had the practice time to get a cohesion to play well. i'm thinking those things would be solved by playoff time. are you assuming the team we're seeing now is the team going into the playoffs? we might not even win a game.
This is almost as big a stretch as excusing Tracy for his shenanigans. Utah went to the WCF by way of Dallas choking to Golden State (uh oh, there goes that choke word again. Dallas was heavily favored in that series... weren't they?) I guess the Nuggets were contenders too, since they also lost to LA?
what was sad was that included shane battier (he was a ghost too). it was tracy & yao v. the entire jazz team.
Cabbage is correct. McGrady is going through a bad spell not long after carring the team through the second half of a 22-game streak and a gutty playoff series with multiple injuries, including his own. Oh, and four years after half the people on this board were wetting their pants wondering whether he'd sign an extension to keep playing with the likes of Juwan Howard and Ryan Bowen.
Timing. Bad timing. He may or may not have dogged it at times the past 4 years. That's a moot point now because that's history. The fact that he carried us to impressive regular seasons and single handedly almost beat the Mavs/Jazz with "NBDL" level talent is very true but should also be a moot point. The reason why many including you and I and the alike are bashing or spoken negatively on him is because we had extremely high expectations coming into the season and we still do (or should; I know I do). For once we DO NOT have "NBDL" level talent but rather a legit 3rd all star pieced together with all the right surrounding pieces to the puzzle. If it were any year to step up and be excited and show emotion and back his teammates and be fired up it should be this year. When a player sulks and dogs it and seemingly "quits" on his teammates it's kind of hard NOT to bring up the past and the bad times. Nobody said the road to a championship was going to be easy or without adversity. Whether Tmac knows that or not who knows? But he should at least act like he knows if he doesn't really know being as he is the best player on this team and is supposed to lead by example.
