It really looks horrible. 44% in the paint...We used to have a lot of floopers but come on. He really sucks inside and I do not know why cause he is a more penetraitin' guy for me.
No, I don't blindly hate Rafer. I just don't think he deserves to start anymore. He had his shot, he was given plenty of opportunity. When he is on the court, we are simply substracting one offensive threat opportunity we could have with James, Head or Steve. No one is going to leave Mike James alone, and this will open up the lanes. Simply put, it is time to hand the ball over and see what can happen this season. PG has been a very weak position for us for the last few years. We need to change this.
Yes we are still weak at the one spot. However, Aldeman has as much said that Rafer gets his system and Francis is struggling. So I don't see the point of belaboring the issue.
More accurately our big man's pick and roll defense has been bottom of the barrel. You can hate Rafer's shot selection and shooting inside the arc and be quite justified. You can also hate JVG's coaching style. But unless you just didn't watch the games you would have to know that Jeff cherished good defense above anything else, and JVG specifically said that he considered Rafer one of the Rockets best team defenders. When asked about Rafer's defense, Jeff pointed out that most of the time when the opposing PG scored alot it was poor switching on picks by the big men, something Yao has always struggled with and none of our 4's has been particularly great at either. It's not like opposing teams run ISO on Rafer on a regular basis, and it's not like JVG was afraid to publicly call out people who were playing poor defense or gave undeserved praise to make players feel good. I'm certainly not saying Rafer is my dream PG, but it's not like Francis or James are coming off career years. Both James and Francis failed to earn the starter position on lottery teams last year, but for some reason people want to hand them starting positions here. Rafer is a better career spot up 3pt shooter than Francis, and honestly he wasn't THAT far behind James with Rafer at 36% and James at 37% last year. Especially considering JVG's offense required Alston to shoot so much that he made more 3 pointers than James even attempted. Certainly Rafer's scoring ability at both mid range and penetration is MUCH worse, but I don't really want our starting PG dominating the ball or taking a ton of shots as long as Yao and Tmac are on the court. Unlike last year, Rafer should never be higher than the 4th or 5th scoring option when he is playing. Fortunately we have the depth where we should never have a starting line up of TMac, Rafer, Battier, Hayes and Deke like we did for a long stretch last year when Yao was out. Nor should we ever have a second unit as scoring inept as Deke, JHoward, Lucas, Head and Battier on the court this year. Rafer will still have his bad games, but now we have the depth to take him out during those stretches rather than have him play thru because the team looked even worse with him out. Rafer definitely needs his minutes reduced back to his career average of around 30 minutes, and his shot attempts needs to be cut WAY back from last year. Do both of those things and I think he can be very effective in this new offense.
Steve should question his minutes, he constantly holds the ball and still doesn't understand the game and the way the Rick Ramsey's offense works. 15 minutes may be his max.
I'd like to see if we can repeat again this year with 4 players scoring. Now that was basketball!!! JVG, "4 guys scoring, yeah, what I really wanted to see was one guy scoring all our pts"
