Well lets see: First half, offense is moving along nicely. Three pointers are falling, Lowry is playing aggressive. Hill is getting offensive rebounds and put back dunks. Gerald Wallace is completely shut down by Battier, 2-10 in the first half. Rockets up at the break Second half, Bobcats come out gunning. Martin, Budinger and Scola completely stop scoring. The offense stops working, Shane ends up with the ball in his hands at the end of broken plays where he has to jack up three pointers to avoid shot clock violations. Wallace held to 4-11 in the second half. Meanwhile Scola and Martin's assignments Jackson and Diaw end up shooting 50 and 75 % respectively. Sorry to burst your bubble angry mob, but our problems were way beyond Shane Battier tonight.
1 - 9 tonight tells you he sux he just needs to retire now. Shane can not do anything its like he is really lazy on the court now it just sux
You can tell when someone doesnt know basketball when he calls someone "useless" when they blocked shots, got his team good looks, closed out on penetration, forced opposing players to pass out with help d, and got back on transition D. We get it, his offense was bad, but useless is an exaggeration. Not just one reason why the team lost tonight.
Hard to say, they are all pretty useless. Hayes - Shouldn't be starting Scola - gives up more than he scores Battier - No O Martin - No D, passes up shots in 4th, spectator Lowry - Hesitates too much, results in TO
Plain and simply without a go-to player we live and die by the three. Early in the 1st half we were on fire. We made bucket after bucket from beyond the arc. In the 2nd half the shots didn't fall. Heck, look at the back 11 of our 22 win streak. When we won it was on good floor spacing and good scoring from beyond the arc. Without Yao, this team has no go-to player. Players like Shane create more possessions on one end, but when no one connects on the other we lose. People on this forum cry for defense without actually appreciating it when it is there...
Rick. Decide who you're going to play. If you have a guy who is playing well, keep him in. If it's not working, make a sub. Stop stomping your feet and shaking your head on the bench.
The lack of defense on this team is embarrassing. We will be nothing but a .500 or worse team until we start guarding someone.
Obviously, there are far greater issues, but it's tough when the team's starting SF and captain shoots 1-9 from the field, including 0-6 from 3PT, and records a whopping -20 in the box score... but, we should ignore the numbers, right? After all, he's the "no stats All-Star."
I think it's just a mentality issue...the defense isn't really stopping our offense most of the time, but our scorers are passing up shots. Last game Scola passed off late in the game and RA threw a fit because Scola didnt back his man down instead. This game, Martin got the ball with an open look about 6 feet from the rim twice late in the game and passed back out. Bud needs to be more aggressive driving to the rim...he did it , but too late. If those guys aren't pushing to score you're going to end up with battier or lowry shooting threes with the shot clock running down.
Yao by far. This team was built to compete with Yao and we haven't been able to count on him since 2007
