NOt blaming....I think sometimes we use tmac as a crutch to much and this will only hurt us come playoff time...those same guys on the court were spectacular the first 5 games yao went down so dont use that lame reason... rafer needs to man up and drive the ball...really I think these is the root of the problem, that rafer is not igniting the offense just bring the ball up and throwing it to tmac....just like last season
Of course I mean when Yao was there T-MAC shouldnt hold the ball two much but now the big fella has been out, so he HAS TO DO this no choice Skip to My Lou? Come on dude...... miss YAO
Yeah it's Rafer. Whenever he plays well, the Rockets play well. Otherwise we need at least two people to play well. Plus Landry was out. This team's performance is dependent on Rafer and his play and he will be our X-factor in the playoffs.
so, putting the ball in rafer's hands when he is shooting 30% from the field and 20% from the 3pt line sounds like a winning formula to you? he has been able to carry the load while shooting well and finishing in the lane well, but the last two games he has done neither well and therefore the ball has been in tracy's hands the alot more. its simple, when other players carry the load tmac steps back and only does what he has to, but when the role players aren't playing well, he takes over and dominates as he must in order for the team to win.
that's why superstars are superstars and role players are role players. remember, tmac is not really that aggressive in the first halves of the last 2 games. he only starts to look for his shot more in the 2nd half when it was clear the role players are not getting it done. bullard pointed that out last night. tmac has been coming out in the 3rd quarter with superb offensive play for the past few games b/c of this very reason.
the problem is that in our offense lately when we do put the ball in rafer's hand its a shooting situation because he is no longer running the offense but instead giving to tmac and setting up for a shot...instead he should bring the ball and start the offense with either a pick and roll or something else...and yes mix up a tracy high post every other possesion...
legitimate point. But Rafer hasn't been good from anywhere the last couple games. He hasn't been any better inside the 3 point line, going 5 for 19 for a very cool 26%. You put him in pick and roll and he's just gonna get a bunch of 2 point shots. He's just missing 'em, all of 'em. Reverting? or just a smal glitch?
Of course the offense last 2 games wasn't there but you have to admin we played awful first half and good 2nd against Atlanta and we did excatly the same against Bobcats. First of all we couldn't shoot straight and the defense wasn't at its best. - to many 3s, 19 attempts for 24 minutes is way to many. we just couldnt stop shooting those 3s especially against bobcats - with 19 3s we attempted only 7 ft at the half and we made only 3. Is that possible? If you cannot make any jumpshoots you have to attack the basket and get poinst from the foul line. We didn't do that at all. Maybe Tracy did handle the ball to much but it is what is used to be when the game is close.
Did u even watch the gm or u looked at the boxscore.Tmac was passing all night and rafer and head wasn't making the shots.Battier too.
Right Tracy had a lot of good passes but nobody could hit anything. He made some nice feeds to Hayes, Harris inside. And Luther Head 1-7 and what's more he was taking more and more 3s. And they were well contested. I'm glad Adelman didn't use him in the entire 2nd half, that should be a clear message for him.
Less player movement, shots weren't falling, over-reliance on the 3-ball. But why were these things all happening? Hmmm...let's blame T-Mac. Obviously!
not to mention a ton of missed layups, by battier, scola and Alston. I think Alston might come out of his slump soon though, a lot of his threes were right on target last night but were just in and out. That happens sometimes. Also, Scola doesn't seem to be getting that mid range jumper as much as he was before. I don't know if teams have adjusted or what, but it was huge when he was hitting that consistently.
without yao or landry on the floor, the other team is allowed to leave hayes and deke to guard the rest of the floor, and in doing so that means scola isn't as open from 15 feet as he has been. scola only takes the 15 footer when he is wide wide open, so with a man within arms reach of him, he just passes the ball around the perimeter, instead of shooting.
I'm with ansfjs73 and ikfit on this one. Not to point fingers but when T-Mac dominates the ball too much we are back to what we have had the last 4 years. Stagnant and predictable jump shooting offense. The other players are to blame as much as T-Mac. When Scola is unable to get to the basket with his flurry of spin moves and no Landry to throw it down we are miserable inside. Last night when Battier is blowing layups and we had uncharacteristic turnovers I guess T-Mac had no other choice. But I am very weary of us falling back to our old ways. Not enough off the ball screens and hard cuts by everyone else. Kobe and T-Mac have shown that if your role players simply become jump shooters and you dominate the ball you can't advance in the West. You have to make the defense honest.
The reason is that Tmac has stopped his pregame shooting pratice, as a result he needs to go thourgh the first half to find his "feel".
Ugh. Guess I need to change my sig up again. Ball movement looks alot better when the ball goes in the basket. Rockets only had 17 assists last night, on 36 baskets. For the past 20 or so games the average was about 22-23 on 35 baskets. So....first think about all the gimmes that were missed(Battier layup, Scola layup, etc) and then chalk those assists up. That gets us to our magic number of 20-21. Then think about all of those WIDE open 3 pointers that were halfway down(can we get just 1 point for those?) and missed. Just 2 or 3 of those go in, and all of a sudden we are back in the mid 20s for assists. Dont try to find a blame for everything. It really did come down to(at least these past 2 games) shots not going in.
Same phenomenon observed in the first half of last two games: 1. When the team won a long series games, players became over-confident. They attempted to win by easy points with open shoots. 2. The guards did not penestrate in first half, just pass the ball around, and took time to warm-up their hands. Unusual high 3pt shooting percentage in previous games made the players believed they could win easily by shooting 3pt. No front court rebounds and no second chance of scoring. 3. Unbelievable low FTs. The team won when Rafer and TMac started penestration, which broke the opponent's defense.
