It must be fun to watch your little twisting wins and losses tactic for your traded lover was easily dismissed by Francis' self-cheating remarks on the Mavs beating the Rockets.
Oooh, good taunt, you get embarrassed intellectually by twisting stuff around in a hamfisted fashion (have you even cited one stat yet in support of your thesis? why are you still talking then?) and so you resort to bigoted, juvenile gay-baiting. What are you, freaking four years old? Grow up. I guess that's what you have to do when you are unable to confront anything I say in a substantive fashion.
First of all I don't hate Francis. I just don't like the Francis lovers make excuses for his immaturity devoid of common sense. Using Jordan talking trash as a sure sign of underestimation to the opponents is laughable on your part, there is something called abusive personality and other factors in talking trash. In case you don't know. You've been avoiding the key question: Is not Francis thinking that another NBA team as a piece of cake or walkover team a case of underestimating the opponents? Don't talk logic with me if you don't understand the importance of a premise.
Answer: Maybe, maybe not, it isn't if they win. Now, you must answer my key question: is not Shaq thinking that another NBA team as a piece of cake or a walkover team a case of underestimating the opponents? EDIT: I'm going to bed, so I will do your work for you, The answer to the other question is the same: maybe, maybe not, it isn't if they win. You can make this same silly argument for almost every player and every team that loses in the NBA, you can even reverse it around, you can say: Franciss overestimated his opponent, contributed to an air of defeatism, therfore they lost; you can say the same thing about yao, Shaq, or any athlete, in any sport, in any way, provided that they don't win. The reason is that it is entirely speculative on your part. Accordingly, it has no meaning....and it doesn't even get to the main point which has been discredited already time and time again, that the Rockets were a relatively "inconsistent" team by NBA standards.
When they don't win(in fact they got owned) and Francis still refuse to give the Mavs credits by saying that the Mavs didn't beat us just we didn't play well, being reluctant to admit the Mavs CAN beat us, isn't that underestimating the opponents?
Why can't all these SOFs just move on to the Magic boards ? I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities for them to defend Stevie Franchise NOT over there when the new season begins. We , YOFs, do have good reasons to hang out here 'cause our idol is still a Rocket.
The only reason Francis got singled out by me in this thread was the fact that he admitted in the newspaper that he considers some teams walk overs. With out a doubt this affects a way in which a person prepares to play a team. Houston was ridduculed all year as a team that did not bring it for 4 quarters. There were plenty of games we lost where we should have won and plenty of games we won where we looked like ****.
Only a self-absorbed dufus like SF3 who plays for a last place team would look down his nose at a team that made the playoffs last year WITHOUT Shaq.
It doesn't even matter what Francis said, the main reason why the Rockets were so inconsistent was that they simply weren't good enough to be consistent. You guys are acting like we had the talent level of an elite team, we were Yao, Francis and a bunch of average to below average players and one of the worst benches in the league, can't expect to be consistent with THAT.
You have to admit that making comments like this team or that team is a walkover team and doing things like missing games to see the super bowl certainly does nothing to help a team win. All bashing aside, Francis is one of the most gifted athletes in all of basketball but he has never been accused of being gifted between the ears. The overwhelming judgment against the Rockets during Francis stay with the team has been the lack of intelligence on the team and specifically with Francis. There was quote after quote of JVG complaining about a lack of intelligent play all year on the team. Talking about Walkover teams is a direct reflection and a perfect example of a lack of basketball I.Q. IMO. There is simply no way to argue or defend that and any attempt is just silly. BTW, I wish Francis luck and hope he continues to mature as a person and as a player but at 27 and with 5 years experience in the league I believe we have seen the absolute best of SF3. His lack of basketball I.Q. will continue to limit his success and any team that employs him much as it does other players such as Antoine Walker.
If he never said anything what difference would it have made on the overall talent level on the Rockets? None, ZERO! What if he would of said the complete opposite of that statement? Was it going to make the Rocket's forwards any better? Was it going to make the Rocket's bench better? NO, and NO! It wouldn't have made any difference what so ever, the Rockets still would of been Yao, Francis and a WAY below average supporting cast.
Precisely. The only "consistent" team in the NBA in terms of wins in losses is one that goes 82-0 or 0-82. As you approach the middle ground, more wins are followed by more losses...I suppose you could that that's "inconsistent", I call it being neither good nor bad. Crash I like how you too have done a total reversal; Yesterday it's Francis fault that we were losing to bad teams, unfortunately that was exposed as a falsehood; now today it's his fault that we were losing to good teams, based on an assist from Panda the mindreader, and with no evidence other than that to back it up. You have any idea how embittered this makes you look? Panda It's ironic that you describe me as defending Steve Francis in this thread. I'm actually not; the main thesis that I have attacked, and pretty much eviscerated to the point of it losing all credibility and you and Crash, et al retreating from it like a bad movie, is that the Rockets were in any way "inconsistent" to a point of it being a statistically significant factor in the level of effort against a given opponent. That thesis was proven to be false. Now, necessarily, that caused the reason for this thesis, It was all Francis' fault, to dissolve in a cloud of ignominy as well. Boo-hoo. So then you jumped in to the rescue, with some convoluted garbage about underestimating good teams, blah blah blah, you changed it about 5 times, then you started gay-bashing when you got frustrated. I wasn't defending Steve Francis, I was defending intelligent discussion from ignorant, intellectually bankrupt crap that you were putting up there, because apparently you and several others are still obsessed with him even though he is gone, the reason for such obsession I will not speculate.
Crash Simple Question Who has the better record at the end of this season ROCKETS OR MAGIC? BTW How many sub 500 teams did Tmac beat last year? Rocket River
With out checking I will go ahead and concede that the Magic lost to more sub .500 teams. Of course this is not a T-Mac vs. Francis thread. Are you implying that Franchise is somehow better than T-Mac? I certainly hope not. On to T-Mac...I certainly don't know if he is going to suffer from the same types of mental lapses as Steve did but there is no question who the better basketball player is at this stage of their careers. But like I said, this is not a T-Mac vs. Francis thread.
You are so wrong. So you want to make up posts in your head that don't exist try to use some imaginary reversal on my part. You have certainly done absolutely zero to prove your point....zero. My point all along has been that Steve Francis was supposed to be the leader of this team and his approach to the game was a major factor if not the major factor to why we were so inconsistent during his time with the team. The teams inconsistencies against the lesser teams in the league are just an example. Steve has a very low basketball I.Q. He always has and probably always will. What was JVG's biggest complaint last year? Hmmmm. You would probably say the price of beer or something really stupid like that. Never mind there was article after article where he complained about the teams lack of intelligent play. Of course you don't recall any of that do you? How convenient. And of course claiming that there are walkover teams in the NBA does nothing to demonstrate how a player prepares himself mentally for a game does it? Taking teams for granted is certainly not intelligent basketball and claiming that all basketball players do it is not only BS but certainly not a defense for Franchise doing it.
Perhaps it would have prevented players like Luke Ridnour, Raul Lopez or Carlos Arroyo from having coming out parties against him. Maybe a little mental preperation would have prevented him from going 3 for 17 against Eric Snow 2 for 9 against Damen Stoudimire 5 for 15 against Raul Lopez 4 for 10 against Raul Lopez 3 for 12 against Baron Davis 4 for 13 against Chauncy Billups 7 for 22 against Tony Parker 5 for 17 against Tony Parker 6 for 18 against Lebron James 4 for 12 against Brent Barry 1 for 11 against NVE 3 for 11 against Tyrone Lue 2 for 9 against Dawayne Wade The list of bad games goes on and on and on. What do all of these players have in common? Steve Francis is suppose to be better than all of them. Is it possible that Steve saw these as walkover matchups and just did not prepare correctly? Who knows but one thing we do know is that is that he considers some teams walkovers even though he himself has only made it to the play offs once in 5 tries.
But you know what? Every team in the NBA will lose to a sub .500 team. Some more than others. I don't blame Francis or anyone else. When you suck so bad, you have nothing to lose, and shots sometimes just falling. Wasn't it two or three years ago, the year the Lakers won their second or third title, when they got swept by the sonics in the regular season? How do you guys explain that? How many times did the Clippers defeat really good teams. To be honest, this is still the NBA. I strongly believe that any given night, any team defeat any other team. You guys are really good to point the finger at others. I bet more than half of you guys making these idiotic comments dont even play competitive ball. When you are down, no matter whether its the beginning minutes of the game or the ending seconds, you will start to play hard. Its hard for me to beleive that Francis or any other player would just slack the entire game. Sure they might come into the game thinking that they can beat them, but who isn't confident in their abilities. Thats what makes strong contenders. When you dont back down to anyone. When you dont think anyone can beat you. Of course, it can work against you too, but I think it develops character.
