Yao Ming leads the league in shotting with a FG% .667

HP, I am sure he would have been more aggressive if the coaching stafff had created the environment for it. When Ming played the US he was very aggressive. In fact the only time he became timid is when he got into the hands of this coaching staff. Two weeks ago, I had to ask, where are all the napkin plays from the plane. Where is the two man game. He was aggressive in his first game against the Spurs. We know that an adjustment is required but I cannot blame Ming for his slow start. There is something call, bread and butter plays. Not only did they not give him his bread and butter plays they did not leave him in long enough. Him running the floor for a bounced pass from Sf for 2 and 1, was not taught in practice. It came from him being out there. The same for the play with the Hawk.

If we are talking about lack of aggression, they better focus in on EG who is probably the softest person on the team.

 

DearRock,

No one said he is not aggressive. We said he is not consistent with being aggressive and decisive. We said Rudy gives him more minutes in games where he shows up to play.

It shows a lot of contempt for a coach to say that based on you seeing 12 of 13 shots at rockets.com then Rudy is not bringing him along and it was coaching that made Yao clueless in some early games.

The great center coach, Neuman, is on record saying Rudy is handling Yao properly. Many other coaches are, too. rockets.com showed Rice pouring it in, too. Is it Rudy's fault that Rice doesn't always do that in games.

You are letting your fan excitement for seeing the #1 get in the way of player development strategies that are most benefial to the team and the player.

windandsea and Rudy both reported that Yao said he was tired. Yao has said for the record that he isn't aggressive enough, and Cato and everyone seems strong to him. It is not too surprising to me that Yao is playing better based purely on having more energy. To you, it is a matter of contempt. The difference is, you want to say it matter of factly, when it is nothing but a theory of yours to say Yao would have had this game earlier...and this is only the 8th game to begin with...

This is exactly what people said about Griffin's development last year. And even with Rudy bringing him along like Yao, Griffin hit the wall in early March. So your theory also ignores the possibility of Rudy being "forced" to sit Yao late in the season for hitting the wall, just when we are playing our best ball.

btw: you comparing Yao's "aggressive" games in International competition should include the fact that he got less than 20 minutes in many games.

 

So if Rudy gets credit for making him timid then who gets credit for making him agressive... No logic... If I threw you in an arena full of lions I suspect you would be timid and if you managed not to get chewed up and swallowed I suspect you would learn something from that and the next time you would be a little better prepared to fight off the lions but it would be a while before you really got good at it and probably the lions would kill you before you ever got good at it...but if I coached before each time before you fight the lions and pulled you out before the lions killed you then I would give you a better chance at becoming a a better lion fighter... Rudy is helping ming survive the NBA and become a gladiator and you would feed him to the lions

 

Does Rudy really need to 'reward' Yao with minutes? Are minutes truly that big of an incentive? Does anybody really believe that Yao is going to be lazy if he's given minutes without earning them?

I really doubt it. Perhaps there are some players that only try hard when their job is under threat... but from what has been reported, Yao probably isn't one of them.

I do think there are good reasons for Yao to not get many minutes. These include:

1. He's been playing without a lengthy break for a long, long time.
2. Time on the bench actually allows him to watch the game, and better evaluate his own performance relative to other 4's and 5's on the team.
3. Creates more "focus" on what his objectives are when he plays. Playing limited minutes allows him to try to perform specific things very well (worked that way for me, at least, when I played ).
4. Yao simply isn't as good as the alternatives (Cato is arguable... Collier, though... ugh)

Right now, I think there's probably good reason to limit Yao's minutes. But I still think that, generally speaking, it's better to give a rookie too much time rather than too little. In basketball, there's no substitute for experience...

 

Old Man Rock :- Remember Yao Ming is NOT a traditional Center! As present he is only taking his first baby steps playing as Rudy would like him to play. It will be at least till next season,before Yao Ming develops great NBA defensive skills. Just sit back and enjoy!

 

haven, have you seen each game? Because as I recall, you don't get to see many games.

We can argue that "Reward" is not the right word to explain the minutes. We can get in a semantic argument about basketball that seems what you like to do. Try to back off the semantic argument that you love, especially if you aren't fortunate to see many games.

The issue is that there have clearly been productive minutes for Yao, and there have clearly been unproductive ones for him, when he's lost, undecisive, and being pushed around. Rudy gives him a set 15 minutes no matter what, and lengthens them when it is clear that Yao is feeling comfortable and looking good.

The strategy (that OMR's gladiator metaphor addresses) is that you learn from productive minutes more than unproductive, and in practice, unproductive minutes can actually cause a setback in development. Setbacks do occur.

Yao came in tired. Why force minutes on him?

 

HP, for the most part I do not have a problem with Rudy T. I am saying that sometimes you just have to keep things simple and not have this elaborate plan. It may actually be contempt because I suspect that where Ming is right now is not Rudy T's doing. We will never know of course but with Cato being out things may have fallen Ming's way sooner than Rudy had planned. Instead of focusing on my contempt which may or may not be justified, I would love for you to explain why more effort was not put into giving Ming his bread and butter plays to accelerate and soften the transition. It is not good enough to say he was tired. To me Ming had the most difficult transition possible with the number of embarassing situations he was exposed to. Why not address the inappropriate decisions to have him switch on smaller players and leave him all alone against Marbury. I just do not see how you can give Rudy T anything other than a B- for the way he brought him along, so far.


The logic, OMR, is that his aggressiveness now have nothing to do with Rudy T. Cato' absence may have played a big role in this whole thing. Minutes was the medicine required all along.

 

This bears repeating.

heypartner is dead on correct about this one. When Yao is agressive, he dominates and deserves the minutes he gets. When he is not, he struggles and needs to sit. We would say the EXACT same thing of any other player. Yao is no different no matter where he was picked.

 

i realy love this comparisment.
Ming will be a great player,but i think it wil take time.i trust rudy to give him as much pay time as he thinks is wise

 

B- is good what's wrong with a B-... I myself was only giving him a B+... So we only differ by points we still are both giving him a B... I thought you were giving him an F! I will not argue anymore...

 

HP. forcing minutes on him is one thing, milking what ever minutes you give him is another matter. I am saying if a guy is new to the NBA, and is tired, then it is crazy for the few minutes you have him out there, to have him switching on guards defensively and not running bread and butter plays for him, offensively. One simple play ran by him and Boki has not been revisited since.

 

I see what you're saying but the metaphor is poor at best. If I was thrown into the gladiator ring, I would die in a heartbeat. I've never seen a lion outside a zoo, I certainly no little to nothing about lion behavior or how to best escape or thwart a lion when in a ring. On the other hand, if I had gradually over the years worked my way up to finally fight the lions in the Collesium, I'd be much better prepared, and, though it would take me a while to get used to the crowd/atmosphere/new lions, my mistakes wouldn't be deadly (if I was good, and by all accounts, I'm one of the best of my day to try and move up to this level) and I woudl certainly learn from them qucikly.

Ming, on the other hand, has been playing basketball his whole life, has been playing professional basketball for a numebr of years and has been playing really good basketball against arguably decent competition for a while now. This is why some people expect him to get more minutes, even when struggling.

IMO, he wouldn't have gotten eaten alive, although he might have struggled and this could have been detrimental to the team. I think he deserves significant minutes Tuesday. I do like how Rudy has been trying to get him into favorable matchups when in teh game, though.

 

<i>I would love for you to explain why more effort was not put into giving Ming his bread and butter plays to accelerate and soften the transition. </i>

DR, I can't explain that, because I don't believe the premise of your question. Not one bit. I do not agree with you even posing that question, so how can I explain a scenario that I do not think exists.

imo, there has been plenty of effort to work on the low post game, and to work on the PnR. We have many quotes of this, and we have rockets.com showing a video of 15 minutes with the Rockets working it to Yao over and over, in something like his 2nd day here. Or are you just going to remember videos of Yao shooting 12 of 13, and forget the low post video out of contempt for Rudy. Further, 8 games into the season for this game ... I mean, how can you expect to accelerate it more than that? Yao is still less than 4 weeks into practice here...everyone else got 4 weeks of camp and preseason. How do you accelerate it more?

Rudy has also implemented a special zone for Yao, if you haven't noticed. That takes practice and learning, too. Yao's success and his practices cannot be measured on offense alone.

 

You make a very valid argument that I can even agree with parts of. I do like my lion's analogy if for nothing else than entertainment value... Plus for a moment it I pictured the lions eating up Dear Rock (just kidding)...

 

OMR the grade is relatively disappointing in the sense that I cannot see why Rudy could not have gotten an A, which was there for the taking. He knew the guy fairly well, he had some time to prepare and plan. I just do not see how a back to the basket plank was the way to go. Rudy knew he handles the ball well, he knew he can shoot the rock. Pick and roll would be nice. Rudy would have known that he is not ready to switch on Marbury or Strickland and remain on his own. Up to now there has not been one alley hoop to Ming attempted. Is it defenses are not allowing it or it was not put in? Oh, he was tired! One of the first plays for Chandler was the alley hoop play which we sometimes run for SF.

His minutes were rudderless and confused and that is why I give the grade and if it had continued for one more week the grade would have been a C-.

 

What if he does really good on his finals?

 

He might have switched that one time on Marbury. I was at a friends house and didn't really get the chance to follow our defense in that possession.

But I am convinced that I've never seen him switch before or after. What we are seeing is a 3-2 zone or something based on a matchup zone. Last night for sure, in the 4th quarter we were playing zone with Ming in any situation that you saw him out front or on the wings.

imo, this is very similar to the way Garnett is used on defense. This is also similar to the way Bradley is used. They zone the 15' perimeter, while staying close enough to the basket to effect shots if they pass over them or drive.

This is pretty exciting to me, so I have been trying for the last 3 or 4 games to get others to look for it and analyze it. It is a zone specially designed for Yao Ming.

 

HP, I may have missed that video but I did reference the play with Boki, a PnR, which still remain in my mind as an option that is there anytime we want it.

In fact if Rudy T had read all your posts justifying why Ming will start from day one and the High post offense, he would have had a better chance that the back to the basket stuff.

Tell me more about the zones.

 

Don't know if anyone caught this article from the Houston Chronicle or not. Helps put things in perspective a bit especially the comments from Yao.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/sports/1665471

I think Rudy is doing just fine with Yao. You can argue what approach is better. Given the way a lot of others are wanting to make Yao appear to be a circus act, I'm glad we're taking the approach that we have.

 

Whoa, I thought he switched all the time. It happened with Strickland and Payton. He even did it last night with Kobe. Now if that is not switching and it is part of a zoning scheme, I would still wonder why he is not given immediate help.

Tango, there is the circus act risk which I understand, I just felt he was exposed to too many embarrassing moments over the past two weeks.