As a rockets fan for so many years, I realized that rockests can go as far as yao can carry them. But the problem is that yao is not consistent on defensive end in clutch time. He is great once in a while, and that's not enough. If I were a NBA coach facing rockets in playoff, I'll always use smaller&quicker player to attack him around the rim or shoot from the perimeter. So far yao has no answer for those. While there's no way to shut down opponents' offense completely, I think the best way is to play zone. Yao should completely stay in the middle no matter what. The idea is to let opponents take jump shots all night long, but no single layup around the basket. I still remember in yao's first year vs Boston, Rudy T played zone against them. Yao had 7 blocks in the first half alone, and Celtics dare not to attack the basket in the second half. They shoots light out in the second half from the perimeter to keep up with rockets, but failed to do so in clutch time(when most teams win by attacking the basket and lose by taking jump shots). If yao completely stays in the paint, he will not get foul calls when the smaller players crash into him. He only gets those when he's out of position a bit and is one step slower in recovering. It will also save him a lot of energy and protect the rebounds more. So what do we sacrifice is Boozers' midrange jump shots and Barnes's or Okurs' 3 pt shots. But do you really think yao can really stop those even if he's rushing over with his hands up? I'd rather see yao stays home protecting rebounds and live with those 45%(or less) jump shots instead of drawing a foul on their drive or get driving by and get dunked. Historially, the best defense is letting them take jump shots, and the best offense is attacking the basket whenever you can. Play zone and let yao stays in the middle will solve our problem most of the time.
That's a legit concern. But just like I mentioned, if yao completely stays in the paint, he will not get foul calls when the smaller players crash into him. He only gets those when he's out of position a bit and is one step slower in recovering.
two major problems 1. defensive 3 seconds 2. if the opponent's big guys achieve a fg% around 45, that's pretty scary and discouraging. Camby, Boozer, Okur and Amare all can knock down mid-ranges, and even 3 pointers, at a fg% higher than 50.
>Take the layup/dunks out of their current shooting percentage, they can average at most 4x% jump shooting.
I getcha man. I don't know about playing it all the time but I sure would have loved to see it the other night against Golden State. Second night of back to backs against a run and gun team and very good penetrator in BDiddy. However, with the defensive 3 second rule and the fact that in the NBA most teams can shoot a wide open 3 effectively, I don't know if that would work. But the overall strategy of using a zone early to protect Yao and get the opponent in that shooting mode, then in the 4th quarter, go back to the scrambling man with Yao standing out there fresh with 4-5 fouls to give and our perimeter guys closing out on the shooters. Yao's greatest and probably his only weakness is he lacks quickness. But that weakness is devastating defensively. It's what separates Hakeem from him. Hakeem had superior quickness and Yao has very poor quickness. We've got to be able to mask Yao's lack of quickness defensively and emphasize the same the Celtics masked Bird's lack of quickness and emphasized his playmaking. The Celts did it by letting Bird play the passing lanes and helping out if his opponent drove the bball. Or they funneled the ball to his opponent and let him shoot the long ball all night over a 6'9" Bird, which is low percentage offense. I do believe Van Gundy's philosophy of keeping the opponent out of the paint first and then attempting to contest the long jumpers. However, Van Gundy's defense caused Yao to expend so much energy defensively that he was always worn down come crunch time, or in foul trouble from having to pick all those little guys coming off the PnR or from having to defend Josh Howard straight up as other teams went smaller and smaller against us until they had us totally mismatched. Teams are going to keep doing that until we overcome that strategy. Adelman's defense seems to have Yao not showing on the PnR but he is still coming off defending a small and the opponent then spreads out and gives the small a chance to attack him. If we stick in a zone, the small has to take the jumper or give it up to someone on the perimeter. We seemed to have done this against Phoenix, but Golden State still ran us out the gym. But I think most of our problem against Golden State was offensively. They were overplaying and playing passing lanes and we did not deal with it effectively. I really think Adelman will get it figured out offensively. We're still not there yet. And that will go a long way towards eliminating these gimmick lineups against us that more and more teams are pulling as they see the success of the others. Everybody in the NBA knows they cannot send a single big man defender and expect to slug it out with Yao in the post and win. He kills them everytime. And most of the NBA knows that they won't be able to simply send the double against us because Adelman is too good and will have guys on the floor that can take advantage of doubles against 111 such as Francis, Scola, Bonzi, et al. So teams are going to just get more ridiculous in their lineups going smaller and smaller to run us out and create the mismatch against Yao defensively to get him in foul trouble and render him useless sitting on the bench. I believe part of the answer on the defensive end is to use the zone to protect him against smalls attacking at least early in the game. The other part is for Adelman to figure out how to abuse those stupid lineups offensively to force the opposing coach out of them. One thing about the NBA for sure. When something works against an opponent, other teams will duplicate it. You've got to be able to get the upperhand on every strategy used agaisnt you to be the champ. And right now, small ball is our Achilles heal.
Zone will work "most" of time. PHX, GS, Dallas and Jazz are those 13% that won't work because their player at Yao position are either faster, more athletic, can shoot 3. The key is RA have to change the defensive system to accomodate for Yao's lack of speed. Oh..but we fired that guy last year! We just have to accept it, play to our strength and exploit other mismatch to compensate for it. Yao don't have that intimidation mentality essential to reign in the paint like Shaq did.
Against Golden State at least, a 3-2 zone could be appropriate to try to stop Harrington from taking advantage of Yao's position near the paint. The "3" of Battier, T-Mac, and Alston with the "2" being Yao and Hayes could work well. The problem is everyone knows that the best way to attack a zone is to find a way to go inside. If GS could do that consistently, then Yao would get in foul trouble without a doubt. Defensively, I think I'm more comfortable with what we're already doing. Pack bodies in the paint to stop the layups and force them to shoot outside jumpers. If they make them, tip your cap. We just need to do a better job of rotating so they don't get really wide open looks on their jumpshots. We did a good job of rotating in the Phoenix game, but not the Golden State game. Transition defense was bad in the GS game also.
Defense needs more effort/energy. I think the Rockets were just tired and gave up. No excuse for them, but that's probably the reason.
Oh yeah absolutely, without a doubt. You can call it an excuse, but it's also THE reason why we didn't play well. It's a shame that many people can't just accept that as the reason. Instead they resort to making "Trade T-Mac" threads and accuse the Rockets of not having heart, being mentally weak, lacking leadership, etc... There's not one team in this league that could play @ PHX and @ GS on back-to-back nights and win both of them.
How about the rockets players' average percentage? Rafer, T-mac, Battier, Mike James, Wells... Can they average above 4x% on a regular basis? Do you remember when we played against the Nuggets two years ago, Marcus Camby kept shooting mid-ranges and had an amazing 7/8 fg% in the first quarter? What a hilarious "at most"!
1) One of the reasons why the Warriors was able to blow out the Rockets is because Yao couldn't do anything on offense against the smaller Al Harrington while Harrington had no problem scoring against yao. Had Yao dominated and able to put Harrington in foul problem, the Rockets would have won. Yao can improve his defense by playing offense. Wear out his opponents and put them in foul trouble. 2) Yao said his an avid video gamer. Perhaps, he's a horrible at playing video games. If he is a good game player, his hand-eye coordination and anticipation are weak. Guys, like little Steve Nash, simply aren't afraid of him because they know Yao will attempt to block their shots after the ball has peaked and on the way down. If the Dream were in his prime and playing now, he would have send Steve Nash's shots outta here so many times that Nash wouldn't dare to shoot. Sikma needs to watch the game tapes with Yao and improves Yao's vision and understanding of how his defenders played. YAO'S BASKETBALL IQ IS LOW! He lacks the fundamentals.
Put all things in perspective, it was a loss tonight, but it wasnt all because our defense compeletely worthless. If you dont compete out there, no defense can stop your opponents. We played like we are better than the Kings. Walked the ball up, careless with the ball. The kings converted how many on TO? Also do we have answer on Artest posting up? Kmart's quick release. This king's team can be good if you let them, zone or not.
The Suns and the Warriors are tough teams to beat, but the Rockets have the talents to beat them on consecutive nights. The Rockets is the Oakland Raiders of basketball. They have talents but lacks of discipline. The Spurs, Mavs, Celtics can beat the two teams mentioned above.
Yao needs some athleticism back..thanks to the bodybuilder 300 pound build he lost what he had in his 1st year. Power doesn't mean anything if you have no athleticism..it will only make athleticism worst. Yao is not the answer..no consistency...he can score 30 points but when the majority of the points is in the 1st half it doesn't matter much. If ya'll didn't notice opponent's D increases in intensity in the 4th as it should.. and that's where yao will get shut down, when it matters. And with the supporting cast or lack of it only tmac will be defended seriously..and when yao gets frustrated he is pretty much a pansy because his facial expressions won't change anything but make things worst
Again if you take out their layup/dunk/easy points, and only consider their jump shooting, none of those can AVERAGE above 45% on jump shooting. Anyone one can go hot with even 100% shooting in a short period(even with opponents hand in their face). But they can't AVERAGE that. Not to mention if someone's that hot, we can simply deny him the open look and let somebody else take the shots. Another thing is there got to be drawbacks in this scheme, and it's a tradeoff. Just like Shaq never defend the perimeter to allow their open shooting, but he shut down the lane to prevent the higher percentage shots. Especially in the clutch time, teams live by attacking the rim and die by jump shooting. Sure jump shots can win a few games by odds, but that's a part you sacrifice(you have to sacrifice something nontheless).
