Badgerfan, you're typical only fan. Now if the rox don't get yao the ball, the team is looking at playoff failure. What about 2 yrs ago when Okur single yao and heavg 44% fg, 4 to's a game and less than blk per game? You know what, you were probably a guy saying van gundy is using him too much. Yao isn't good enough to carry a team thru the regular season and playoffs. Neither are tracy or ron, but combined with the others maybe they can. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
Ye Gods, did you just read what you posted? I just wrote that Yao doesn't have to get the ball to the open guy directly with a skip pass. I just quoted Hollinger when he wrote about the Rockets taking two or three passes to find the open guy when Yao kicked the ball back out. Do you think Yao made every single one of those two or three passes himself? If not why are you talking about Yao making the cross-court pass? One more time: all Yao needs to do is kick the ball back out. He doesn't need to pass it to the open guy directly. Simple enough?
no, a fronting defense is not a double team. when yao gets fronted, it's his guy that's fronting him and he's not being doubled. if yao was athletic, we could lob it to him and problem solved.
DING DING DING. and the ultimate answer -> balance. morey gets it. let's go over the last few championship teams since the shaq-kobe lakers (who were arguably the best players on the planet). and let's be realistic, none of our stars are top 5-7 players. the pistons - balanced the spurs - 3 headed monster with defense the celtics - 3 headed monster with defense again, BALANCE.
You know how the Rockets could have won that Utah series? Last night Yao got doubled. Aaron Brooks took off running, Yao handed the ball off to him, and Brooks took off down the baseline for an easy layup. Yao doesn't have to score for the Rox to win. The team can win by making the other side pay for doubling Yao. Yao doesn't have to carry the team anywhere. This is a team sport. Yao can do his part by drawing the double and punishing single coverage. The rest of the Rockets have to do their part by making other teams pay for doubling Yao.
yao made the correct passes the past few games b/c he just doesn't pass it to the guy who passed it to him, which yao usually does. he's making better decisions. when you make passes that simply don't go back to the original passer, you force the defense to rotate more. since the ball moves faster than the defense, multiple passes help. can yao do this consistently? for years, yao has simply pass back to the guy who passed it to him when he gets doubled. when you do that, you don't force the defense to rotate as much so multiple passes are pointless since the defense rotates back pretty easily. don't you get that. watch the past 3 games again. it's not just that yao passes. it's his overall decision making that is very impressive. but yao doesn't do that quite often enough.
utah did single cover him in that playoff series with okur. and he wasn't punishing him or forcing utah to double him. so where's the "punishing" single coverage? why don't you understand the past few championship teams have won with BALANCE. the spurs don't run their offense around tim duncan when they won their last championship; the celts don't build their offense around one guy. if yao is as good as you said, we would have had more success already. there's a reason we keep getting more players b/c morey knows we can't depend on just 1-2 guys. get that through your brain.
The lob is very hard to do even with an athletic guy. Once the lob is in the air, the help from the weakside comes. Heck sometimes, the double from the weakside is there without the pass. you're right though that with yao - it is even harder. a fronting defense does put us in a great position to grab offensive boards though. i wonder how we do..
very true. however, if yao was more athletic ala shaq was in his prime, i doubt teams would front him as much b/c yes, offensive rebounds would be a piece of cake. if teams front yao, i think we can make them pay b/c we have more options. yao may not even touch the ball, but by going to other guys when he gets fronted, it'll open up the game for him more and hopefully he won't get shut out like years past.
So you don't think Utah playing yao with 1 man and zoning tracy and yao shooting 44% with 4 to's a game had nothing to do with it?
Right, whenever you are having a tough debate, you can just accuse people on the other side of being a Y-only-F. I can understand that it's an easy way to bail out though. I have been reading your posts in the last 6 months. I think at least 90% of your posts is about Yao and none of them are favorable. So if badgerfan is really a Y-only-F, what do you think yourself is. Maybe I should let you pick a name for yourself first before I choose one for you. Anyway, what you have been doing is just repeating his weaknesses. You have told us at least 100 times before that Yao didn't take advantage of the 1 on 1 coverage by Okur in the playoff. You have repeated at least 200 times to us that Yao is not athletic like the other legendary centers to post a big target for the entry passes. You have repeated to us 300 times before that Yao is having injury issue which even the grandma of my neighbor knows it. Honestly, are you getting bored with your own repetitive posts? I have said this before, even if there are certain truths in your repetitive posts, the fact that you have chosen to relentlessly bash on one single player make your motive very interesting. Are you saying that the other stars on this team have no weaknesses? Are you telling me that fans of the other stars on this team haven't made questionable points before? The fact that you have chosen to ignore everything else other than Yao's shortcomings in his game and what his fans say is very very interesting. And you are so passionate in this crusade that sometimes I have to wonder if Yao has stolen your high school sweetheart or something. I have said this before and I will say this again here. The fact that you have been a fan before Yao joined this team and the fact that you have some basketball knowledge doesn't mean you cannot be hypocritical. And what you have been doing has served nothing but to prove my point.
What are you talking about? It doesn't matter who Yao kicks the ball out to as long as the Rockets as a team keep swinging the ball around until it finds the open man. That's what Hollinger is talking about when he writes about the Rockets taking two to three passes until it finds an open Rocket. First you babble about Yao not getting the ball to the open guy in one pass, or not going cross court. Now this.
Sure, it had something to do with it. But this team is not that team. I think you'd have to agree that Yao is much better now at kicking the ball out and reposting deeper. And the Rockets as a whole are much better at getting the ball back to him after the repost. The point is this Rockets team is not that Rockets team. I love and admire JvG, but his offense was from the stone age. Adelman is a top quality coach and his Rockets are much more canny about getting the ball to Yao. He talks about using a little misdirection going from strong side to weak side to get the ball to Yao in deep. Can you imagine JvG having that conversation?
One more time: It's not about how good Yao is. It's about how smart the team is, and consequently how effectively they can exploit his peculiar strengths while minimizing his weaknesses. The first thing is: ******* move! Don't sit around and watch Yao, or T-Mac. The Brooks play isn't the whole offense, but it's a very good example of how this offense is supposed to work. Do you remember the very first points Bobby Jackson scored for the Rockets last season? Hard cut, pass from Landry, open layup. If the Rockets aren't going to play Adelman's system, why is he even in Houston?
