Since seattle had so much success with it, teams are going to throw it at them all the time Houston did a decent job tonight against GSWbut only because Eddie was hitting threes and steve was, once again, incredible. If I'm an opposing coach though I'm going to take my chances with it. Eddies' not going to hit those shots all the time. So, with our current personnel set up, and the Rocket's patented IsoMotion offense--What should Rudy & Co. do to beat the Zone? Note: Any response that contains the word "trade" or "move francis to shooting guard" will cause me to lose all faith in humanity.
The easiest way to beat a zone is by hitting outside shots. We have 4 players that can hit the three consistently which are Cat, Francis, Rice, and Griffin. Also everyone on the team with the exception of Cato has range out to 20 feet so we just have to continue to make them pay for leaving our outside shooters open.
It seems like people think to beat a zone you have to shoot them out of it, and this works. . . sometimes. The best way to beat a zone though is through ball reversal, ie making the d work back and forth, attacking the gaps of the zone and cutting the zone up, or a lot of movement. Every time you reverse the ball you are puttin the D out of postion allowing for easier drives to the basket, throw in some movement, or cuts by other players and soon the D will be out of position and the O can score some easy buckets, and by easy buckets I mean lay-ups. Also unless its a matchup zone, the O can or should get tons of Offensive rebounds.
A good passing and shooting big man can also tear a zone to shreds, although Hakeem never handled it to well against Seattle. I think that MoT will help alot in this department when he comes back, we sorely need a post-presence and should approach it that way. Our shooters are very good but I do not think that Rice and EG are consistent enough with the 3-ball.
If everyone can hit a 12 ft jumper, that's enough to beat a zone. Zone's shouldn't work well in the NBA because it's too fast. I haven't seen them employed all that much, but I've only seen like 5 games this year. As for double teams away from the ball, you just have to have a good team concept. If you look at the good teams in the league, most teams play them striaght up and rarely try doubles away from the ball. As the Rockets improve, I doubt this will be an issue.
