Yao tries to stop the Celtics’ Mark Blount Sunday night as Boston had a party at Houston’s expense, blowing them out 102-82. For more photos from the game, click here. Photo courtesy of NBAE via Getty Images.

by John

SUNDAY, 11/13/05 – I’ve got a couple of things to say after the Rockets got blown out of Boston Sunday night 102-82.

1) Coach Jeff Van Gundy coached one of his worst games in recent memory
2) The trade of Mike James for Rafer Alston continues to haunt Houston
3) The scoring punch we expected Derek Anderson to deliver is not happening

Regarding point #1 above, it was unbelievable how the Rockets kept leaving Celtic center Raef LaFrentz open for wide open three-pointers. LaFrentz was 7-for-7 from behind the three-point line in the first half alone. You would think after he hit the 3rd or 4th three-pointer, some defense would be put on him.

Alston was absolutely worthless (again), going 0-for-5 through the first three quarters and getting one assist. What were the Rockets thinking when they traded James, who scored 36 points (including 6 three-pointers!) for Toronto Sunday against Seattle? Oh yeah, I forgot. Point guards who play under the Jeff Van Gundy system shouldn’t be scorers. They should be passers first.

Without decent production from the point guard spot, the Rockets’ offense gets brought down to its knees. Through three quarters of play, the Rockets had a grand total of 8 assists. That ain’t going to get you anywhere in the NBA.

Anderson scored 3 points on 1-of-5 shooting, and like Alston, is shooting in the low 30% range for the season. Maybe the Rockets should have signed this past summer Nick Van Exel, who wanted to play for the Rockets because he lives in H-Town during the off-season. Oh yeah, I forgot. Van Gundy wants shooting guards to pass and play defense more than score. Well, that philosophy ain’t working. The only guy in the backcourt who can score, play defense, and pass is T-Mac, and look where that got the Rockets tonight. Now Van Exel will probably win a ring in San Antonio.

So to make up for a struggling offense, your coach needs to force your superstars to take shots, right? Not in Van Gundy’s book. Through 3 quarters, Yao had only taken 8 shots (making 6) and T-Mac had only taken ten (making 5). Let’s see, that’s 75% and 50% shooting, respectively. When it comes to forcing Yao to take shots (maybe even some jumpers from 10-12 feet), I think JVG has Tomjanovich-itis — just let whoever wants to score jack up some shots.

Without Yao and T-Mac not attempting enough shots, the Rockets just seemed to lay down and die in the third, giving up when the game was still within reach (a deficit consistently in the low to mid-teens). By the end of the third quarter, the Rockets trailed 82-62, and that’s when Van Gundy hung it up.

By the end of the game, Yao finished with 14 points on 6-of-8 shooting, and finished with five personals.

Here is some more detail on the Blowout in Beantown:

1st quarter:

The Rockets started off cold, missing their first five shots. Before you knew it, they were down 9-0 until Yao had a shot goaltended to make it 9-2. Houston had to call a timeout at the 6:58 mark trailing 13-4, and at that time they were 2-for-7 from the field (Rafer was 0-for-3) and had 3 turnovers.

By the end of the first quarter, LaFrentz had scored 14 points on 4-of-4 shooting from behind the arc, giving the Celtics a 28-14 lead.

2nd quarter:

The Rockets trailed by 16 at one point in the second, but they cut it to 40-35 after Stromile Swift threw down a left-handed jam, David Wesley hit a trey, and T-Mac hit two free throws. But then LaFrentz made his fifth wide-open 3-pointer to push it to 43-35. Can someone PLEASE cover this guy?

Near the end of the second quarter, LaFrentz hit his sixth and 7th treys in a row to make it 53-41. Again, he was wide open.

Despite Lafrentz’s hot 7-for-7 shooting from behind the arc, the Rockets only trailed 55-44 at halftime. Houston had 13 turnovers (one below their entire game average), but they were shooting the same percentage (47%) as the Celtics. They were still in the game.

The main difference was Raef’s three-pointers, giving Boston five more than the Rockets. Houston had to figure that LaFrentz (27 points) would cool off, and Yao (6 points on 3-of-5 shooting) and T-Mac (11 points on 4-of-6) could heat up in the second half to make a run.

3rd quarter:

Yao got hot in the third quarter, hitting 3 buckets in a row to keep it close at 63-53. But for some reason Van Gundy took T-Mac out of the game, the Celtics went on a run, and the Rockets couldn’t buy a bucket and fell behind 73-56.

Van Gundy put T-Mac back into the game, but didn’t make him take many shots. By the time he came out of the game with 1:05 remaining with the Rockets down 82-62, T-Mac had only taken four shots in the quarter, and 10 overall (making five).

4th quarter:

The rest of the game was garbage time, with Van Gundy feeling like it wasn’t worth trying to go on a run to cut the deficit to 10 points and maybe let T-Mac repeat some late-game heroics. Instead, Van Gundy mailed it in by playing the reserves. With the pressure off, Alston made 2-of-4 shots in the quarter for 5 points, and finished with one assist.

The only bright spot was Stromile Swift, who led all Rockets with 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting. Maybe the Rockets can put him at the point. He couldn’t do much worse than Alston or Anderson.

The Rockets are now 2-4, and play three games in the next five days: Minnesota (3-3), San Antonio (5-2) and Detroit (6-0). With the way they are playing, the Rockets will be lucky to win one of those games.

John
john@YaoMingFanClub.com

To read the Houston Chronicle’s story of the game, click here.

To see the boxscore from the game (which is pretty ugly), click here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 10:17 pm and is filed under vs. Boston. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.