Warriors’ defense overwhelms Yao without T-Mac
Thursday, April 5th, 2007
by John
Yao was stifled by a swarming Golden State defense all night long Wednesday night. Yao was only able to get off 4 shots and score 9 points in a 110-99 loss to the Warriors. Click here and here for more photos from the game.
On Wednesday night, the Rockets showed to me many of the flaws that will lead to their demise in the playoffs. They not only lost to the Golden State Warriors 110-99, which didn’t surprise me. They were dominated. Part of the reason was because they held Western Conference player of the week Yao Ming to 9 points on 2-of-4 field goal attempts. Amazing.
What’s frustrating is that the Rockets seem to have no answer for high-powered offenses like Phoenix (who they haven’t beaten all year), Dallas (who they are 1-3 against) and now the much improved Warriors. What’s even more frustrating is that Jeff Van Gundy doesn’t seem to be able to adapt his game plan for teams like those.
Consistently Wednesday night the Rockets tried to keep pounding it into Yao despite having two or three defenders on him. Golden State was doing an excellent job defensively on Yao, and they made it very difficult for the Rockets to get him the ball in the post. It’s not as easy as people (like the Rocket TV announcers) would think. When the defenders are fronting Yao, and have a man behind him, and are basically playing zone defense against him with hands constantly up, it’s going to be hard to get Yao the ball without risking a turnover or a three-second violation in the lane.
Yet, that’s what the Rocket perimeter players continued to do. I counted at least 8 turnovers resulting from them trying to get Yao the ball in a tough position, resulting in either a tipped or stolen pass. Give credit to Warriors coach Don Nelson for exploiting the absence of T-Mac, out with a stiff back (more on that later).
On the other end, Van Gundy said after the game that the way the Rockets should beat that kind of defense is to make their perimeter shots. Jeff, that’s true. But I’m sorry, if you haven’t figured it out by now, you don’t have enough personnel who can do that consistently. You have Luther Head, who stepped up in T-Mac’s absence by hitting 7-of-9 three-pointers for 30 points, but many of those came when the Rockets were just about dead down by 16 points in the fourth quarter.
Yao was stifled by a swarming Golden State defense all night long Wednesday night. Yao was only able to get off 4 shots and score 9 points in a 110-99 loss to the Warriors. Click here and here for more photos from the game.On Wednesday night, the Rockets showed to me many of the flaws that will lead to their demise in the playoffs. They not only lost to the Golden State Warriors 110-99, which didn’t surprise me. They were dominated. Part of the reason was because they held Western Conference player of the week Yao Ming to 9 points on 2-of-4 field goal attempts. Amazing.
What’s frustrating is that the Rockets seem to have no answer for high-powered offenses like Phoenix (who they haven’t beaten all year), Dallas (who they are 1-3 against) and now the much improved Warriors. What’s even more frustrating is that Jeff Van Gundy doesn’t seem to be able to adapt his game plan for teams like those.
Consistently Wednesday night the Rockets tried to keep pounding it into Yao despite having two or three defenders on him. Golden State was doing an excellent job defensively on Yao, and they made it very difficult for the Rockets to get him the ball in the post. It’s not as easy as people (like the Rocket TV announcers) would think. When the defenders are fronting Yao, and have a man behind him, and are basically playing zone defense against him with hands constantly up, it’s going to be hard to get Yao the ball without risking a turnover or a three-second violation in the lane.
Yet, that’s what the Rocket perimeter players continued to do. I counted at least 8 turnovers resulting from them trying to get Yao the ball in a tough position, resulting in either a tipped or stolen pass. Give credit to Warriors coach Don Nelson for exploiting the absence of T-Mac, out with a stiff back (more on that later).
On the other end, Van Gundy said after the game that the way the Rockets should beat that kind of defense is to make their perimeter shots. Jeff, that’s true. But I’m sorry, if you haven’t figured it out by now, you don’t have enough personnel who can do that consistently. You have Luther Head, who stepped up in T-Mac’s absence by hitting 7-of-9 three-pointers for 30 points, but many of those came when the Rockets were just about dead down by 16 points in the fourth quarter.
