Tonight the Rockets played hard, and for the most part smart. However, they lost another winnable game by not concentrating on an important aspect of the game. Mobley at the line, up one, and he bricks 2 free throws. Steve missed a few, the whole team did not shoot Freethrows well. Can't do that and make the playoffs. The one positive I did see was that Steve DEFERED to EG on that last shot..... That kind of trust is great to see, and will make us better. DaDakota
Yes those free throws would have really helped us. I know Cat gets a lot of grief on this board for taking too many shots. Well, tonight I would have liked him to shoot more in that second half. Mo Taylor looked pretty good tonight, and so did Yao. I think even though we lost tonight, it previewed the good things to come. At least I hope so.
When Cat got the foul I thought "great our best free throw shooter going to the line to extend the lead to 3!" But as soon as Cat missed the second free throw I got a really bad feeling that this was not going to turn out good. I was really wanting to see Steve or Cat drive the ball to the basket and either make the bucket or draw the foul. I thought he waited way to long to pass to Eddie which of course caused Eddie to rush his shot IMO. I still don't understand why Rice spent so much time on the floor in the last quarter. He played fairly well when he was going against Jacobson but he didn't look very good against anyone else. I would have prefered to see Mo Taylor in the front court along with Eddie and KT to finish the game. Mo was easily our best offensive weopon in the second half.
Certainly Rice should not have been on the floor for defense on Phoenix last shot....where was Hawk? DaDakota
I didn't like the game very much at all. Even if the Rockets had pulled it out I wouldn't have marked it down as progress. Too many lazy turnovers, they seem to have little confidence in trying to go inside, and they didn't help each other enough on offense (unlike they Suns). The missed free throws were bad but they could have sealed it up in other ways if only they had executed properly. On the plus side, they played like crap and still only lost by a point. I'm not really down on the team since I know that even though they're coming together they're still going to have these nights where they fall apart again, but it's just not any fun actually watching these bad games happen
Nice to see Mo and Yao get some good points in although Yao should've played more. When Mobley got to the line, it was one of those jinxes that I felt was gonna happen. It was a bit too good of luck to be true with our best at the end of the game.
I am not convinced that missing the aforementioned FT's is as important as the team taking 9 fewer total FT's for the game. You frequently hear annoucers say that the aggressive team gets the breaks from the officials and that a jump shooting team tends to take fewer FT's.
