Trade is showing an explosiveness to these Rockets, after gelling?

Thank you for that suggestion. I'm going to look into that for next season. But, my goodness, I find myself jumping out of my seat after being on pins and needles following the radio broadcast. I complain, because I can't see the flow of a player, but I hear all the good things that the players are doing. Plus, I've got ya'll here on Clutchfans - ya'll do a great job of letting me know about the role players. Plus, every once in a while I'll go check out a live game at the Toyota Center.

 

Martin's terrific on the break, and the fast break was lookin' mighty good last night with Brooks, Martin, Ariza, and Scola all on the floor at the same time.

 

I read some of the reviews and it said if you are local, you can't watch local games. Is that true? Sometimes I'm at work and I can't watch the games but I'm scared it will say that the game is "blacked out" like the reviews describe of the app.

 

I definitely agree we have better 1-on-1 defenders overall, but we also don't have a true shutdown guy like Christie used to be. And when you think about it, C-Webb was that team's only real shotblocking threat, and he actually didn't get that many. Shows you just how big a Christie or a Bowen type of guy can be. Ariza and Battier are good, but not on that level... maybe Battier used to be, but those days are certainly past.

 

What's great about Kevin too is that he scores big without having to dominate the ball. If he can't make a move, he will look to pass right away. That and his efficiency has rubbed off on his teammates.

We have that ball moving, and everyone is conscious now of being efficient and taking the higher percentage shots, even Ariza.

 

Martin is awesome to watch during the entire game. He's pretty damn intelligent of situations on offense. If he notices the defender isn't focusing as much as they can when he doesn't have the ball, he blows right by them for an easy layup off the assist. If he has the ball and he notices the guy is in a position to defend him well, he gives the ball up to somebody else.

The frustrating thing about him is watching him on defense. I honestly think he has the ability to be a good defender. He does a decent job of staying in front of his guy on-ball. His problem is that he loses focus quite a bit when his man doesn't have the ball, and sometimes it leads to open layups. As soon as he learns how to stay focused on defense (if he ever does), he will be a good defender.

 

During the Webber era, the Kings defensive ranking, using defensive efficiency, was #7, #6, and #2. For reference, JVG Rockets were #6, #5, #4, and #3. I know this is a Rockets board and no one cares about the old Kings, but their defense has to be one of the most underrated aspect of that team. And they didn't even have to use the snail-pace gouge-my-eyes strategy typical of top defensive teams. The Kings during that time were always in the top in pace.

The old Adelman Kings were essentially the Phoenix Suns with defense.

 

Yes, thanks for saying it. It's a concept that amazingly seems lost on some people here: When some of your best defenders are out, your defense will not be nearly as good. Here's another crazy concept that some folks still haven't figured out: Since the team got Lowry and Ariza back, they've been playing better and winning. Yes, believe it or not, there is a connection! Believe it or not, as much as people wanted to draw immediate conclusions, those first few games after the trade couldn't tell us jack about how good the team was post-trade. Inconclusive. Not enough information. Now we're getting a better idea. Martin-Brooks might be a poor defensive backcourt, but you've got to love the quickness and firepower. The team has enough strong defenders to make up for what the backcourt lacks, especially when Yao comes back, Hill develops nicely and the team adds front court depth this summer. This is very exciting time to be a Rockets fan.

 

One of the things that I absolutely love to see is when Hayes is on the high post and makes a pretty bounce pass to a cutting Kevin Martin, which results into a easy layup.

As a fan of RA's kings team, it is nice to see this kind of offense in action.

 

Yes, the 4th quarter comeback against the nuggets was awful!

 

Oh man there is no doubt about that, Everyone is filling their role, like you mentioned Ariza is looking whole alot better after the trade, doing his job (role player), not to mention our defense has slightly improved, but still not there, but I really like how this team looking..

 

When the trade went down, Kyle Lowry was out, Trevor Ariza went out, Landry's heart and soul gone from the team. Kevin Martin as the new guy had to be the magic potion making up for the vacancies of THREE rotation players. And Martin himself only had a few weeks of ball this year after his extended time out with injury, and was/is trying to get back into playing form.

Plus all the other new faces on the team. It definitely needed time to come together, and still does.

How Yao fits into the "explosiveness" remains to be seen. There are some positive signs the Rockets can play a good up and down transitional game if they have to.

 

Are people really buying into the "our defense only sucked because we didn't have Ariza and Lowry" BS? No one was watching games?

To summarize the Rockets defense post-trade:

With Lowry and Ariza - give up 108ppg. 112 average defensive efficiency.
With one or both hurt - give up 106ppg. 110 average defensive efficiency.

They sucked on defense with Lowry and/or Ariza. They sucked without them. They've been sucking on defense for a while now ever since their hot start. Although before the Martin trade, the Rockets played at a slower pace, so it didn't really register in the raw totals. But this is simply not a roster that can play top 10 defense.

 

Ariza and Lowry have been back for what 3 games now? One of those games was against Denver with Melo killing us.

Ariza and Lowry aren't up to speed yet either.

 

Totally agree with both parts of your post. Yup, he's an offensive monster and very smart in his attacks, and yeah, he loses focus as a defender.

Case in point, in the game against Denver, Martin's guy doesn't have the ball, Chris Anderson screens Martin. It wasn't a rough screen but Martin just like stood there and literally let himself get screened. What I mean by that is he wasn't in a rush to get around Chris because he didn't think it was a big deal. Yet a second later, his guy gets the ball in the paint and scores with no one around and it was purely because of Martin.

IMO, he's an extremely lazy defender - he really doesn't care if his guy scores. It's unfortunate but if he doesn't have a defensive mentality now, he'll never get it. On the plus side, at least he's conserving energy for his offense lol.

 

well no ****, our center is 6'6, and even though he usually handles most centers well, he's not a factor in shot blocking. But with Chuck's size and a center like Lopez, he dominated us and we can't do anything about it. There's a hell lot more possessions now with us running fast as hell, and so scoring will go up no matter how good our defense is. Plus we played Denver, did you expect us to only allow them score 90 points? LOL, what about the washington game we played, held them under 90 points.

Anywho it's as if Landry was the reason why our defense was a lot better? LOL, he wasn't good at defense either, and didn't rebound the ball as good as scola. Wait maybe it was Dorsey enforcing the defense throughout the whole game with his limited minutes. No j/k, it was actually Tmac, the ghost of him had our opponents intimidated, and which is why our defense was much better before the trade. No one wanted the t-back curse.

 

True, but the 4th Qtr D wasn't great - we gave up 28 points in the qtr...

If you say Denver is going to score 123 points - usually you'd think they'd win.

That being said, I'm not completely against sacraficing D for a bit more O - and that's what I think Adelman is doing.