Indazone
11-04-2008, 12:20 AM
http://rockets.basketball.titan24.com/08-11-02/129589.html
Reporter Wang Meng of Titan Sports reports from Houston
The competition with Oklahoma City Thunders had just completed, and all the joyous atmosphere prior to the game had but vanished with nothing left. Right after the game ended, Rafer Alston (trying to cheer up Yao Ming) grabbed Yao Ming and said: “Yao, it was Halloween. You need to learn how to celebrate and enjoy (the Halloween). Well, let’s see what we can do to celebrate Halloween next year. If you play the role of Batman, I’ll be Robin. If you play the role of Tom (the cat), I’ll be Jerry (the mouse)……..” And Yao Ming did not wait for Rafer Alston to finish and immediately threw back: “What if I play the role of Snow White?” Rafer Alston chuckled and yelled: “That’s all right. No problem. We have enough dwarfs here: me, Luther Head, Joey Dorsey, Von Wafer…..we have more than enough (for the 7 dwarfs).” Tickled by Rafer Alston’s reply, Yao Ming rolled over laughing heartily on the bench.
But soon afterwards, when he picked up and reviewed the statistics sheet of the teams and the players, Yao Ming completely lost the interest in cracking further jokes: 36% team FG% and 17 team turnovers resulting in 20 fast break points for the opponents; and down at his own column, 6 out of 15 FG%. There were no legitimate reasons for Yao Ming to be happy about.
Yao Ming was very unsatisfied about his team’s current conditions. “We are just too relaxed. We seemed to have thought as long as we were on the court, then winning would become automatic, and we took it for granted that we would beat our opponents. But this is not factual and it is not going to happen like this. We cannot continue like this. We played 2 very sloppy games (i.e. against Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunders) and these should sufficiently and profoundly serve as our lessons. We do not necessarily need to lose any games before we realize and understand this.”
Yao Ming knew that this winning streak of 3 in the new season will cover and hide away a lot of problems and questions, because as a lot of basketball critics or TV commentators would have the tendency to say: A win is always a win and the most important. But Yao Ming is very subtle and clear deep down inside: His team should not be just content in pursuing victory in individual games; what his team should pursue is to complete its gelling as soon as possibly they can such that his team can evolve to become a team tenacious enough to win in the playoffs. Now he could clearly feel the disparity between his team and a winning playoff team.
Titan Sports: So in these first several games of the new season, everybody’s attention and emphasis was placed on the team offense to see whether your team can play in accordance to Rick Adelman’s systems (motion offense). But then what about defense? After all, defense could be the deciding factor of how far your team can advance further into the playoff.
Yao Ming: We have also a lot of problems in our defense. Now because of the height reason, the pressure on our interior defense is very huge. It is impossible for me to stay on court without taking breaks. Once I leave the court for my breathers, the height of our opponents’ interior players will possibly become their superiority in interior offense and defense. Moreover, I felt that our intensity in defense had somewhat dropped; it seemed that the heritage left by Jeff Van Gundy in defense is gradually vanishing from us and that desire to defend (amongst my team mates) is also gradually disappearing; there were much less movement and help defense, and we had a lot of cracks and loopholes now in our defense.
Titan Sports: As the longest serving player in your team, what kind of responsibility you have to remind your team mates such that the heritage of Jeff Van Gundy could be retained?
Yao Ming: I know my own responsibility; and all these require communications and exchanges to complete. I will continue to communicate with my team mates and coaching staff in order to find the best and most appropriate remedies. You probably should have noticed, right after the shoot-around practice the other day, Chuck Hayes and I talked with the assistant coach about our defense; we brought up what we thought to him, and hopefully through such communication we could further adjust and strengthen our defense. We all know how important defense is; after all we had played so many years under Jeff Van Gundy.
Titan Sports: You just mentioned about the height issue of the interior players. If Deke Mutombo returns, how big an enhancement it will actually bring to your team’s defense?
Yao Ming: If Uncle Mutombo does come back, it certainly helps; after all, defense and rebounding are his strong suits, and we had all witnessed and experienced that ourselves in the past several years. But we just can’t just anticipate and say once he returns, our defense will be upped another level all of a sudden; after all, his age is there and he is getting another year older. However, I definitely felt that we need a big tall guy in our interior, above 7 feet; just to scare off our opponents will already serve the purpose. Was there such a saying that you cannot teach height? If you’re short by a few inches, then you’re short by that few inches.
Titan Sports: So before they find you a big tall guy as your back-up, how are they going to adjust your play minutes on the court, and how to distribute your play minutes in both halves of the game? Don’t you think you had played too long in the previous games? Also don’t you think they had played you continuously for too long?
Yao Ming: Well, play minutes of a player a lot of time depend on match-up situation, and should be adjusted on-the-fly according to actual game situation. Moreover, since we still had some injured players on our team, surely I’m expected to play much longer. But sometimes I do feel that I should reduce the time playing continuously on the court. If I stay on court and play continuously for too long, I will become too tired and could not run in the later stage of the game, and my efficiency will significantly drop. I thought maybe we can go back to the previous mode, and that is, I play for 6 minutes or so in first quarter, and then I will take rest; then I will start in the second quarter with our second squad. Well, a lot of times, our opponents will also be sending their relatively weaker line-up in the second quarter. So we may turn that into our superiority and take the lead from there.
Titan Sports: If this trend of playing you 38 or even 39 minutes per game persists, how long you think you can last?
Yao Ming: I can’t really tell, but I know it is going to be a little bit risky; probably I won’t last for 40 to 50 games. Now the new season has just begun, and the restoration is relatively fast; if I feel exhausted and tired, I just sleep, and the next day, I just feel fine. But once you have played 30 to 35 games, the accumulated wear and tear and exhaustion will not be that easily resolved by just one sleep. If by that stage of the season, I’m still required to play this long (i.e. 38 ~ 40 minutes per game), then possibly there will be problems. I now know that I need to take rest and good care of myself, as I am now a veteran (and am no longer young). Like just what happened now; right after the game with the Oklahoma City Thunders, I just told Keith Jones that I will need rest and I’ll be skipping the team practice/scrimmage tomorrow.
Titan Sports: What about Joey Dorsey? How much help he can give you?
Yao Ming: Well, he practices very hard and assiduously; he is also very earnest and eager to learn. Just like every rookie, I can feel he very much yearns for obtaining his chances to play. However, he still requires time to adjust the transition from college level basketball to NBA level basketball. It is the same for every other rookies; prior to obtaining his play minutes on court, he needs to make his coaches satisfied on the training court. Whether to let him play or not is really a head coach decision. Moreover, I think Coach Adelman prefers players that are with sound basketball techniques and fundamentals. Joey Dorsey needs to improve and enhance the technical/fundamental contents in his defense. Just take a look at Chuck Hayes. Don’t laugh. Chuck is such very skilled and good in his defense; his footwork and judgment in defense are so great. Joey Dorsey needs to learn a lot more about these.
Sure hope they can get it together for the Boston Celtics Game :depressed
Reporter Wang Meng of Titan Sports reports from Houston
The competition with Oklahoma City Thunders had just completed, and all the joyous atmosphere prior to the game had but vanished with nothing left. Right after the game ended, Rafer Alston (trying to cheer up Yao Ming) grabbed Yao Ming and said: “Yao, it was Halloween. You need to learn how to celebrate and enjoy (the Halloween). Well, let’s see what we can do to celebrate Halloween next year. If you play the role of Batman, I’ll be Robin. If you play the role of Tom (the cat), I’ll be Jerry (the mouse)……..” And Yao Ming did not wait for Rafer Alston to finish and immediately threw back: “What if I play the role of Snow White?” Rafer Alston chuckled and yelled: “That’s all right. No problem. We have enough dwarfs here: me, Luther Head, Joey Dorsey, Von Wafer…..we have more than enough (for the 7 dwarfs).” Tickled by Rafer Alston’s reply, Yao Ming rolled over laughing heartily on the bench.
But soon afterwards, when he picked up and reviewed the statistics sheet of the teams and the players, Yao Ming completely lost the interest in cracking further jokes: 36% team FG% and 17 team turnovers resulting in 20 fast break points for the opponents; and down at his own column, 6 out of 15 FG%. There were no legitimate reasons for Yao Ming to be happy about.
Yao Ming was very unsatisfied about his team’s current conditions. “We are just too relaxed. We seemed to have thought as long as we were on the court, then winning would become automatic, and we took it for granted that we would beat our opponents. But this is not factual and it is not going to happen like this. We cannot continue like this. We played 2 very sloppy games (i.e. against Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunders) and these should sufficiently and profoundly serve as our lessons. We do not necessarily need to lose any games before we realize and understand this.”
Yao Ming knew that this winning streak of 3 in the new season will cover and hide away a lot of problems and questions, because as a lot of basketball critics or TV commentators would have the tendency to say: A win is always a win and the most important. But Yao Ming is very subtle and clear deep down inside: His team should not be just content in pursuing victory in individual games; what his team should pursue is to complete its gelling as soon as possibly they can such that his team can evolve to become a team tenacious enough to win in the playoffs. Now he could clearly feel the disparity between his team and a winning playoff team.
Titan Sports: So in these first several games of the new season, everybody’s attention and emphasis was placed on the team offense to see whether your team can play in accordance to Rick Adelman’s systems (motion offense). But then what about defense? After all, defense could be the deciding factor of how far your team can advance further into the playoff.
Yao Ming: We have also a lot of problems in our defense. Now because of the height reason, the pressure on our interior defense is very huge. It is impossible for me to stay on court without taking breaks. Once I leave the court for my breathers, the height of our opponents’ interior players will possibly become their superiority in interior offense and defense. Moreover, I felt that our intensity in defense had somewhat dropped; it seemed that the heritage left by Jeff Van Gundy in defense is gradually vanishing from us and that desire to defend (amongst my team mates) is also gradually disappearing; there were much less movement and help defense, and we had a lot of cracks and loopholes now in our defense.
Titan Sports: As the longest serving player in your team, what kind of responsibility you have to remind your team mates such that the heritage of Jeff Van Gundy could be retained?
Yao Ming: I know my own responsibility; and all these require communications and exchanges to complete. I will continue to communicate with my team mates and coaching staff in order to find the best and most appropriate remedies. You probably should have noticed, right after the shoot-around practice the other day, Chuck Hayes and I talked with the assistant coach about our defense; we brought up what we thought to him, and hopefully through such communication we could further adjust and strengthen our defense. We all know how important defense is; after all we had played so many years under Jeff Van Gundy.
Titan Sports: You just mentioned about the height issue of the interior players. If Deke Mutombo returns, how big an enhancement it will actually bring to your team’s defense?
Yao Ming: If Uncle Mutombo does come back, it certainly helps; after all, defense and rebounding are his strong suits, and we had all witnessed and experienced that ourselves in the past several years. But we just can’t just anticipate and say once he returns, our defense will be upped another level all of a sudden; after all, his age is there and he is getting another year older. However, I definitely felt that we need a big tall guy in our interior, above 7 feet; just to scare off our opponents will already serve the purpose. Was there such a saying that you cannot teach height? If you’re short by a few inches, then you’re short by that few inches.
Titan Sports: So before they find you a big tall guy as your back-up, how are they going to adjust your play minutes on the court, and how to distribute your play minutes in both halves of the game? Don’t you think you had played too long in the previous games? Also don’t you think they had played you continuously for too long?
Yao Ming: Well, play minutes of a player a lot of time depend on match-up situation, and should be adjusted on-the-fly according to actual game situation. Moreover, since we still had some injured players on our team, surely I’m expected to play much longer. But sometimes I do feel that I should reduce the time playing continuously on the court. If I stay on court and play continuously for too long, I will become too tired and could not run in the later stage of the game, and my efficiency will significantly drop. I thought maybe we can go back to the previous mode, and that is, I play for 6 minutes or so in first quarter, and then I will take rest; then I will start in the second quarter with our second squad. Well, a lot of times, our opponents will also be sending their relatively weaker line-up in the second quarter. So we may turn that into our superiority and take the lead from there.
Titan Sports: If this trend of playing you 38 or even 39 minutes per game persists, how long you think you can last?
Yao Ming: I can’t really tell, but I know it is going to be a little bit risky; probably I won’t last for 40 to 50 games. Now the new season has just begun, and the restoration is relatively fast; if I feel exhausted and tired, I just sleep, and the next day, I just feel fine. But once you have played 30 to 35 games, the accumulated wear and tear and exhaustion will not be that easily resolved by just one sleep. If by that stage of the season, I’m still required to play this long (i.e. 38 ~ 40 minutes per game), then possibly there will be problems. I now know that I need to take rest and good care of myself, as I am now a veteran (and am no longer young). Like just what happened now; right after the game with the Oklahoma City Thunders, I just told Keith Jones that I will need rest and I’ll be skipping the team practice/scrimmage tomorrow.
Titan Sports: What about Joey Dorsey? How much help he can give you?
Yao Ming: Well, he practices very hard and assiduously; he is also very earnest and eager to learn. Just like every rookie, I can feel he very much yearns for obtaining his chances to play. However, he still requires time to adjust the transition from college level basketball to NBA level basketball. It is the same for every other rookies; prior to obtaining his play minutes on court, he needs to make his coaches satisfied on the training court. Whether to let him play or not is really a head coach decision. Moreover, I think Coach Adelman prefers players that are with sound basketball techniques and fundamentals. Joey Dorsey needs to improve and enhance the technical/fundamental contents in his defense. Just take a look at Chuck Hayes. Don’t laugh. Chuck is such very skilled and good in his defense; his footwork and judgment in defense are so great. Joey Dorsey needs to learn a lot more about these.
Sure hope they can get it together for the Boston Celtics Game :depressed