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With the contention that the Rockets are doing too much talking, guard Tracy McGrady said Ron Artest was not necessarily wrong in his assertion that improving the Rockets’ defense has to begin with McGrady, but that Artest was wrong to say it.

“We’re doing too much talking,” McGrady said Saturday. “We have to play some basketball and get some wins. This is not the time to point a finger here and there on what somebody needs to do. No, we all need to step it up.”

“It starts with everybody,” McGrady said. “I understand what he was saying and I think if he had a chance to word it again he would have said it in a different way. It starts with Rafer (Alston), myself, Yao (Ming). It starts with all of us. You don’t just call one guy out. I understand what he was saying, though.

“When things are not going well, everybody wants to say things they normally don’t say and that’s what’s happening now. We have to win and stop doing too much damn talking.”

HTown_TMac wrote:Whats wrong with what was said by both players? What they both were saying is true. If they take this serious, they have mental issues. Plus, even though Artest has been playing horrible, he is still looking for that contract.

Rockets coach Rick Adelman has been around long enough to know when a team is on the verge of falling apart, and he's worried about his team.

"I see things," Adelman said. "I've been doing this a long time. There's not too much that slides past me: body language, comments, whatever. Once you've seen it over and over and over again, you get a pretty good sense right off the bat. That’s why it's important as coaches we keep trying to talk to them about it. I think it's important as a team that individually they talk to each other about it.

"You're going to have times throughout the year you're going to have guys irritated or whatever. It's important it does not carry over and stay and fester. That's what I keep trying to tell them."