erudite23 wrote:I actually, literally, loled at that. Their interior defense has been significantly better WITHOUT him than with him, actually. In fact, after we beat Houston last year, I seem to remember everyone discounting that victory by saying that Yao was a huge liability defensively because he couldn't keep up with Boozer. Before these playoffs started, the reasoning was that now Booze wouldn't be able to run circles around Yao, and Deke would give him trouble, so it was going to be a whole different story.
The double talk is blowing my mind.
Bottom line, say what you want, the Jazz have the best road record in the league right now.
I never said that personally. I felt they would struggle without Yao(regardless of Boozer being a mismatch for him defensively) simply because they would lack a post player that can actually demand a double team as well as score(therefore taking pressure of T-Mac and providing more open shot opportunities for the rest of the scrubs).
And stats might "prove" me wrong on the Rockets interior defense being better without Yao(do they? I'm curious about that) but from what I've seen it's the opposite. Dikembe is not a better defender than Yao, he's a better shotblocker and a slightly better rebounder perhaps, but not a better defender(unless we're talking specifically about guarding Boozer in which case that could be true).
I seem to recall seeing many-a-game of us giving up easy layup after layup after Yao went down, but then again I do live in Imagination Land.
