Game Thread: Blazers at Your Houston Rockets - 10/31/09

[Iggyemu]

Couple of things I noticed. We are gonna be tough to beat at home for anyone. I like Ariza. Consistency will be key for him but he is keeping it simple in terms of offense. If he is open he is taking the 3. If he isn't he is driving to the hoop and just trying to score not worrying about the foul. He is running the floor and is extremely good in the open court. He is a good defender but not as good as Battier...maybe he should have been on Roy.

Brooks bounced back nicely. But he still continues to strike me as a guy thats only good when his 3 point shot is falling. I would really like to see him penetrate more to create b/c at his size it is harder for him to finish and I imagine thats why he rather shoot it. We were a lot better on the boards. We have to rebound like we did...straight up send everyone to the boards. We are too small not too.

I think one thing thats extremely important for our success and for us to hold on until McGrady returns is that we have to get easy baskets. We did that against the Blazers and Warriors in both our wins. We can't set up in half court..we don't have the personnel to do it consistently.

Utah will be tough tonight b/c of the PG match up. But outside of PG we match up a lot better with em now without Yao. And I think we'll find that we match up a lot better with most teams without Yao.

[Mr. E]

Nice insight, Iggyemu. I share that concern about Brooks' 3-point shooting and the effect on his game, but I'm getting the feeling that he's intentionally not driving to create his own shot because he's trying to play the traditional PG role. I commend him for that, but he needs to take advantage of his speed at times during the game, kind of like how Lowry does when he attacks the basket.

Everyone has been talking about how bad it was going to be for Houston without Yao & McGrady, but I think that you're right in that we will match up better against certain teams without them. We've now seen that Hayes, in extended minutes, is more than capable of giving bigger guys fits, leading to opportunities for Scola or Landry (hopefully both) to step up in the paint.

By the way - who's creating tonight's game thread? I'm on an iPhone so posting isn't the easiest thing!