PG: Great all round effort for the WIN.. 101-88

[Buyaka]

I usually agree that Bargs defensive awareness and help defense needs a lot of work, but today he played a lot better on D and rebounding in traffic. For the record both Bosh and Barney got muscled by Scola, Hayes and Landy at times. If Barney is able to produce today's D and hustle on a consistent manner, I'll take it. I did like his 3 pump fake a drives in row though. JT needs to also run plays for him.

[Courtside]

For all those who knock Bargnani's D, consider for a minute what he's asked to do and what team we're up against. Landry (a backup) and Scola are not exactly premier players and last time around, Houston's guard play totally killed us. It seemed to me that the game plan called for Bargs to help on penetrating guards, which he did fairly well. When you help, someone becomes open and it's up to someone else to help on that man. I concede that when the guy is already in the paint it's probably too late to get to him, but the strategy seemed to work fairly well today.

...and about that whole thing of Triano saying to Bosh "you've got Landry". Did anyone notice that CB was scored on by Landry twice in a row, the second time after giving up an offensive rebound? No one is scared of Bosh defensively and they go right at him, while at least with Bargs they usually try to go around him, or shoots hooks and fadeaways.

I do think that the defense needs to ask less from our bigs help wise when it's a guard they're helping on. Yes, they should recover to contest a shot if a guard is penetrating for a shot, but we shouldn't be helping, hedging or switching as much. Good defensive bigs like Howard, Shaq, Dampier,Okafor, etc... don't hav to guard as far from the basket as Bargnani typically has to, so naturally he's going to have a hard time protecting the basket itself a lot of the time.

I think with the injury to Calderon and insertion of Jack at PG, we'll see a bit better protection outside and better defense inside from both Bosh and Bargs. They've had to help way too much to be effective at protecting the basket. Watch the next few games and how magically Bargnani won't seem to be the liability that many claim.

[Tofubeque]

Anyone notice the Rockets players yucking it up on the floor or on the bench while they were losing? Me neither. Something to keep in mind for those who excuse the Raps for having fun when they lose.

On the other hand, Belinelli looked downright depressed on our bench while we were winning.