against the Rockets last night was glaring! It begins and ends with Outlaw on defense for me. For every great game he has offensively he has the exact same disaster blowing assignments on the defensive end. He was torched last night. IF you watch him he doesn't fight through the picks, and he plays two body lengths off of good to great shooters over and over again, and they make him pay for it!!! Nate takes out Batum who is cancelling out Artest and getting steals and dunks and almost single handedly cut the score to 7 and plops in "I DON'T HAVE A DEFENSIVE CLUE OUTLAW" and the Rockets are back to 15 ahead in under three minutes. I couldn't believe it!!! Outlaw has been on this NATE DEFENSIVE COACHED TEAM for years and is still being torched by every SF in the league nightly. I know Travis is clutch on offense at times, but he has to be to make up for his crappy defense. I for one am getting tired of Nate letting 15 point leads happen cause he doesn't want to stray from his set in stone rotations. Travis last night was a liabilty and Batum should have been left in while hot. Nate has shown time and time again he doesn't understand substitutions nor how to teach a team to play a shred of defense. Outlaw is a glaring result of a Nate coached team.
I didn't want to bring in the rest of the team on this rant. I think some nights the ball doesn't fall for ROY, LA and RUDY. That said they hit nothing, but still mananged to climb back in. A little defense by Mr. Outlaw might have helped out or allowing Batum to stay in might have won our team the game.
I assume you are talking about the first half? Because I only watched the last quarter and a half and I didn't see any Rockets lighting up anyone except for Yao underneath and two wild 3 pt shots by Artest. Is that what you are referring to?
I hear what you are saying and to some extent agree. It would be helpful if some of you analytical types (not me you understand) would go through a Tivoed game and chart the missed assignments and the time Outlaw is scored on due to weak defense. Chart also the points that he scores on the other end or that lead to scores. Seems to be the only way we can get a handle on just how valuable he really is to the team. I do think Nate would benefit the team by staying longer with the guy(s) that are playing well.
I wasn't paying much attention to Outlaw's defense (he was one of the bright spots on offense) but I did see a fantastic game from Batum last night. He's not going to play like this every time and we should have kept him in the game longer.
Agreed, but it just bothers me that the guy never puts the ball on the floor and just waits out in the corner. It's not his fault, Martell was doing the same thing and we've seen via blogs and friends that according to them, it is Nate McMillan who tells them to wait out there. It's just a shame that such athletic freaks are being relegated to taking jump shots rather than flying to the rim sometimes.
This was apparent to me last night watching Von Wafer run all over the court causing chaos. That would never happen in a Blazers uniform.
Thanks to Comcast I was unable to see much of the game last night. I was getting it via Slingbox from my grandson's TV but had a very poor feed and it was almost not watchable. Then to top it off his Comcast TV feed went out and so did my Slingbox feed. So I switched to justintv feed but that was poor quality and in spanish or chinise or some thing so my game viewing was very limited. On subject, Outlaw is not very safe at putting the ball on the floor. When he does the risk of a turnover is greatly heightened. it seems he is almost better to jus take the jump shot as it has a good chance of going in. Another thing, did I see a time there in the fourth quarter that we had Aldridge at center and Outlaw at PF and Batum at SF? If that was indeed what I saw and, I believe that we were coming back on the Rockets at that time. Looks like that could be a good lineup when Oden is not available. Take out one or the other of Batum or Outlaw when Joel comes back in.
You're overreacting. Who torched Outlaw last night? Who? And why get all over Outlaw? He had a block, a steal, and no turnovers. He also hit half his shots. Looking at the boxscore, I'm not sure who torched anyone on our team. We played pretty good D over the course of the game, but LMA just couldn't hit the wide open jumpers they were giving him. That and Frye's FTs cost us the game.
Yeah I had the game tevoed and man the postitioning was bad by Outlaw on D! Roy, LA, Joel and Blake could put an elbow or arm on their man, Travis would have to jump to get to his many many times. The cushion he gives his man is unreal and other teams know it and exploit it. Can't believe Nate is not screaming at Travis to get up on his man. Artest would have to put the ball on the court and so would players like Peja and Hedo, that's where Travis could use his athletic ways to steal the ball. Instead Outlaw begs great shooters to shoot and they do.
Watch tonight and see if Outlaw isn't giving away to much space on his man on every defensive stance?
Oh yea... check the boxscore of the last game we played against Dallas. Check out what Dirk did. Guess who was guarding him?
I do gotta say, Batum provides excellent defense over Trav. Also, watching Von Wafer last night proves to me that our coach, really doesn't get his players sometimes and doesn't coach to their strengths, it seems. Kingspeed, put your boner for trav aside. he plays garbage defense. Y is right, he doesn't really fight through picks; and when someone blows by him, I see him standing and watching a lot. Not trying to cause arguments, its just things I see, and notice.
