[whomario]

Must win for the Rockets tonight.

3 quotes that sum up my thoughts, fears and hopes :

Q: When the Rockets need a basket, why don't they pound the ball down low to Yao Ming, a great free-throw shooter who has a mismatch with whomever might be guarding him, instead of having Yao set picks 27 feet from the basket to set up unspeakably bad jumpers by Ron Artest?



A: I ... I don't know.

from a nice column by Simmons overall Bill Simmons: The Sports Guy answers key questions about the 2009 NBA playoffs - ESPN

Give him the ball.
Don't weigh the options. Don't worry about the double- or triple-team, don't get too clever for your own good.
Give it to the 7-foot-6 guy with enough brawn to cast a shadow over Shaq.

Tuesday's Game 5 loss to the Blazers was almost laughable. Twenty-six shots were taken by the Rockets before Yao got his first shot in the 88-77 loss, a missed turnaround hook with 6:19 to play in the second quarter. His first basket did not come until 2:37 remained in the first half.
Just to reiterate: Twenty-six times the Rockets determined it was better to have someone else take a shot before Yao got a turn. Yes, Przybilla was relentlessly fronting. But, uh, by late April, shouldn't you have figured out how to throw it over the top?
When Yao finally got the ball, when Brooks decided perhaps another 3-pointer wasn't in the team's best interest, he made seven of his next 10 shots, closing a respectable 7 of 12.

from NBC : Expert: Simple game plan — give Yao the dang ball - NBA- nbcsports.msnbc.com


and the big guy himself had this to say :

The Blazers have mostly defended Yao by putting either Joel Przybilla or Greg Oden in front of him and then double-teaming whenever he touches the ball. Yao found a way to score 24 points in Game 1 and 21 in Game 4, leaving the game plan for Game 6 fairly obvious -- at least to him.

"Get the ball inside. Get the ball inside. Get the ball inside," he said. "That's it."

Yao had grown tired of being reduced to a witness.

“I don’t know,” he said sarcastically when asked what went wrong in the 88-77 loss in Game 5. “I just went up and down on the court. I don’t know anything. I just ran baseline to baseline for seven or eight times. That’s it.

“I mean, I ran up and down. We didn’t organize well. We did not execute. We did not know what is the play. We don’t know what is called.”

And by "we" he means "they" . That´s the closest to calling out his teammates i´ve seen him. I honestly want them to just try it. Don´t care about 5 or 6 TOs by him, just throw him the ball whenever even remotely possible and then work from there and not start the game assuming you can´t get it to him like in Game 5...

Can´t wait ...