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Whats Happened

The fickle finger of blame has been pointing to injuries it seems like all of the Rockets have had trouble with this at some time in the season. But that's only part of the problem, as the Rockets are finally beginning to realize.

With the lines between the league's haves and have-nots blurred, the race for a playoff berth is wide open. And if the Rockets can somehow get their collective act together, they might just find themselves playing in the postseason.

The Rockets' problems have been many, but mostly they can be narrowed down to two things -- defense (or lack thereof) and crunch-time execution (or lack thereof).

As for defense, over the course of their losing streak, opponents have shot 48 percent from the field, about five percentage points above the NBA average. Only the fact that nobody in the league can make a wide-open shot has kept that mark below 50 percent.

"Our defense sucks," said Maurice Taylor, to whom we'll defer since he is the undisputed expert when it comes to lousy defense. "You can't win like that. Defensively, we have to get together and show more heart. We're not playing very well, everyone knows it. We're not playing as a team, everyone knows that as well."

Yeah, that six-game losing streak would have to qualify as a clue in that regard. Their rotations, always one of the team's strengths, have been poor this season. And the lack of a shot blocker inside has opposing point guards (and shooting guards, and small forwards. . .) penetrating at will. If they don't finish with a shot in the lane, they kick the ball out to wide-open guys on the perimeter.

"That's what we have to work on," Hakeem Olajuwon said. "We have to tighten up our defense, help each other. We can't give up the easy basket. We want to win. The reality is the other teams are better. The other teams are doing the little things. It shows in their records."

Because of that, the Rockets had themselves a real, live, sit-down team meeting Thursday, hoping to iron out the many kinks they have developed over the past couple of weeks.

"What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room, but we haven't been playing good defense,"Matt Bullard said. "The teams that are beating us have been shooting 48 percent. That's too high.

"We're not frustrated. We're very confident. We're very upbeat, very positive. We're still on-target for our goals. Every team is going to have some rough parts in the season."

And this constitutes a "rough part" of this season for the Rockets.

"I feel we're a lot better than this," Taylor said. "We want to make the playoffs, we feel we're a playoff team. Also, we don't feel like we have to settle for the seventh or eight spot in the playoffs. We feel like we're better (than we've played lately) and we feel we're capable of beating some of the better teams in the league."

Still, they have to learn to execute down the stretch.

As mentioned in this space last week, the Rockets still have not established a go-to player down the stretch. Because of that, their end-of-game execution sometimes makes a food fight seem orderly by comparison.

"We can do it (execute in crunch time)," Olajuwon said. "When we do it, it looks great. Sometimes we take for granted that we can beat this team. And when we play the real quality clubs, we execute all the time. I remember watching Chicago (during the championship years).

"They could be up 30 points on somebody and play even harder, with the same intensity. Championship teams have this quality. It is the way they play. That is doing the right things every time. It's doing it every time.

"Like Utah. You have to beat them because they will use their system and will not beat themselves. There's no other way around it. Are you committed to the team? That's the team that wins championships."

Some things worth mentioning

Walt "the Wizard" Williams has been playing like a Washington Wizard -- poorly. Williams, the alleged "shooting" forward, has had back-to-back games of 1-for-7 and 1-for-6 shooting and has made just 18 of his last 67 shots, a whopping 26.9 percent. He has managed to shoot a couple of ticks better from the arc (9-for-29, 31 percent), but Williams, who has averaged 6.9 points over those nine games, has been a victim of the Rockets' static, isolation-heavy offense. He also poses no threat at all Defenseively.

Isnt it odd that Steve Francis leads the team in rebounds over teh 6'9 Maurice Taylor theirs not doubt in my mind that i like haveing this guy on my team but he hasnt really lived up to any kind of hype. He cant play defense althou nobody ever said he could.

Steve Francis just isnt takeing control over ball games.But lets give him credit he leads the team in almost every category. Theres been a recent switch moveing him to off gaurd and letting Noris as the starting point gaurd. Hopefully this will let him exploit his offensive talent and will allow him many more shot attempts. This is almost exactly what happened to Allen Iverson a few years back. Lets just see how long this will last.

Shandon Anderson this is just a sad story all together. The man has not done almost anything. Granted hes one of the Rockets better Defenders hes waisted space on the court when it comes to offense. Its like he's scared to get off any shot attemps at all. Most of his points comes off fast breaks.

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