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Tuesday January 27, 2009 5:34 AM

Rockets Sing Fourth Quarter Blues Once Again

Mistakes down the stretch result in 104-98 loss to New York

Jason Friedman
Rockets.com Staff Writer

New York - The symptoms are all too familiar: A stagnant offense, bogged down by too much dribbling and not enough passing or movement. Then there are the defensive lapses, leading to easy layups and wide-open jumpers. The end result: Fourth quarter meltdowns which, more often than not, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

It’s a problem which has plagued the Rockets all season and, though they know all the telltale signs of their affliction, they clearly still have a significant amount of work to do when it comes to finding a cure.

That much was evident Monday night as Houston allowed a 9-point fourth quarter lead to slip away against the New York Knicks during a disheartening 104-98 defeat. The final frame featured all the aforementioned maladies, as the Rockets got outscored 24-9 during the last 7:59 of the game, primarily due to the disappearance of anything resembling real ball movement or team play on the offensive end.

“We didn’t play team ball,” said a discouraged Rafer Alston after the game. “We were very selfish tonight. They were able to capitalize on our selfishness. We have to decide whether we’re going to play one-on-one or we’re going to pass the ball to each other and play team ball.

"Not playing with energy on both ends, being lazy, not running up and down the court, not sharing the basketball, not setting solid screens, it's just selfishness."

Undoubtedly, part of the problem for the Rockets was the absence of All-Star center Yao Ming, who missed his second straight game with a bruised right knee. But Houston had more issues than merely missing its man in the middle. The Rockets were far too reliant on the three-point shot, hoisting a whopping 33 attempts from downtown; seven, alone, in the final two minutes (all misses).

“You have to attack and you have to be in an aggressive mode,” said Coach Rick Adelman. “We didn’t do it. We didn’t attack them at all. Even when we were five, six down in the waning seconds you don’t need a three, you need a basket. It’s a two-possession game and we settled for the three. We didn’t attack the basket. That’s the way it went all night long.”

Houston’s fourth quarter execution stood in stark contrast to the crisp, free-slowing offense the Rockets displayed during their most recent homestand. Such an unfortunate interruption of that chemistry isn’t surprising given the absence of Yao and the still in progress re-integration of Tracy McGrady and Ron Artest. Nonethless, the Rockets know it’s an issue which must be solved if they’re to put their fourth quarter blues behind them once and for all.

“We just went back to isolation and that’s going to happen,” explained Brent Barry, while dissecting Houston's struggles down the stretch Monday night. “We have no quick fixes for getting Ron and Tracy back into the game, and back into the way we need to play. It’s going to take some time. It’s the second game they’ve played, it was a back-to-back situation and when you start to get fatigued – whether it’s physical or mental – you start going back to the things that you know. And we have to move on from that or else we’re going to find ourselves talking about the same things we talked about earlier on in the season.

“It’s trying to break old habits and embrace the offense for what it is. It’s a passing, cutting offense. There has to be a buy-in mentality that this is the way we’re going to play and this is the way we’re going to be a better basketball team. If we don’t do that we’ll see the inconsistencies we saw the first part of the season. It’s not really rocket science. We just need to buy in and do the things that we talk about and work on in practice.”

And 1’s: Yao Ming was held out of Monday’s contest due to precautionary reasons, but is expected to be available Wednesday night when the Rockets return home to play Philadelphia… Aaron Brooks was on the wrong end of a scary play in the first quarter when Knicks’ rookie Danilo Gallinari drove to the hoop and kneed Brooks right in the mouth on his way to the basket. Brooks’ front tooth was pushed back upon impact and had to be positioned back in place, though he did not lose it. The Rockets second-year point guard says he expects to have the tooth re-examined by a specialist in the very near future.

QUOTES

Rick Adelman

On tonight’s game:

“We didn’t play well as a team. We didn’t move the ball. We didn’t defend. We didn’t do enough to win the game.

“We can’t run if we don’t move. We have to move better as a team. We didn’t do it tonight at all. And somehow we have to figure it out. We said it wasn’t going to be easy and we played into their hands tonight.”

“They competed. One kid hit the three to put them ahead. The other team always has something to do with it but I’m just disappointed with our effort.”

Shane Battier

I don’t know what to attribute it to, we just didn’t play with the offensive energy we’ve had the last few weeks. The formula is simple for us: When we play with energy on both ends, we’re a pretty good team. When we don’t we struggle to win games.

With Ron, Tracy and Yao, they’re so talented individually, you want to put them in positions where they can use their skills and their talent. But at the same time you have to do that within a team concept and it’s a fine balance. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a lot of practice time to work on different things, different sets to put them in positions where they can be most effective within the framework of our offense.

Luis Scola

It’s frustrating. You all know it’s frustrating. You’ve been asking the same question and we’ve answered with the same answers. It’s not the way we want to play and it’s not where we want to go. But it’s been tough. People are coming and going from the lineup and it’s been tough. We’re not able to get the identity we want to have. So we just have to keep working hard. That’s the only way you get through these bad losses is just by working hard.

Rafer Alston

On the team’s injuries:

“It’s tough. One day you have this guy, the next time you have another. The offense changes; the game plan changes. But one thing that shouldn’t change is playing hard, playing together and playing with a passion.”

On the Knicks:

“They’re good. They’ve been solid all year. With some more pieces, they’ll be a tough team. But, they’re playing hard, they’re playing intensely and they’re playing energetic basketball. They were the better team tonight.”

Tracy McGrady

On the team taking a lot of threes in tonight’s game:

“Well, I think you have so many talented guys that can score the ball. I just feel like you can take over the game. And that’s pretty much what’s happening.”

On coming back from his injury:

“(When I return from injury) you have to play like you never left. With me, that’s how I have to go from this point on. That’s what I have to put my body through, that’s why I took a couple of weeks off and trained extremely hard. When I came back I made the commitment that every game from this point on, I would play hard. I felt great; my wind felt great, my legs felt great. Everything felt good”

On the different defenses he faced tonight:

“We’ll I’ve been in this league a lot of years and I’ve seen a lot of defenses, faced a lot of great defenders. They put some size on me; put some length on me and mixed it up. As a scorer you’ve got to counter whatever they throw at you. If they’ve got a small on you, you’ve got to go to the basket and post up. My thing was, every time they put a small on me I didn’t want to be that aggressive and try to score. I wanted to make plays, you’ve got to mix it up. That’s what I tried to do and (create) some shots for our guys.”

(on how much the lack of continuity plays into Houston’s issues): When you don’t have 7-6 down in the post to throw the ball into and make our job a lot easier, then you’ve got myself and Ron out there trying to make plays for everybody else. We’ve got a lot of perimeter guys out there trying to score the ball and sometime you live and die by jumpers and tonight we died by them because we shot a lot of them. I mean, they were wide open, but we just didn’t make them.

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