And so far, they have been horrific. What interviewer lets him off on that awful lie of them all doing great? I legitimately cannot believe he thinks Carter-Williams is anything but a scrub who shouldn't be on a roster. Anthony and Ennis haven't had good seasons in the entire Warrior era.
"Yeah, my boss didn't want to pay all that luxury tax. That's why we let them go." Is that what you thought Morey should have said? I don't think that would have sat well with Tilman. IIRC per a BimaThug tweet when Ariza was signed the Rockets would have paid $70 million if they matched Ariza's $15 million deal, thanks to the taxes.
Knight is damaged goods he may never see the court again. They don’t even have a time table for the time line. Put him out of your thoughts and move forward.
Ariza plays AD pretty well defensively. Ariza was the Rockets best defender on AD. Luc is also a good post defender. That's why switching defense was so good.
Morey is not a liar. If he doesn't believe it's true he won't say it in interviews. If Morey thinks Melo, MCW and Ennis will be good for the Rockets, I believe him. Doubt is creeping in after game 1 though.
Houston has always primarily guarded AD with a Center or PF. Even then, with all the pick n' roll that is played, NO can force a switch anytime that they like.(Just as the Rockets do). Last season, Davis shot 50% in the 3 games that he played vs the Rockets. Nobody shut him down. Here's Davis' video highlights from those 3 games. Take a look at who's primarily guarding him. It's Capela and Tucker. You'll see more of Anderson guarding him than you will Ariza. 3/17 http://www.nba.com/games/20180317/HOUNOP?ss=watch#/video 3/24 http://www.nba.com/games/20180324/NOPHOU?ss=watch#/video 1/26 http://www.nba.com/games/20180126/HOUNOP#/video We didn't stop Davis in any of the games that we played last year. Ariza wasn't the guy guarding him but it wouldn't have mattered. Nobody in the entire league stops Anthony Davis. Rockets defense isn't about 1-on-1 defense. They rely on rotations and help defense. Opening night, the rotations sucked and we were fearful to help because Mirotic couldn't miss.
I just found a really cool feature of NBA.Com's box scores. You can actually see who guarded each player on every possession. Here's the breakdown of Davis' 3 games vs Hou last year and this year's season opener. 3/17 - Davis was on the floor for 66 offensive possessions. Guarded by Ariza 8 times. Tucker 25, LMM 11, Capela 10 https://stats.nba.com/game/0021701036/matchups/?OFF_PLAYER_ID=203076&DEF_PLAYER_ID= 3/24 - Davis was on the floor for 66 offensive possessions. Guarded by Ariza 8 times. Capela 32, Anderson 8 https://stats.nba.com/game/0021701091/matchups/?OFF_PLAYER_ID=203076&DEF_PLAYER_ID= 1/26 - Davis was on the floor for 78 offensive possessions. Guarded by Ariza 5 times. Capela 24, Harden 15, Tucker 15 and Anderson 16 https://stats.nba.com/game/0021700720/matchups/?OFF_PLAYER_ID=203076&DEF_PLAYER_ID= In all last season, AD was on the floor for 210 offensive possesions and Ariza was guarding him on a total of 21 of those possessions. If you're curious about who covered Davis on Wednesday night's opener, here's the breakdown. Anthony was on the floor for 84 possessions. Guarded by Capela 35, Tucker 23, Ennis 4, Anthony 3 As you can see, we've primarily guarded AD with Capela or a PF. Ariza didn't guard him much and Ennis didn't guard him much on Wednesday.
Yea AD going off is usually not a problem, let him get his gaudy numbers, we usually dont let it translate to wins. Its the Mirotoic, EM, Payton, Mirotic, and Randle all went off on us and we could stop them.
An interesting stat from the opener is that Ennis was on the floor for 53 defensive possessions and the man that he was guarding only attempted 6 shots. https://stats.nba.com/game/0021800009/matchups/?OFF_PLAYER_ID=&DEF_PLAYER_ID=203516 In comparision, Harden played 69 defensive possessions and his man took 16 shots. Anthony played 58 possessions and his man took 16 shots.
I think both Harden and Melo both have problems off ball. Cause I believe holistically while Melo was on the floor our defense was garbo, feel free to correct me though.
You did a lot of work to say Capela gets lit up by AD all the time. Capela is the primary defender because he and AD play center. Ariza plays AD pretty well when Rockets go small (I think the stats you gave show that). Nobody is shutting down AD, I'm just saying Ariza defended AD better than anyone on the team when he gets the chance.
Curious how accurate this is at assigning to the right player. For example, if the team runs an action that gets Randle open in the post for a dunk are they assigning it to the last guy who guarded him or to the guy who should have rotated?
The obvious answer would be that last guy that guarded him as there's no way to determine who should have rotated without knowing every team's defensive scheme.