Mike D'Antoni: Rockets can be a lot better on offense

Music to the ear. The one huge complaint for years, and still somewhat this year, is the last 5-6 mins. Glad he see it and think it can be improved.

 

First of all, please stop the crap about "all of this with only one star player on the floor", the Rockets are +10 of offense efficiency this season and also +14 when Harden was on the bench. Nobody is denying he is the best player in this team but people keep saying we have scrubs around him is just laughable.

Secondly, you should not go to bed too early and missed the whole second half last night.

 

#1 Please tell me who the second star player is on the Rockets? Please tell me where I said the rest of the Rockets are scrubs?

#2 We are talking about 40 games thus far this season, not half of a game...... the Rockets are 31-9 on the season, with a single star player, a new coach and without their starting center for a good amount of the Rockets recent success.

The Rockets are 9-1 in their last 10, and have gone 19-2 over the last 21 games.

So please answer the question....... how does your comment possibly apply?

 

First of all, I don't give a shlt about whether he will be MVP or not.

But being said that, when you want to talk about impact stats, this is the impact stats that make him above the others.

Every Rockets rotation player this year are playing better than the previous year(s) in their careers, why?

This is the impact you need to see, and that's why the NBA beat guy from Washington post polled about 100 players and coaches, and 68 of them selected Harden as the MVP and Westbrook only got 15 votes at this point.

 

The answer to your question is very simple : watch the game.

 

"One hundred percent," Harden said. "Different games, we see different defenses, guards guarding Ryan (Anderson) now, so we just have to figure it out. We're almost halfway through the season, and we're a fairly good team still. I'll get better. My turnovers will start dropping as I get familiar with what different defenses are doing.

Nice!

 

That is what's scary. We aren't even playing to our full potential. We'll have lapses here and there but we are able to close it out this time. We have yet to become a team that steps on their throat and keeps in there the entire game. When we get there...uh oh

 

So it is ok for him to say we have too many turnovers but if you bring it up here, the Harden White Knights go nutzoid!

DD

 

The funny part is that if MDA were an average poster on Clutchfans - he would get so flamed! LOL!
Obviously, he sees the kinks in the armor that will get exploited by teams in the playoffs and wants to correct these shortcomings - good for him!
Unfortunately, the majority of posters want to point at the record, say everything is great and ignore opportunities for improvement... smh...
It's like last year, when any criticism of Harden was met by a barrage of butthurt 'knowledgeable' posters throwing up a bunch of stats and insisting that Harden was MVP caliber, any criticism was unjustified and no improvement was needed... well look how he's raised his game THIS year from last... so imo all those excuse makers last year were wrong!
Flash forward to this year... we're doing great - but there's always room for improvement - especially prior to the playoffs!
Kudos to MDA (who I was not in favor of hiring) for continuing to push for improvement - despite present successes!

 

There are definitely people on here who White Knight for Harden, but I think most of us agree his turnovers are an issue. The White Knighting is a response to people who essentially trash Harden because of the turnovers instead of saying it's a chink in the armor. I fully accept his turnovers as a problem but that doesn't make him fatally flawed.

 

His turnovers have been increasing a bit since Nov tho but not much

TO/g

Oct (3 gams): 7.67
Nov: 5.27
Dec: 5.88
Jan (5 games): 6.4

 

We need a better shooter to take up Sewer's minutes

 

Part of the spike from my naked eyes appeared to be not knowing how to feed Harrell the ball at first. No scientific data to back this up, but it seemed like he had issues with that early on.

 

Oh the guy that stole your girl? What did he do to you dude? Why you hate him so hard?

Was she hot?

 

Harden's turnovers are increasing and his defensive/impact stats are falling off by each passing week. But you a hater if u point this out tho.

 

stop with this inane drivel.

 

I could see the potential of adding new offensive schemes affecting his turnovers. Not an excuse, obviously, but hopefully as it becomes more familiar he can cut down on them. The lazy passes are the ones that irk me.

 

Harden is not a better pure passer than Chris Paul.

But at the same time, Paul was never a better offensive threat than Harden even at the same age.

You just don't get everything at the same time, no one is perfect.

Harden did have some bad TOVs like those long full court passes, once it will find the target, those were easy 2s, once it won't, it will look bad. You just need to take the good with the bad. I really don't have much problem with that.

There are also TOVs when he fumble the balls doing crossover, going to the rim, try to draw a foul, ect. Again, I don't have problem with those, he probably average about 5-6 FTA at least every game when his defenders put the hand near him and no one in the league can create those 5-6 points as easy as he can. There is no guarantee that every trip to the rim will be a score, he is top 5 FG% in the league when going to the rim, sure I will take those TOVs.

The TOVs that really bug me are those passing behind the back or trying to be cute, or even like yesterday, he did some kind of crazy sh't jumping up and passing through his own leg to Anderson behind him (although thats not a TOV). Once a while this could be fun, but it actually is embarrassing when it became too casual and when you lost respect to your opponents and the game, sh't like last night will happen.

 

I think this basically boils down to being more consistent. Every game seems like a race to 120 points, and that includes the game against OKC the other night when we hadn't scored 10 points in the first 6 minutes. The offense is very explosive but we need to avoid those lulls in the playoffs.