I was going to bring it up sooner; but the Rockets have won by an average of “ONLY” 17 (16.8) pts in their last 10 games.....”ONLY” by 18 (17.66) pts in their last 6 games. This team should be winning by 30 pts a game. I’m afraid some change needs to be made to shake things up. Fire D’Antoni, Fire D Morey or fire both D’Antoni and Morey. I’ve been thinking strongly about David Blatt lately. All of this resting in the 4th quarter is getting out of hand. These are suppose to be world class athletes and here they are resting. That’s valuable team that could be used on meshing with one another. Switching everything on defense is lazy and is a sure sign you have no fight. Trying to avoid contact and not fight thru screens. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Anyway, had to get all that out in the open. Of course I’m just razzing on all the ultra critical individuals of the Rockets. Those same Rockets that are: 1st in ORtg 8th in DRtg 10th in Pace 2nd in eFG% and 1st in the Western Conference, Baby Edited: take out the one loss (Raptors) in the last 10 games. 9 wins have been by an average of 20.4 pts Go Rockets!! Thank you very much!!
This was talked about on one of the Rockets podcasts. The Rockets have a few scripted plays that they run at the beginning of games in order to test the defense and see how they will respond to different actions.
no need to make a big deal out of 1 game also, CP3 is the one who will be deferring to Harden...Harden is the better player, it’s Harden’s team, and Harden has already been carrying the squad while CP3 missed 14 games these are 2 guys who are used to dominating the rock, it will take time...they will strike a better balance as the season goes on...last game was only their 4th regular season game together
This. And the 1st quarter drought was mainly because Capela was uncharacteristically missing shots in the post. Once Nene came in, we were rock solid. I don't think it had anything to do with ego's much less deferring to each other. At least I hope not!
Though I'm not sure about the psychoanalysis, I do agree that in Chris Paul's highlights, you consistently see Harden kind of waiting for the ball while Chris is busy pushing it. It's interesting that the guy guarding Harden doesn't leave him when he's so far removed from the play, but goes to show Harden's respect from all his opponents at all times. In the end, it's too early to tell, but at the same time, I do think Harden needs to develop a different mindset when playing with a pointguard/playmaker as good as cp3 ... and develop an alternative "score-first" mindset that is off-ball in nature, putting himself in positions to score off the catch versus waiting for someone to get him the ball to handle/dribble to make plays for himself & others. I've always believed that the ceiling of our team goes as far as Harden can learn this so that our duo can really work together at a high level on top of the rotations in place to have one of them out there at all times. If Harden can learn to think "score-first" in off-ball situations (not that he doesn't know how but that he hasn't done so for so long), then I can see him maintaining a 30pt 8-9 assists season. We need him to be able to pull out of the bag this type of play to beat the elite teams. So instead of him wavering & waiting for the ball to facilitate, if he runs to the corner, makes aggressive basket cuts, utilizes multiple off-ball screens, it'll probably surprise him how much easier it'll be to get off his stepbacks, dribble-drives, etc. I do think he's very capable of hitting more spotup 3s and increasing his percentage from there, while building momentum/confidence in games to hit the tougher shots. All these things that a lot of other good/great players do regularly, Harden already knows but I think is just so used to facilitating that it'll take a little while for him to adjust. I have full confidence that if Harden can couple this with his awesome playmaking (when cp3 is out), he'll take his game to yet another level.
lol people were upset that I called this out in the game thread, but yes Harden looked kinda selfish the last game. The fact that we blew them out doesn't change the fact that Harden needs to adopt a different mindset when he's playing with CP3. Just accept that CP3 is a better ball-handler/play-maker.
Blowout win last night. Great Thanksgiving day meal. Then I login to clutchfans and read this bullsh!t. Smh
It's funny, but I was actually presently surprised with how much Paul had the ball. I didn't think it would be this early into the season that Harden wasn't walking the ball up every possession. You cannot just force Harden to play a different way after it was a necessity for the past 5 seasons that he pound the rock every single possession for us to have a chance. Give it time and it will come even more than what it is now.
