Definitely have to give the Pels some credit It is not like we blew them out and swept them last season They were a playoff team Randle probably works better than boogie for them Rocket River
I learned AD is on a mission. He's not playing around or waiting around for help anymore. He wants MVP. 2 upsetting things @Will mentioned. Melo trying to play but defense, but he just cant, it's not part of his skillset. And MCW trying to take good shots within the offense, but he just cant, it's not part of his skillset. That's troubling. Also, Capela looks out of shape.
I don't disagree with this at all, but then who's gonna get in Chris' face? Lackluster defensive effort from both of them last night.
Idk if it was the Pelicans' pace or what, but he looked gassed EARLY. Stamina was always one of the big question marks for him and it seemed like he made big strides last season in that department. I wasn't expecting to see him bent over w/ hands on knees less than 20 minutes into the game.
I learned that if Mirotic continues to shoot like that, they will win the championship. Good thing it is a long season and he probably played his best game of the season in game 1. In the first half our Defense was atrocious, in the second half I would say we played solid D, but Mirotic was unconscious. He hit some crazy shots with guys in his face and never let us get on our run.
Yep. And the eyeball test tells me he also lost muscle mass. I don't think he spent his offseason getting better.
Nah, I see 3 easy games of the 5. Regardless of a bad opening-night showing, we're not suddenly some mediocre team.
Defensive rebounding was an issue all preseason. Issues with defensive assignments I guess shouldn't be a surprise since we lost Bzdelik abruptly not too long ago and our Ariza/LMM replacements didn't do well enough. Capela was tired early. I'm not at all worried about our offense. But the real story to me is that NOP came out to kick our asses and win the game. Rockets came out to start the season. Pelicans were more focused and better prepared. I hold the seemingly contradictory 2 positions: 1) Last night's blowout loss was bad and not something we should dismiss 2) I believe in this team's ability to remedy the miscues from last night
You can panic or not depending on what you think the team goal is this season. If you want the Rockets to be one of the top 4 teams in the West and make a deep run in the playoffs, then I dont think you need to panic. They have two of the best guards in the NBA to carry them. If you want the Rockets to beat the Warriors in a 7 game series and win the championship, then yeah you should be panicking. This team has regressed from last year, and to believe otherwise would be delusional.
As far as I'm concerned it's not about what I learned, or we learned... it's about what they learned. Hopefully, its something to do with effort on the defensive end.
I'll make no definitive statements until we've played 10 games but...You can't play SFs at Center and expect to get away with it against actual centers and bigs and a team that is smart enough to exploit that. From what I saw, their bigs feasted, which is to be expected when Clint plays 26 mins and no other big plays. This is not going to work defensively. IF we continue to do this smart teams will continue to exploit our switching defense and destroy us in the paint so consistently that we'd have to shoot amazing from 3 to make up for it. I mean look, the Pelicans shot over 50% from the field last night. There's a reason we have bigs in the NBA, we're not going to revolutionize the game by ignoring that, we're just going to find out that...there's a reason 6'9 and above guys get paid to be in the NBA.
Little changes can make big difference, and chemistry counts. The team still makes sense on paper, but when people were questioning swapping Ariza and Luc for Ennis and Melo, this is exactly the reason why. There's value to knowing the system, buying into the system, believing in the system and fitting the system to a t. I am/was ok with losing those guys. I still question the replacements. I barely knew who Ennis was, and have never been in favor of Melo. Regarding Melo, we've already had a lot of buzz about his role. Him accepting the 6th man role. The starting lineup press release that included the 6th man role, etc. Meanwhile, the team's ACTUAL 6th man, EG, is on the trade block, is now the 7th man for some reason. All you need to know about Melo is the very first thing he did in the game. Which was step 1 foot inside the three point line and take a contested jumper - which he luckily made. He is who he is and what he is. He'll have some good games. The other thing you saw was a big speed and athleticism difference. And that's something they'll have to fight all season. CP3 and Harden dominate in their own ways, but not be being athletic. PJ Tucker fits his role, but not by being athletic. This is all relative to the NBA. Capela is very athletic, but was just off. Melo is not athletic. EG is a year older. MCW isn't a super quick twitch athlete. Gerald Green is a great athlete, but at 33 uses it selectively. The Rockets are something like the 5th oldest team, and a team like Dallas which is near the oldest, has outliers like Dirk. Veteran experience is great, but there's a danger of going overboard. Rockets had been a team with pace rankings of 5th, 2nd, 7th, 3rd in 2013-2017, then dropped to 13th last year and it seems like will drop again this year. Again, that can be ok... it certainly worked out fine last year... cause as their pace slowed down, their defense was way better. The danger this year is that their pace will get worse and the defense will get worse, so less opportunity to outscore opponents (and even less if your offense is less efficient, as its almost guaranteed to be given how historically amazing they were last year). Finally, we can look to the opponent. Also, I'll look to style overall. I wonder if the rest of the league catches up more to the Rockets style. The Hornets/Bucks both shot 34+ threes in their game. It's obviously super super early, but already the 3PA average by team is up over last year. And more than that, the Rockets have never been "great" % wise. They've just used math better than others. And as more DM subordinates move across the league, and more analytics guys in general move across the league, won't more and more teams will move more and more towards reducing the % of mid-range shots?? And can the Rockets use "math" any more than they have - can they exploit it any more? It's one game, but these are some of my take-aways...
Agree with a lot of this . We will see how it plays out . I'm concerned about our rebounding more than anything . Teams may not have the bigs to punish us through scoring , but will be able to hammer us on the glass . I think Morey has historically underrated athleticism and overrated skill a bit . Think about those Yao and Tmac teams and then our 08/09 team . Great vets , highly skilled , lack of elite athletes . All this being said , we might have actually gotten more athletic this year . Ariza and Luc are probably less athletic than MCW and Ennis .... but this year we don't have as much length. In camp people raved about the "athleticism" of ennis and MCW .,,, those guys are OK athletes . Maybe 2nd quartile . No where near the westbrooks , derozans , etc . you're also right about the league catching up , having an offseason to adjust and counteract our strategy . As the meta-game evolves we will have to adjust too . Hopefully (and one would think this is the case ) smart GM's and coaches like MDA and Morey have already thought this through . Frankly , I thought we were going to push the pace way more this year .... but we may not have the athleticism to do so . I love how well harden plays the distributor .... but he may need to take some notes from 12-15 harden and focus on attacking more and really going at it in transition .
Yeah MDA need to get young legs into games like this. We was getting beat by rim runs and back door cuts all game long.
