Love the up tempo, run and gun, push at no cost, let it fly, and pick n roll me into a comma offense that the Rockets run. However, we all know we can't stop a caterpillar from turning into a butterfly with a gun. Posters are asking about making more moves to hopefully improve this team. There is only one move needed, play some D. James Harden that means you, please stop the 2013 AAU reach around from behind to try and stop someone. Just stay in front of your man and force them to shoot a contested jump shot. If they hit it fine, but letting your man drive around you and creating more fouls for Asik doesn't help! Jeremy Lin our favorite whipping boy, my man, PG's go by you like a Metro Park n Ride bus on the HOV! After 8 minutes of getting abused, in comes the stopper Patrick Beverly. By no means is Patrick a better overall player than Jeremy, however, his D is 3000% better. Try this Jlin, one (just one) hard foul on a guard trying to drive by you going to the bucket, they (PG's) will shoot jumpers for the rest of the night. I can't forget about No D Mo, dude is headed back down court before his man scores. David Lee would have went for 60 if TRob didn't accidently smack him in the knee. This isn't mother Russia, this is the NBA. The weakness of our starting guards and new power PF is killing the overall D By no means is this rant directed at Chandler, Beverly, or Asik. We need all 5 players on the court functioning as defensive stopper to win those tough games. Good contradicting opinions are appreciated.
A lot of it is off-ball miscommunication that will correct itself as the team gets more experienced. This miscommunication is one of the major reasons why our transition defence is terrible. Young players are rarely disciplined in this regard,and we will grow out of it.
Jeremy's D was better at the start of the year. Has dropped off as the season progressed and is right now pretty average. Harden's D is non-existent. DMo just hasn't adjusted defensively. Asik is flat-out and tired, but giving his best. Parsons has regressed defensively, but is consistently playing 40min and taking the best wing scorer every night. Small-ball line ups are bad rebounding-wise and defensively, and it more useful for short stretches than as a playing style. Delfino has been bad, but hard to blame him for giving up 4 inches and 30 pounds night-in night-out. 2Pat's positional defense was underrated.
It's really difficult to get young players to buy into playing hard on defense. It's why JVG kept playing his old ex-Knicks players. It's why when Yao went down and the Rockets went young, Adelman had them playing top-3 offense and bottom-10 defense. I don't think there's a short term answer to this. I mean, McHale can yell at them, but history generally indicate that this approach generally doesn't work. That usually coaches just give up and replace young players who play no defense with older, crappier veterans who don't drive coaches nuts.
Yes, I do bcuz film and the eye test do not lie. Everyone besides you knows that JLin's D isn't that proficient and Beverly is definitely the better defensive player. However, JLin is the better overall player. In order for the Rockets to win consistently though, JLin must become a better on the ball defender. Why, because in the playoffs all of the PG's are top tier.
The answer is "No, we can't". The only possible improvement in D this year will be Dmo and Trob getting a little better with more time. Any real improvement will not happen until next season, if it ever does.
I think we can if players decide to stay in front of their man and limit the dribble pentration that takes Asik out of position and allows offensive rebounds. Also, more toughness from D Mo and TRob on the defensive glass as PF's. TRob can leap out of the gym but doesn't have a thorough understanding of defensive rebounding. Also, the team could benefit from have at least 4 players rebounding instead of 3 taking off for the other end.
We have poor rotation and team defense. Our players get lost during transition D. Basically the defensive chemistry of this team is really poor. But then again, it's hard to expect a young team, filled with players that have never played with each other before, to perform stellar on D.
If you watched film at all, you'd see that Chandler still makes rookie mistakes on defense. He may be an excellent one-on-one defender, but he follows the ball on team defense, and, as a result, often loses his man for easy layups. You'd also see that Jeremy is no slouch on defense, but like Chandler he needs to improve his team defense.
God this is stupid. Where to begin? How about here: Our coach is ONLY a 3 time all-NBA FIRST TEAM defensive player. He just so happens to be a 3 time all-NBA second team defensive player too. Larry Bird was a renowned bad defender, go back and watch some Celtics games -- McHale had to check Dominique Wilkins all the time and MJ at times because he was considered the best defender on the team. He always drew the hardest assignment, but you probably guarded a tough guy one time in junior high, so it's about the same. Right keyboard warrior? You probably know more about defense than him too. He just got those accolades because he has long arms right? Just shut the **** up. You don't know a tenth of what that man knows about basketball. But your 5th grade girls in-house team probably is laying some wood down on the league right about now huh?
Much of the problem with Lin, Harden and Parsons is ball watching. The reason why PGs are driving past him isn't a result of his inability to stay in front of his man but more a result of his recovery time. With Harden and Parsons, they both ball watch until their man is completely out of their sights. I've seen too many times where all 3 of these guys have to run to the other side of the court to contest their man. This habit needs to be addressed and adjusted. That said, we have seen that Harden can play great man D. It just depends on when he's focused. His defense isn't completely lacking as many would have us believe. It just isn't consistent at the moment.
LOL, my man, there is not 1 poster on the site that will agree with you. Please pick someone else beside Chandler who consistently checks the #1 scorer on the other team from PG's - PF's. JLin needs to improve his man to man and team defensive skills. D Lillard, Tony Parker, Chris Paul, Curry, Westbrook etc... He starts getting murdered by these guys and u here that familiar buzzing sound as PBeverly checks in. I hope you also notice that JLin is stuck to the bench during crunch time if he's not scoring, because the coaching staff knows he's a liability down the stretch on D. Besides this isn't about Lin, it's about HardlyD, Linless D, and No D Mo.
Easy to say than done. Team defenses are not there due to players' laziness, team chemistry, inexperienced players, new players rotation, coaches' ability. Individually defense may be OK among some players. But we all knew the end result were losses even PB, Parsons or Asik in their best defense shape. We won mostly because we got more offensive points more than Rockets opponents. Usually not because Rockets played well defensively. What to do? It started from the coaches. By not playing the best players 40 mins each night and only playing team ball without endless ISOs will be a good start. working only on team defenses instead of individual defenses will be a next step. Defense accountability is another right step to do especially to all players instead of certain players.
