http://www.nba.com/rockets/video/2013/11/22/ZOOM0004MOV-3049984 Former Rockets assistant coach and GM Carroll Dawson came to Rockets practice today and spent some time with Dwight Howard. Howard was asked about this by the media.
"guys have to know their limits" "the main thing is, late in the game you've gotta have go-to plays" hmm
He was talking about Harden there I believe. Right after that comment he expressed players tend to cruise at times. Harden tends to cruise on D most of the time.
Team gets comfortable with leads. How do you avoid (getting) comfortable? We have to play 4 consistent quarters. It can't be one or two or three. It has to be four. Guys have to know their limits and know that when they need a break to be humble enough to raise their hand, get somebody else in to play those minutes. A lot of times guys cruise. I've cruised a little bit sometimes wanting to stay out there longer. You can't do that if you want to be a great team. We all have to go there and go hard and play 48 minutes as hard as we can. Whether that's 20 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, we have to give it our all and trust the guy that comes off the bench is gonna give us the same effort and more. We all have to get to that level, where we trust each other, trust the guy that's gonna come in for us to come in with the same intensity. Once we get there, we'll be tough to beat. We have a big lead, that's when we turn up the pace, get out and run more and on D, you get more stops. For our team, we've had comfortable leads sometimes and we allow teams to get back into games by not playing D and just worrying about offense. We have to do a better job of that. We're a young team. We have to learn how to play with leads. It's all about sacrifice. You have to put 110% effort on defense. It's not easy. Defense is something that requires a lot of will and determination. Offense is the easiest part. Defense, you want to have to do it. Most teams or guys do it for maybe 10 seconds of the shot clock, the rest they're cruising. To be a good defensive team, we have to do it every possession. In the playoffs it will really matter. We don't want to wait until the playoffs to turn up the defense. We want to do it now. We're still in the learning process. I want to see us peak at the right time. No need for us to peak right now. If we're peaking come playoff time and playing our best brand of basketball going into the playoffs, that's the time where we'll be good. We're not gonna blow every team out. There's gonna be some dog fights. In the NBA, 20 points is nothing. The main thing is late in the games, we have to have go-to plays, plays we can execute every time down and get a good shot. Defensive end, we have to be consistent with our effort. Guards have to get into the guards and pressure them up the court and trust the bigs behind them. It's a total team effort. Every game will not be a blowout. We have to go out and play the right way. In the playoffs, the games slow down and you have to play at half-court and that's something we have to learn.
We have a very good team, time will tell if we learn to play D much better. But I like what I see. We normally get dusted in Dallas on a back to back!!
So true, so very,very true!!... <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_VrFV5r8cs0?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>....... ....... .......
Unfortunately, the best play currently is a pick and roll with Dwight. But Dwight is a liability at the end of the 4th. Dwight, make your free throws!
Are issues are: 1) Lack of any defensive gameplan 2) Lack of any offensive structure when forced to by the defense 3) Lack of a consistent rotation 4) Zero in-game adjustments This is more of a problem for the coaches to address.
Dwight's pretty mature in all his interviews. I do think it would be best if McHale would give Harden and Parsons a few less minutes and ask Harden to sustain the intensity on defense. Can't win with just five guys. It's so typical how posters (trugoy, landrysfan) take an interview like this and try to make the team look bad.
