Pacers Bench: Lavoy Allen + 14 Rakeem Christmas + 19 Rodney Stuckey + 21 Monta Mother ****ing Ellis +24 Glenn Robinson III - 3 Rockets Bench: Harrell -8 Dekker -9 Nene -13 Gordon -24 Williams -13 Our bench is supposed to be our strong suit and yet the Pacers exposed it fairly quickly. Our starting unit that built the 17 point lead in the opening minutes didn't get enough time on the floor together during the later stages, imo. I hope MDA figures this out. It seems like Nate McMillan made the necessary adjustments and MDA couldn't counter it. I don't appreciate how MDA blames the players for "not playing hard" that's a Kevin McHale move and it's a cop out. He needs to make adjustments and he needs to instill confidence in the players about what he's doing and why he's doing it, and tonight he didn't do that.
Defense and rebounding were god awful, our bench doesn't have capable interior defenders or rebounders and that's where I think our defense crashes, even though we didn't just give up a LOT of paint points, but a damaging amount of outside jumpers too. It was a night and day difference when Capela was on and off the court when it came to rim protection. Play after play we gave up - wide open layups - wide open 3's - multiple second chance points all night with the exception of Capela trying to do his best when he was is Blew two 15 point leads as well, just a really bad game exposing our flaws, similar to the Twolves game which was the same exact game, only difference was we where nailing all of our 3's Saturday and tonight we bricked them. Great teams have to play defense, have to rebound, we can't expect to be serious about winning if we rely solely on offense.
Too much confidence in our bench I think. MDA still needs to do his job, though. Because as he said "They don't give championships for guys who just show up". He needs to show up too and stop blaming the players or else he's going to be the next Kevin McFail. Time to whip it out and tonight the Pacers measured out much longer than the Rockets on the dick scale.
No one saw this coming. Certainly not after when "We have the best bench!" & "Our bench can make the playoffs" threads were created.
Damnit, man. Between you and CK Johnson I get Walter bombed to no end and the images are almost permanently engraved into my head. I love Walter, don't get me wrong but fkn A man tha dude needs some peace and quiet every now and then. I would like to go to bed withing the next 10 hours or so.
Yesterday turned into to and we still have the same problem. We need a player add to this team. Christmas happened.
The bench is designed to make a bunch of threes plus dekker do sturdy energy stuff. If Gordon shoots like crap the bench will play poorly.
The bench has played well this year, so I'm not too alarmed about one game. But, the shooting was just horrible tonight by both the starters and the bench. Williams shot 5/10 from 3-pt range, but the rest of the team shot an abysmal 5/40.
It was more of a lack of execution from my perspective as we took way too many early shots that were poor shots.
Harden was the only negative starter at -9. I think there's an adjustment process with Lou. He looks great offensively but the defense has been pretty bad last two games
C'mon, what's the problem? I thought everyone was all happy that we were gonna "rain 3's..." blah blah blah... welp, 22% from the arc.... if yer gonna be a one trick pony... You want rebounding and defense? Sorry... that's not the 'company vision'... but let's all continue to hope that some guy that got waived will agree to take Les' money... since we haven't done anything to address rim protection or rebounding... and at the end of the season, everyone can get together and do a giant circle jerk on harden's stats.... lol! Sorry if that seems a bit harsh... but I wish this team would find some balance.... too often it's been either A) the Harden iso show or B) everyone chucking 3's.... and before people wanna start quoting our record or rank... regular season don't mean a thing... it's about being playoff ready...
