Mgmt Discussed a System Change - More Ball Movement/Less Iso

You can highlight his bad games, but his percentage from deep during that entire stretch is 35.5%. That's not good, but it's within one point of Gerald Green's, EGo's, and Ariza's career percentages with Houston. You can highlight stinker games for any of our shooters and the distribution would look similar.

 

You can accept Anderson's defensive liability when he is shooting 40%+ …. You cant when he's shooting below league average and that's exactly what happened during that stretch.

MDA accepted it until he couldn't …. that's when Anderson got benched.

Anderson shooting 40+plus next to Harden , that team was really good offensively , they were blowing everyone out by 20.
That was a big part of why Capela was so effective in the pick and roll. You just couldn't cheat off of anyone ….

When Anderson went bad …. it screwed up the entire offensive philosophy.

Same thing happened in the playoffs this year …. 3 point shooting went south , inside game went south , whole offense went south.
They got great looks and missed them.

Put better shooters around Harden …. and the result changes. There is no defense that can stop him from getting to the rim OR setting up someone else for an open look.

 

Man, this guy is attempting to bring down James Harden all by himself.

 

Fun to watch; yet where are they (actually) going?

 

ya think that might be worth considering? lol

 

More yak, yak, yak, nonsense.

 

Would be all for it, but such talk requires a coaching change to manifest

 

Exactly my point.

 

Shouldn't it be the coaching staff and not the management discussing this?

 

Well ISO is the result of, and cure for, switching defenses like GSW. Almost every play we run starts with a high PnR. If Harden's man fights over the screen then we go from there, just like every other team in the NBA. I'm not saying James doesn't occasionally go 1 on 1 with his Man, but most of the time ISOs come from the other team switching.

I'm all about some Adelman-type tweaks to get easy buckets when the other team zones in on Harden. PJ Tucker running some Shane Battier type cuts and post ups ftw.

 

No because Morey is the one behind our isolation heavy offense.

D’Antoni’s offense is more spread screen and roll or screen and pop. The pace is very high and his Suns teams finished as one of the top teams in assists yearly. So it’s not the coaching staff.

Austin Rivers even said that Harden plays the way the organization is telling him to play.

 

The Harden isolation offense is still the best producing offense.

 

D'Antoni is actually going to try coaching next year?!?

 

The way I see it, the ball had plenty of movement, between Harden's hands and the floor.

 

That's the bottom line.

You can run some plays for that 12 minutes he's sitting on the bench …. other than that , as ugly as it is to watch , its the most efficient way to play.

 

I've been calling for more ball movement ever since Lin was here. But Harden didn't like that.

 

Fair enough, I appreciate the objective stats breakdown. However, there is a bit of "noise" in these numbers, in particular it ignores strength of opponent. Each of the last two post season we've faced a nearly fully healthy Jazz and Golden State, who are both top defensive teams. 4 out of the 5 series we've played were against the best 3-5 teams defensively. That's going to influence your stats greatly.

In the past two seasons, the Warriors have got to play the Clippers, Cavs (lol defense), and two mediocre defensive teams Pelicans/Blazers. So half of their opponents ranged from average to horrible as far as DRtg.

Whereas the Rockets played 80% of their series against top defensive teams. Meanwhile a lot of the other teams that posted higher ORtg played in series were both teams were bad defensively, so their offense was inflated accordingly. Or they simply had an easier ride on offense.

I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement in the playoffs, and that these stats mean nothing, but adjusting for difficulty of opponent the Rockets offense appears a lot better than we think. Maybe adding a bit of variation could help, but I wouldn't rely on these somewhat rudimentary numbers as empirical evidence that the Rockets offense has been overly disappointing in the playoffs.

 

Most of what he says is true but he did not need to use the bold headline 'Is it fixable?'

CP3 is stuck in Houston with his contract. And he prolly knows he ain't a magnet no more.

The real question is : Will MDA hold players accountable if they revert back to the ISO?