No but had nothing to do with # of games. 1 game is enough to identify identity and traits and so far we are who we thought we are. Best offense and worst defense. We know that you need to be top 15 defense to win a chip so this team(as currently constructed) identity and traits won't get it done. Team needs a spark to get identity and traits balanced. That said, I'd rather find out now then in the playoffs.
Harden hasn't looked sharp but, in defense of his appearance, if I was an NBA player I would come into the season looking a littler heavier. Why? Because I would spend the offseason doing more intense lifting with heavier weights, and I would be consuming more carbs, protein and fats in preparation for the long grind of the season. By design, I would get leaner, more agile and quicker as the season wore on. My intent would be to be in peak physical shape for late in the season and the playoffs--not to look good for week one. James has done exactly this for years, with guidance from people that have forgotten more about training and athletic performance than most of us will ever know.
Poll Needed but yes. Last year was worse and more discouraging than this year to start. That's not to take away with the lazy play that has been going on though.
My biggest concern, along with the obviously unacceptable defense, is that we have a lame duck coach who is acting like someone who knows he’s not long for his job and is just showing up for the paycheck. The organization set itself up for this mess by the way they handled the off-season. I think they will get better, but I see a lot of complacency at the moment.
You definitely don't fully know what a team really is until about a month into the season. At least that's my take. But i do think one can identify vulnerabilities in personnel or scheme pretty quickly. For example, i don't think one can explain away our dismal play on defense by saying it's too small of a sample size to know. We clearly have a problem there. But to get the full picture of what we are as a team certainly requires more than 6 games. Did House take another step or is he just off to a good start? Is there something wrong with Eric Gordon or is he just off to a bad start? I think questions like those will become clearer as we make our way through Nov.
No. Statistically, if there was high variance, more games would help settle things out. Further, you could argue you may see a regression to the mean IF what you were doing should work but the other team has outliers in performance. But what we have is a fundamental failure to play effective defense - consistently! - and this is not some statistical fluke. Could it improve with better defensive awareness and fundamentals? Sure. But that’s not a statistical question. currently, our defense SUCKS. This is not a statistical anomaly. You can say this with 100% certainty. If you watched yesterday’s game and thought that was just a fluke...
Lol. Some took a look at the crap roster, crap coach, crap defense etc, and could skip the whole “panic” thing. Anyone that had any actual expectation for this team to be anything better than average Is living in fantasy land.
This is a better illustration of what I was going to say in control-system-based terms. I was going to make a post about how perturbed systems tend to oscillate at the beginning until their in-built damping factors bring them stably to their target value. And that's what you see in those graphs. Then again, the second part of my post still remains: what are the damping factors on the Rockets? Is the coach making adjustments to lineups and playstyles? (Yes, you can laugh; that was rhetorical.) Will the players settle down or step up and get it together themselves? I don't know. Will the GM make moves to try to smooth things out? Well, yeah. That's what Morey does. So, of the three major corrective factors I see for this system, there's a yes, a no, and a don't know involved. That doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence that things will settle down even after many more games. We shall see.
Last year, remember? Terrible start, sh!tty defense, EG not having fun, Harden being moody, etc. This ship will right itself. The question is: Will it be good enough at its best?
That fills 1 hole. Spacing. It also creates 1 new hole at rim protection and leaves 1 gaping hole and defensive wing length. We also need to add about $ 7 million to make the money work. We don't really have the salary without NENE or Shump being able to sign those deals that made them assets. I do not foresee Kevin Love happening this season. I think the right move is to flip CC for a wing somehow and expand that trade to take on someone's center or assets to flip for a center at the deadline. I'm looking at Covington, Jaylen Brown (if eligible to be traded) and Justise Winslow as my main targets for a Capela trade. I wish Oubre was here and he should have been here 2 seasons ago.
Are we to expect supernova Harden to carry us for the next 3 months? Do we have a player that we can exorcise off of this team to get rid of the bad juju like what we did with Melo? Do we have a player that inexplicably played really well for us like House did? I'm sure the Rockets will be fine this season in terms of making the playoffs but, given the personnel and the limitations of acquiring help to fill in the very visible gaps, I don't think they're going to be "in the mix" to be a championship contender that most stat nerds out there expected at the beginning of the season.
Last year we had at least two more highly influential people on the team who gave a crap about defense - CP3 and eventually Coach Bzdelik. This year's team, not so much. I hate to say it but leaving the keys to the defense with D'Antoni is just not going to work out well for us. You can tell that is not his focus in nearly every update status he gives with the team - he always has way more to say about the offense than the defense - he won't even go into specifics about the defense. While I think we will still win a bunch of games because of the talent of Harden, Westbrook, Capela, Tucker, EGO, etc - I think our legit title chances will hinge on our ability to lock in defensively...and after 6 games I'm very concerned about this. Thankfully we still have 75+ games to figure it out but if Harden and Westbrook don't bring the defensive intensity, if D'Antoni doens't seem to bring the defensive focus, I have a hard time thinking it's going to get any better without a change in coaching or personnel - there is no calvary waiting to swoop in and make it better that I know of unlike last year where at least we got Coach B back around Thanksgiving.
There is plenty of time to make the defense passable. What worries me is D’Antoni has used a variation of the same quote about the Rockets’ poor energy level in pretty much every game but the opener against Milwaukee. A game here and there with lackluster energy happens, but not five in a row, especially when your coach calls it out in the post game press conference. You would have thought the Rockets would play like their hair was on fire defensively since, but nothing has changed.
Lets see how they respond tonight, I saw some comments on reddit about how apparently the guys were out partying in Miami...or at least Westbrook was.
You are going to need a three-team trade involving Capela to get both the 3&D power forward and rim-running center the Rockets need. Marvin Williams and Nerlens Noel would be an example of such a combination, but Capela is worth more than that.
The Rockets have played with no energy defensively for five straight games, allowing 61, 62, 77, 61, and 71 points in the first half. I guess they must be partying before every game, then. Also, if a professional athlete doesn’t realize a visit to Miami’s South Beach during the season is a business trip first, that’s a problem, too.
