I do think it has to do with our personnel and style of play. We're a high ceiling, low floor team, and you see that playout during games. Reason why the Lakers win the games they're supposed to. They have a high floor because they're guaranteed points in the paint w/ Lebron, AD, Howard, McGee, and besides Capela we rely on the perimeter. I wish the coaching would figure out how to maintain leads/put teams away, but the way we play allows teams to get back in it either during slumps or when legs get tired. If we were to jump out to huge leads then slow down the tempo/adjust the offense it could help with maintaining leads, but idk if we can consistently score without it just being iso ball with Harden/Russ, and of course what do you do when they go cold. Effort level and energy is also a huge factor, but that seems to come easier when the opponent is a bigger name, so we may not see it as often in the playoffs... We'll see!
Extremely rare "we need more midrange" take that I actually agree with. This is well put, and the analytics will support this. When you have a huge lead, the goal isn't to maximize amount of points you get per possession anymore (this would say to keep shooting nothing but 3s), the goal should be to minimize variance. In the long run you'll score more points on average by continuing to shoot those 3s, but I think you'd win more games (even while scoring less) with more 2s. I'm not sure we have the personnel for it but in theory it's the right decision.
Fair enough. Give me an inhuman team that stomps on the throat early, doesn't let up until the breathing stops, and then slits it for good measure.
We got up 23, Harden was hot to start game and started going for 50+...took some awful shots, stopped moving the ball. 3 horrible full court passes that flew out of bounds and we gave up points right after ... 23 down to 13 Also on MikeD Ben was hot and the squad with Ben Gordon Rivers Hardistien and House was doing well and he never rides the hot hand
It's almost like we're playing against NBA teams and NBA coaches and they do something like 'make adjustments' in the locker room or some kind of voodoo like that. WEIRD. . . .
Because we don't have enough compatible pieces, defensive talent or depth to maintain a consistency better than a 2 or 3 seed in the West. It's really that simple. The real question is: why on earth would we be better than our current record with a PG who can neither shoot or defend and he's our second best player? Seriously, why? There's nothing wrong with the production we are getting from what we have.
I don’t watch anything but the Rockets, but I suspect this is a league wide thing. Not sure if The Rockets play with fire more than most.
I'm not sure I've ever seen the Texans take a lead over a good team. lol. And the Astros were terribad until they were super good. I think last year was the only year where this applies.
I'm guessing some of you guys don't watch the NBA? An article from last season (https://www.espn.com.au/nba/story/_/id/26725776/this-season-massive-comeback-nba) states this: Consider: There were 491 games out of 1,230 this season in which a team had a 20-point lead. the average winning percentage for teams with 20-point leads at any time during a game from 1996-97 through 2016-17 was 97.2 percent. Over the past two seasons, that has dropped to 94.6 percent, meaning such comebacks have been nearly twice as common. The two trend lines -- more 20-point leads, and more comebacks -- suggest a common cause: bigger swings within games, attributable both to increasing pace of play and the rising share of shots from beyond the 3-point line. Teams are building larger leads earlier (there were 44 games this season in which a team went up by at least 20 in the first quarter, as compared to 28 in 2015-16), but finding them more difficult to protect This is not a unique thing to the Rockets. They aren't even the team in discussion in that article. Plenty of times teams get down big early (due to someone being hot?), but fight back to make the game close. This is just the trend in the modern game, it is all about making runs and not giving up. A team down 20 know that if they get 4 stops in a row they could be back within single digits. Plus teams up 20 tend to play a touch more extravagantly, force a pass, turn the ball over, take their foot off the accelerator. Again, this is not unique to the Rockets.
Also, from the article quoted in my previous post is this tidbit: The conventional wisdom that teams that shoot more 3s are vulnerable to comebacks doesn't bear out statistically. The 10 teams with the highest rates of 3-point attempts this season collectively won 96.4 percent of games they led by 20-plus, as compared to 91.7 percent for the bottom 10 teams in 3-point attempts and 94.4 percent for the other 10 teams. Though teams that attempt a lot of 3s were more likely to come back (they won 9.9 percent of games they trailed by 20-plus, as compared to 3.0 percent for teams in the bottom 10), that could be explained by the fact that teams that attempt more 3s are generally more successful. The top 10 teams in 3-point attempt rate averaged 47 wins, as compared to 33 wins for the bottom 10 teams in 3s attempted.
Well that’s exactly what it is lackadaisical and lack of focus. It’s psychological but it works both ways. Teams losing expend more energy into focusing on coming back while the other team has to fend off the blitzing frenzied attack. But it’s also the natural shift of momentum of the game. It happens. You score big play great then they play great and you play like crap and everything falls apart. But great teams respond. Look at the warriors. They’ve were 16th and 18th previous 2 years in OPP PPG. They had this same issue of letting teams creep back in but they were able to close out teams when it mattered in the end.
Rox never found an Ariza/Moute replacement to stifle defenses... as a result this team is designed to outscore you by 120+...that seems to be their Agenda to compensate for the defensive void left behind
