ClutchFans Game Thread: Kings @ Rockets 12/31/2013

They aren't point guards period. Lin is a combo guard. He plays well when he looks to score first. Look at his best games without James, he scores first and his playmaking rolls off that. Brooks is a true shooter. Bev has no playmaking skills.

 

Didn't i mention to you guys in previous game threads that we have problems.in rotation and player management? Anyone else listening yet?

 

Even when we had them we always had short rotation of 8-9 guys.

Among the three that you mentioned, smith won't even earn much of a playing time.

 

THIS!

 

Howard gave him an Audemars Piguet.

 

Casspi and our bench doesn't have much playing time because we have a stubborn coach who refuses to manage players minutes properly.

8 player rotations? What does that tell ya? 2 of our players dont even have substitutes for their position.

 

Harden gets angry and starts hitting his three's!
- He giveth!! 8)

Harden lets his opponent blow by him with no effort on D
- He taketh away 8(

Harden freakin scores 16 points in 9 minutes!
- He giveth!! 8)

Harden goes isoball and the ball gets "sticky"
- He taketh away 8(

 

I totally agree with you Swag. There were more than 24 seconds left on the clock. If the rockets make an aggressive play on the ball before it reached 24. or not foul and just play good D, forcing the Kings to take a bad shot, get the rebound, call a timeout, advance the ball and run a play... Instead Lin waited for IT to dribble at the top of the key and then fouled him with less than 24 seconds left. The Kings got a fresh clock with 12 seconds left in the game. .I really wonder what the coaching staff was doing. Were they out of timeouts? Because it sure didn't feel like the team was put in the best position to secure a final possession to force OT.

 

I'm not really in to being too critical about McHale. Believe me, he does understand BB. McHale is in a bad place right now because of the Asik episode. He needs to play the bench with the starters, which will take a lot off of the bench player scoring. When there are 1-2 starters in, the bench becomes a supporting cast for them. I haven't really checked this statistically, but to my mind for instance Casspi plays best with Parsons and Dwight. There seems to be some good chemistry.

However, playing with Chandler reduces Casspi's 3pt attempts and with Dwight his rebounding. From the team point of view it really doesn't matter. IMO the bench needs to play as a unit in order to develop plays for themselves. They too need to know each other and maximize their chemistry and output. As long as the Asik issue is not dealt with, the bench needs to continuously adjust themselves to different lineups. It's not easy with very dominant staters.

 

James had a bad time to go cold, I don't really blame him though since him and Durant had eerily similar games. Harden scored 10 points in the fourth and it looked like he was trying to push early on at least. Durant went 0-5 in the fourth for 1 point (missed freethrow, wasn't a tech) and he let Batum blow by him twice. They both took semi-ill advised 3's in their respected games and they looked lost at the end. We need that intensity, and that will come in due time. No worries at all right now. We have all this time to practice and to brush up on our offensive and defensive principles.

 

To add on to my point, Dwight is actually doing mostly everything right on the offensive end and we need to brush up our spacing again. Dwight understands that the adjacent corner to where he is posting is the look for 3 through swing out or direct pass from a double and our guys need to learn that. Once they get that down, oh boy, look out. He gets a turnover once every like 3 or 4 games from no one being at that spot, it is really frustrating at this point but everything needs due time to click.

 

You don't pay your starters $$$$ to play your bench more minutes.

 

Harden is the most selfish player in NBA.

 

Read his post again. He was trying to say to let the bench have some playing time, and not the bench have more minutes than the starters.

 

Nah this isnt just mchale's problem with Asik. Because even when we were at full strength we only played a short rotation of 8-9 players.

 

OH YES YOU DO!

No team in the league plays their star-starters (star-ter-s )
in regular season as much as the Rockets does!
(And it's not cause we're not deep enough, IMHO)

and...

Spoiler

If you're gonna use Melo to counter that claim - Just DON'T!
Look where this is getting the Knicks... Is that our model?

 

Hello, Melo is also Woody sanctioned.
the beard + Melo = ISO galore and championship in the meeting.
Can't wait to see the two square off on Friday.

 

I'm looking forward to the game but not to Harden & Melo's ISO ball.

I'm like watching good team basketball and a flowing game.

I wouldn't mind if they were both injured so my man D12 can take over the game!!!

 

Harden scores 38 points, gets 10 rebounds and he is getting burned on Clutchfans because of this loss?

I'm still scratching my head that out of a time out the only thing that McHale could draw up was a Harden ISO...twice!

Maybe the Harden ISO is the play that the coach wants & Harden is only following instructions?

We should've fed Dwight more, the perimeter defence sucked big time & we didn't take advantage at the free throw line...that's what cost us the game.

 

The last shot was a necessity, we were down by 4 with 8 seconds left and no timeouts, so we needed to take the first semi open shot, hope it goes in, foul, get the ball up the court and take another shot, so the first shot needed to be in < 3 seconds