[Chron] Jeff Bzdelik sees path to fixing Rockets' defense

That literally had absolutely nothing to do with our defensive issues.

McHale used that as his excuse on why we lost to Portland. Truth is, with Sampson we still sucked on defense. We still let Steve Blake get a game winner on us with HORRIBLE defensive positioning, we still made fundamental defensive mistakes in guarding inbound plays, basic offensive sets.

Basically, since McHale's inception as a coach our talent level grew and therefore our winning totals grew. The truth is, that relationship is linear until the poor habits are exposed(lousy practices, poor work habits, no discipline, no structure).

As Anthony Carter said, McHale with a marker board is like a kid with etch & sketch. At not point in his coaching tenure here did he ever emphasize a strategy outside of 3s and layups. He was nothing more than Morey's puppet, and unfortunately, Morey is a typical submissive dork and will bend over at star player's request cause he's so weak in these areas. Don't get me wrong, he's our most vital piece to our franchise, but he was so happy to get stars and please them he overlooked all the necessary steps to actually taking them past being stars and into winners. He just thought simulations, numbers, and analyzing different points. He never took it further from there. I think he's learned it's a combination of people and numbers that take you there. But ultimately, people that have great habits and discipline.

 

Getting back after the shot means reduced offensive rebounds. That's a JVG philosophy that I am no fan of. Lower scoring games.

 

If it was only that simple.

 

Whom should Harden have trusted last year? Who would not have let him down?

 

In principle, boxing out is simple. But the act of doing it is much more complicated as players have to have a knack for how the ball bounces off the rim, making sure they have good position and putting a body on the offensive player, and timing the jump.

Getting back in transition when the shot goes up is just about running backwards. It's not that hard.

 

I never understood this strategy but apparently this is what the coaching staff instructed him todo.

I remeber JB coming out and flat out saying that they want James roaming in the paint. Made not sense to me but I'm not a basketball coach.

 

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Assistant Coach Buzz: Rockets still making hard push to try to hire James Harden favorite Rex Kalamian away from Toronto ... as are Wizards

 

Les can start his road to redemption buy overpaying to get this guy on staff. Les should be throwing stupid money at this guy. This thing doesn't work without Harden and this guy sounds like the best chance we have of reaching him.

 

Chris Finch defensive philosophy...the reason we gave up so many wide open 3's

CF: We need a total dedication to keeping the ball out of the paint; helping each other and making a wall of defenders anytime the ball gets near the paint and then challenging from there out. We really feel like if we do those two things – play with some tempo, space and freedom on offense, and we play with some physicality and sell-out to protect the paint on defense – then we can really take a step forward even from where we were last year. With a younger team, with a less experienced team, those will be challenges but it won’t keep us from making the improvements that we want to make as a team.

 

Exactly... Getting out of the corners is not some hot new take people. Anytime you play on a 94ft court coaches will harp on getting back, not getting stuck under the hoop or in the corners. We literally had practices where we put the plastic rebounding cover on the hoop and ran out of the corners back on defense in college. They sometimes even called out a guy's number and had him touch the baseline before having to sprint back - really revolutionary stuff according to ClutchFans, lol.

 

Yep, Joe Clutchfan still thinks the Rocket coaches were completely clueless and that's why they were a .500 team. A majority of NBA fans will always pin everything bad they see happen on the coach. It's like their minds refuse to entertain any other possibility. I would be shocked if Jeff B. had any thought about improving the Rockets' defense that the coaches themselves hadn't thought of or tried to implement already.

 

Yes, that tends to happen in the NBA, where talent is the single most important ingredient in defining a successful head coach by a large margin. How did that triangle work out for the Knicks?

 

Hang on, you quoted an entire video to prove my point that the issue is something that almost everyone at any level of basketball can see and address?

OMG WE HAVE A GUY WHO'S SO SMART IN CHARGE OF DEFENSE NOW!!1!1!!

 

Alright, in case it was somehow too cryptic from the post I quoted originally and what I wrote about it: I bet it was something that was coached and addressed, but there are other things that go in to it - like personnel and play calling. Especially when you have a guard who penetrates as much as Harden without someone to "pop" on the high screen for defensive rotation. You have to occupy the corners for bail out passes and spacing on a high P&R, causing everything to flatten out - combine that with dudes who don't really sprint back, and it's a problem.

But someone saying "get out of the corners" or "don't allow coast to coast lay ups" or "make them swing the ball so you can recover defensively" isn't very exciting to me, but apparently you are sold by these bold, new ideas! Every coach in the NBA would say that stuff if asked about it.

I can't wait to see Harden in this brand new defensive scheme next year though, I'm sure he'll be flying around on defensive rotations and stopping transition buckets like Ben Wallace with the new ideas of Bzdelik in place!!

 

Not gonna just wall-of-text back-and-forth chief.

The midseason stats you put up showed that we were ok at transition D after misses, but we were horrible when it came to transition D after turnovers. The article addresses the issue - live-ball turnovers (which happens to be a problem Harden has). Our transition D was not consistent, but really the root of the problem was turnovers.

We were no where near the worst transition defense in the league from what I can find online, so what are you alluding to when you say the worst?

You are under the impression that NBA coaches aren't teaching transition defense and just throwing out that we were the "worst," so it seems to me that you are a bit emotionally attached to your position on this topic and not really worth trying to convince further. Take care.

 

Exactly.