ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Jazz 5/4/2018 (Playoffs Round 2, Game 3)

Hope the Rockets are watching the Cavs and LeBron dismantle the Raptors. Talk about elevating your game for the playoffs. The Rockets have been dialing it back from the regular season. Won't get far doing that.

 

Dont be Western Raptors. They are laugh stock of NBA now.

 

******* it Chris Paul, DO SOMETHING. You came here to get out of the 2nd round....... now STOP being an anchor around Harden's neck and get your **** together.

 

I expect CP to be better than he has been. With exception of game 2, he’s been above average which isn’t acceptable at all.

I’m counting Gordon as lost cause at this point.

 

I hope the Rockets are watching what Philly is doing so far. WAKE THE **** UP AND STOP STARTING SLOW.

CP3 stop being average and Eric Gordon stop being utter garbage.

 

I think we win this in a rout from start to finish. They are going to make a statement this game and hopefully not look back.

 

I better see the Rockets paint Salt Lake City with Jazz blood tomorrow. I have no interest in being the West equivalent of the Raptors.

 

I think I'm gonna have to watch this on mute. I can't stand it when the Rockets play in front of loud crowds on the road.

 

Celtics actually kept the lead once they re took it and didn’t let Toby from the Office beat them.

Fully expect the Rockets to bludgeon the Jazz tomorrow.

 

The environment will be hostile, I hope Rockets ignore all that and use their plays to silence the crowd.

 

About that...

 

And two 3’s that went in and rimmed out. I ain’t worried.

 

Make no mistake

We are in trouble here guys.

I'm sorry. I hate it. But it's the truth. We're flawed and we're being exposed right in front of your eyes. And the problem is IF we actually pull this series out of the hat there's virtually no chance for us to beat the Warriors without a serious defensive boost from either Luc getting back healthy or some other player all of a sudden giving us something defensively that we haven't had all season.

Play harder.
Come out serious.
Don't leave Ingles open.
Bench has to contribute.

Are you guys serious with this nonsense? You're saying nuth'n. NOTHING!

This thread reads like a Kevin McHale echo chamber.

Doesn't anybody know why Ingles was so wide open the whole durn night? Doesn't anybody know why we looked flat? Doesn't anybody know why we ain't getting anything from the bench? Does anybody know what we have to do to get past these guys besides spewing out just a bunch of stupid, meaningless, mindless cliches?

Here's the core problem guys. Read what I'm writing here and understand it. Go back and watch the replay of the game and see it. Our flaw is we are weak in the defensive paint. This game was the classic case in point.

Utah comes out of the gate and goes something like dunk, dunk, free throws, turnover, wide open 3, dunk, layup. Now I've got those somewhat out of order most likely. I didn't go back and write it all down. But it was something real close to that. Utah IMMEDIATELY took it to the hole on us and won the possessions.

What happened next was our perimeter defenders started shading the paint. Go back and watch the plays. Harden constantly drifting inside to help plug up space on Utah's bigs. Ariza....same thing. Guys collapsing inside the whole night to keep us from getting killed inside because Gobert and Favors make our bigs look like midget dwarfs out there. We clearly were sandwiching their bigs. And when you do that you give up something, don't you?

Guys, that's why Ingles and the rest were mostly able to count dimples on the ball before they flung up wide open looks.

What's the adjustment? Well, obviously we gotta send out defenders to at least upset their rhythm. How's that going to work on Gobert and Favors? We'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if Utah's paint possessions went through the roof in game 3. They're very smart from the coaching staff all the way through the players, Mitchell, Gobert, Ingles, O'neal, Crowder, and Rubio if he gets back. Utah is very, very good at in-game on-the-fly adjustments because of their outstanding bball iq. They've already figured out our defensive flaw and they're going to work it over for all the remaining games.

Now let's look at the other end. Most of the analysts were predicting before this series began that our offense was going to make it difficult for Gobert to stay on the floor. I was wondering why they would think that since Utah was one of the best defenses and when Gobert was healthy they were dominating opponents with their defense. They apparently hadn't watched Utah play enough. And now they've been proven wrong because Utah has a plethora of good perimeter defenders that can switch on the perimeter and then also fight over the screens to stay with the ball handler allowing Gobert/Favors to drift down and cover the rim.

In the playoffs, this is a losing combination for us with Harden. In the playoffs it's a rougher game. The officials give all defenses more leeway with contact. This setup allows Utah to stay at home on our shooters and lets the point defender and big man defender play a two-man game with the offensive pick and roll. And Utah is very efficient defensively in the paint area. For instance, in last night's game....we went 25 for 50 in the paint. That's 1 point per possession. So despite all those spectacular highlight reel plays between Harden and Capela, Utah still forced us down to 50% on those paint possessions while simultaneously they were face guarding the shooters and forcing misses.

So even on a night when we were conserving turnovers....we couldn't be efficient enough with our shots to win the game.

What's our adjustment here? (Yeah, play harder, right.)

MDA has to figure out how to get the mismatches we need. Somehow we've got to get Ingles switched off onto the point and then we attack him in the pnr. Or we've got to ABANDON that highlight reel pick and roll in favor of going 5 out with PJ/Ariza/Luc at the 5, and getting the switch with Harden going downhill on Gobert/Favors. However if we're able to get that to work..... then Utah is going to make an in-game adjustment. Because they're that good and that smart defensively to make in-game adjustments.

And so it goes. If you're not dominant in the defensive paint.....which we aren't...we're very porous......then against the top contenders.....you'd better be able to spread them out and force their dominant paint defenders out to the perimeter defending shooters and playmakers in space to get them off the court in foul or matchup trouble so you can then go back to running your fancy pick and roll.

That's where we're at with this Jazz team headed right into their lion's den. I'm hopeful. But I'm not optimistic. We're in a dog fight. And I'll be surprised if we come home 3-1. I expect it'll be 2-2 and I hate to say it but we could be down 1-3 when we get back home.

We need to find something defensively that isn't there right now. Nene shouldn't see the floor. Neither should Anderson. If we need some bombs those have to come from Green because Green is at least athletic enough to get lucky defensively and then convert on the break. Anderson is a zero defensively and on the break. And he can't get back in transition. He's unplayable.

We've got to get some defensive magic from Luc or we really should try something radical.....like Qi. (Laugh all you want.at the suggestion. You're not going to be laughing when this season gets flushed down the toilet like the 2005 Phoenix Suns.)

And we need to make the offensive adjustments necessary to iso Ingles and Gobert on the perimeter.

 

We outscored them by 24 at some point in game 2. We just have to do it again. We’ll win this in 5.

 

We will win this game by at least 10 points. The team came out flat and just kind of ran through the motions defensively. When we started swarming Utah could barely get a shot off.

It's all about sustained defensive intensity to beat the Jazz. We will definitely get it done because I don't see us making the same dumb mistakes tomorrow.

 

Bench has to step up and play well. You cant have 6 guys playing 30+ mins and expect their legs to not be tired near the end of the game. Especially when they spent so much energy in trying to come back from a large deficit.

I expect the team as a whole to play better and come out swinging. Rockets win 104-97.

 

I got a feeling that we will hit at least 15 threes tomorrow and win by 10+ points

 

we have to come out with intensity, move the ball, not leave their shooter wide open, don't always double team their guard, let them take rush three if that's the cost.

wish Luc will feel more comfortable, he will start leading the defense and fast break.

 

Chris Paul dropped 34pts 10asts last year in the Playoffs in a win at Utah in game 3 to get home court back.....something like that would be very timely