It's crazy to believe a Gm with no basketball experience is telling NBA coaches and players how to play and who to play. Reminds me of co-coach for my youth league team, it's all about running my plays but yet your child can't do a single lay-up. That's just pure narcissistic insanity. Your engineer degree and Exxon job means nothing on this court. Lol off-topic rant over.
DMo was a prototypical Power Forward IMO, but they tried to use him as Center. He wasn't consistent enough but they should have continued to play him at PF.
I do think it gives our team as currently constructed the best chance to win. However, here is the thing! The small ball line up should be situational, not your teams foundation. It should be part of you teams core situational roster. This team does needs a skilled forward at the 3 or 4 position either one or both. That's where you have to draft and develop players pretty well.
Players 6'3'' and under: Chris Paul Players 6'4'' to 6'6'': James Harden, Eric Gordon, PJ Tucker, Austin Rivers, Iman Shumpert Players 6'7'' to 6'9'': Gerald Green, Kenneth Faried, Gary Clark Players 6'10'' and over: Clint Capela, Nene, Hartenstein It's not even about small ball starting 5. Houston plays small ball the almost the entire game. This is how the roster has been built. There's nothing MDA can do other than replace 6-4 Eric Gordon with 6-5 Iman Shumpert, give 6-8 Gary Clark spot minutes, or insert 6-7 Gerald Green into the starting line-up. None of those are appealing. None. It's strange. MDA was open to letting James Ennis start, but for some reason he hasn't ever started Gerald Green despite being a constant guy in rotation with very little change in minutes/role. Him and Shumpert are the only current rotation players that haven't started once. Is Gerald Green that sorry that he hasn't been able to start once in an injury riddled season? Sheesh.
Gordon is put into the starting lineup over Ennis because lack of offense in 1st quarter Then Gordon got hurt, House fill in, then back to G-League Gordon is back in the starting lineup, and so on Now our bench scoring suck
Height is definitely a problem. Lot of our opposition forces smart switches which put our smallest guards guarding the paint (the worst is CP), and draw the C/PF out to the perimeter. No matter what they decide to do after that, they have a great mismatch in the paint, and nice positioning for a rebound and 2nd chance points if they decide to take a 3. The teams that know how to do that, they are freaking scary, especially if they have bigger/taller players for their positions. I'm going to try to find more of this happening in future games, just to see if we figured out a way to fix this. But last I saw CP play, he found himself guarding a 3/4/5 in the post and Harden or someone else had to come over and help w/ a double. That's more of a patch job than an actual fix, so I hope they have a solution in the works for the playoffs.
Legitimate question, honestly. I guess my answer would be, if we're hitting 3s, and gambling, scrambling for steals here and there, small ball works fine. I do see energy as a problem to solve for both teams if we're playing small ball. For us, I usually see the bigger player get spent (Capela) on trying to hold the paint, doing everything on the PnR, etc... On the other hand, opposing team ends up spending a lot of energy defending the smaller players if they're taller, especially if they got handles like CP, Harden, EG.
Yeah u right. Let's fire the guy who put together one of the best teams in NBA history last year and hire someone with playing experience. What's Isiah Thomas up to these days?
Defensively, yes. Not always about "height" but also about talent. And yes the team plays smaller, and that is because it favors the switching defense and spreading the floor offensively. It is why Gordon was placed in the starting SF role over Ennis. Because Ennis' 3pt shot (while decent) was not *respected* as it relates to gravity and spacing. And defensively while they liked the energy, he was out of position a lot and fouled a lot. These are things Shumpert should stabilize. And also things House was better at than Ennis. It would be nice to have a "Jerami Grant" type PF with length, good lateral quickness and a 3pt shot. They had a version of him with Danuel House. But those type of players are hard to get and are in demand.
I just hope we get one of those hard to get and in demand players. Time is a ticking and the playoffs are right around the corner. They didn't have a problem splurging on Paul, but I'm afraid this lineup is gonna fall "short".
I've always been wary of leaning to heavily on analytics without practical experience... For example, one could look at the defensive stats for a 6'8 pf and draw assumptions based on his numbers... but whether or not that guy has Shaq or some scrub standing next to him at center is gonna make a world of difference... Last year when we were up 20 or 30 pts in games and the other team would just chuck 3s to try to make up ground... at that point the defensive stats for small ball stats dont look bad... but make it a tight game where the other team is happy to work the ball inside for a high % bucket - and all of a sudden the negative aspect of that small ball line up is apparent... last year we won a lot of games walkng away and this year we've been in a lot of tight games... Also, Morey has built this team to try to beat GSW... and it shows everytime we play a team with a dominant front court - bc we got no defense for it... If the 3 ball aint falling we may as well go home... lol
Small ball... 3 ball heavy game plan... these are high risk/high reward options... and hey, when were were a middling team they were a decent gamble to take vs mediocrity... At this point though... we got the MVP... we got hope that CP3 will return to form (and at min he is still a great floor general)... We got a center that shut down opposing centers last post season... we got quite a few guys that are sporadic but can deliver (EGo, Rivers, GG, Faried, etc...) ... it's time to stop gambling on high risk gimic game plans and just be the better team... imo...
I was the one who created the start Gordon thread a while back but after seeing him play, I think he should come off the bench and we should start HOUSE once he’s back or Shumpurt for that veterans defensive presence. Ideally we slide tucker back to the 3 and get someone to fill the 4 spot.
look at the rosters of the top offenses in the league and tell me they wouldn't be successful running any reasonable scheme... It's like when everybody talked about what a genius Big Chief Triangle was... that Bulls team coulda won championships with any reasonable offensive set - yet the triangle didnt work too well with that Knicks roster... good or bad - it was the personnel - not the system... show me a crappy team being successful in a certain system and I'll be impressed with the strategy... but is GSW successful bc of the system - or bc they're freaking stacked? ...and obviously spacing is an important thing - but its not the only thing. Sure if you have a group of great shooters - spread em out and take target practice... but if you dont.. then you need to mix it up and play to your strength on any given night... whether thats keying on the defenses deficiencies or playing to your hot hand... Our biggest problem is "we're just gonna play our game..." and MDA wants to see 50+ 3 pt attempts... all shortcuts to actually thinking, making adjustments and catering your attack to your opponent...
Harden carrying a bunch of g-league players is NOT the best assembled team in NBA history. You big tripping.
well this is not "one of the best" teams anymore and he and tilmen have done nothing this season to change that. We are like 5 in the conference. As constructed, this is an average playoff team and thats it
