Inside The NBA Reaction to Rockets Defeats Jazz 122-90 In Game 1

They always talk about how to stop us when we win. They don't talk about how good we are, or what we do well, its always about the other team not doing things right....... The only compliment they give harden is, "he can score"

 

'Make him take 30/40 shots....'

He's never taken more than 40 in his career smh.

 

Idk what else they would talk about with that crap defense jazz threw out tonight. Everyone knows they’re better than that defensively. These guys were absolutely right to dog on jazz tonight cause they had a terrible showing. And I usually don’t like these dudes (except Ernie and sometimes Chuck).

 

Shaq is just brilliant, the guy's iq is unreal.
Why we have balanced scoring is because James being shaded left the entire game and he was forced to throw the ball to other guys, not because he wanted to distribute the ball but because he was forced to, lol.

Oh and James is going out tonight because he isnt tired based on the way he was defended not because the it was a blow out and played only 30 minutes.

bruh this is beyond hilarious, this is literally like watching 3 middle schoolers arguing about the NBA.

 

Rockets just gotta win it all.

Sick of dis.

 

I was thinking the same thing. Like does he really think that if you play James straight up he’s not going to try and get other
Guys involved? Why do they still act like he is a selfish player?? So misinformed. Why would sizing guys up take our role players out of rhythm?

 

Not to mention he just contradicted Barkley's previous point about this being bad defense and then Barkley goes on and says this "I like that you said that", that was one of the funniest and dumbest sequences on TV.

 

They’re saying that’s the only hope for jazz, they’re not saying it will 100% work. And they’re not wrong. The jazz only hope is to make harden dribble more (which means our guys are standing around). Jazz need to make harden exert more energy, not just give him a wide open lane.

Rockets played this gimmick defense perfectly, as we knew they would if we saw it again. If harden hit his floater we woulda won by 40. Harden is an elite playmaker and scorer. Giving him a wide open lane is a complete joke of a strategy.

 

Inside the NBA is heavily influenced by Nike. Barkley is a diehard Nike guy and Nike regularly provides shoes to all of the guys (including Shaq, who is now a Nike guy after shunning them when he was a player...money talks). Even guys like Reggie Miller are big Nike stans.

Nike has consistently been after Harden since he left to join Addidas and they use these guys to go after him. Not sure why they also don’t go after Curry, but maybe the league wants to protect him or Nike doesn’t see Under Armour as real competition.

 

I get that the gimmick defense was awful. The only reason you try a gimmick defense is because straight up doesn’t work either. Playing harden 1v1, straight up is exactly what he wants. And instead of talking about how he is ungaurdable, and how he makes any defense look bad, these clowns talk about making him dribble! As if his 1v1 dribble moves aren’t what have MADE him ungaurdable in the first place! So I say, go ahead and try straight up defense, it’s gonna make you remember why you tried a gimmick in the first place!

 

Chuck said James could go 11 of 29, 4 of 10 from 3, and you’d look at that and say he didn’t really have an impact on the game.

 

I don’t disagree with you that we’ll beat them anyways in this series. We’re just better than them and James is just that good.

But I dont disagree with them either. Jazz only hope is to make harden exert energy and cross their fingers that he’s off and our shooters are off. They might take 1 game in this series and it’ll be because we beat ourselves.

They just have zero chance with their personnel running that gimmick defense. We don’t even need to be hitting 3s to beat them running that crap. They’re not Milwaukee and they don’t have two 7 footers to muck up the paint, they don’t have long wing defenders with quick feet to close out on 3 point shooters, and they don’t have a single defender like Bledsoe that can be quick and active the whole game on harden. They tried to copy a better team and fell flat on their face. They should just play their own game and cross their fingers that they can take 1 game from us and hope we beat ourselves.

 

Before y’all go looking for things to be mad at, just remember that chuck was one of the first talking heads to call harden unguardable. Kenny and shaq came with their crappy takes and shade as always, but chuck sometimes recognizes real and you gotta give him credit:

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/519704002

Y’all sometimes are just looking for a reason to play victim and it’s sad. We beat, no, DESTROYED a gimmick defense tonight and that defense was rightly called out.

 

Cause its jealousy. I've been come to that conclusion...media hates James n the rockets. They dont respect what we do plain n simple.They think it should be easy to stop or beat us

 

I honestly think that the only reasons we lost to that defense in Milwaukee were because James wasn’t aggressive enough when he went by Bledsoe, and our shooters were off. I thought we got all the shots we wanted in that game, too. But I see the point of abandoning the gimmick if you are Utah. I just don’t see the correlation between playing James 1v1 and him becoming selfish and shooting too much (which was shaqs reasoning). I agree with you their only chance is if we miss quality looks, because we are going to get quality looks.

 

Imagine if the referees had called fouls on Hardens drives!!

 

Yeah if we hit our 3s I don’t see Milwaukee beating us with that gimmick scheme either. And if harden hits the floater on top of that there is no way. They’ll have to adjust in that case for sure.

I think what they’re saying is if harden dribbles for 20 seconds our shooters are just standing around and they’re more likely to go cold. They’re saying make harden beat jazz (probably by sticking on our shooters tight). And I’ll take that all day as well. Harden is the best 1v1 player in the league along with Durant. I’ll take our chances that harden will have a good night.

Shaq is a hater with awful takes and always trying to make it about him. Don’t listen to his mumbling. Don’t look for stuff to be mad at when we got such a huge win tonight.

 

Haha! Im not mad. Just talking basketball. I agree with what you are saying. Although I don’t think there is a correlation between harden dribbling and shooters going cold. He usually only runs the whole clock down at the end of games. (Which I don’t like) but I don’t think there is any way he gets played straight up. My guess is they will start running that late double at him, or try the gimmick again, under the false pretense that he was “limited” to 29 points on 26 shots or whatever it was.