When you think about bad chemistry on a sports team, you tend to think of a few different scenarios: * a situation like Jimmy Butler on the T-Wolves this year, where he wants out and is rebelling publicly and pulling the entire team down in the process * different factions developing in the locker room, where a player is either one of Player A's guys or one of Player B's guys * someone who is openly questioning his role on the team and making it clear that he's unhappy It would seem that this year's Rockets are being negatively impacted by the latter. Say what you want about superstars not performing, people not hitting their shots or rotating to the open man, but those things don't happen in a vacuum. Playing well is a function of a team playing together, and chemistry problems can cause things to go south pretty quickly. I was among those who thought bringing in Melo was a great idea, especially at the vet minimum with no commitment after this season. I even thought that his being forced to the bench would be ameliorated by having his BFF CP3 on the team. The next few days will probably tell us exactly how wrong we were ( @Zboy, @The_Yoyo and a handful of others excepted). It seems that Melo is unhappy with his role on the team, meaning he either wants to start or wants more minutes. Whether or not his poor defense or his reliance on a mid-range game fits what we're trying to do is almost immaterial, because the single most important thing to consider is that if Melo is unhappy now, he's probably been low-key unhappy since the first pre-season game. And if you don't think that affects team chemistry from the top down, then you don't understand team chemistry. Dwight's final season is a perfect example: Tired of accepting what he considered a reduced role (because the offense didn't start with him), he low-key smoldered all year and soured the entire locker room. You bring in a future Hall of Famer, 10-time All-Star and former elite player, with all the power and authority that comes with those honors, and when he starts to go sour, everyone in the locker room feels it. CP3 and Harden are probably wondering what the hell they've done by lobbying so hard for this guy. Even Morey is likely admitting he overlooked the aging-superstar ego factor in this move. Melo making his unhappiness a public issue this week just throws gasoline on a fire that has probably been smoldering for a while now, and the whole team has been affected by the smoke WAY before Friday. I thought Melo was ready to accept a reduced role. He's now made it apparent that he wasn't, and nothing short of a bigger role will make him happy. MDA's not ready to grant that bigger role (Asked what role he sees for Anthony moving forward: "What he was doing. Melo's been great. What he's been doing is backing up the 4.") I honestly think Melo could be valuable to us, but only if he's ready to accept not being a starter. Now we know he's not. I know many CFers are saying we need to give this more time, that it's not Melo's fault. Put me in the camp that disagrees. Melo may be a good friend and a nice guy, but his selfishness is having a detrimental affect on the locker room. TL;DR: The experiment has already failed. It's time to cut our losses and move on.
Sorry to be harsh, but this is all pure speculation. Did it really need its own thread? I don't really expect this from you, Topfive. At this point everyone is losing their minds searching for answers, and this is a conspiracy that has everyone hooked in right now like reality TV. Cut Melo, fine. But that doesn't deal with MCW, Ennis, Nene, Knight, Chriss, and our general lack of shooting. I just can't get behind the idea that guys can't hit shots because they're so mentally distraught about Melo's existence.
I said it a couple of times before--if Melo can't succeed on this team, regardless of role, then his career is done. It's a failed experiment overall. If he and the team cannot be aligned on how a 7th-8th rotation player plays then it's time for both sides to part ways.
lol. Sorry to disappoint. What's NOT speculation at this point: Melo is unhappy with his role, so much so that it's become public knowledge that he wants to discuss it with the team. MDA is ticked off enough to show it to reporters when questioned, telling them to "talk to Daryl." He also has indicated he doesn't want to give Melo a bigger role. We've been sucking, and there are a lot of reasons why. What we absolutely don't need right now is our new addition being selfish about his role. I've seen this movie before, a few seasons back. I already know how it ends. It's hard to be optimistic about righting the ship without addressing the actual cause.
This season definitely has shades of 2015. (Yet in 2015 Lawson wasn't really the 'cause' of what transpired that year. His career decline was just multiplied by a rotten core at that point.) It wasn't clear at the time exactly what was going on behind closed doors, nor is it super clear at this point. We have secondhand evidence that Melo is disgruntled, but we don't even know "the why". We know that D'Antoni is peeved (rightfully so). But he also said Melo has been "fine". Cut Melo, great, no problem. I'm just begging for Morey to find some new blood regardless of what happens. Throw Jimmer Fredette on the bench. Sign the corpse of Brandan Wright. At this point I don't really care. But we have to keep rolling the dice to find some offensive spark and some defensive rebounding. I guess my beef with Rockets fans right now is that too many people are here are using this Melo situation as an "excuse" for the many ills this team currently has. To me it's just a distraction from the fact that our roster is really poorly constructed. SOS.
A million Melo threads before/when he arrived. A million Melo threads as he exits. @Os Trigonum says bring on all your new Melo threads (because once he's gone, he's gone)! I.D.I.O.T
For the record, Dwight was the cause of 2015's implosion. Lawson was just a bad idea that didn't work out. But yeah, I agree that Melo isn't the only issue, and that keep-him or cut-him, Morey's got a ****-ton of work to do to make this thing work again. But having everyone on the same page is a good place to start.
That could be true. But I think is still speculation at this point. I would counter with @The Cat's analysis where Morey/MDA know they need to double down on defense much earlier than expected to dig out of hole that will necessitate Melo taking some DNP-CD's in certain games. Something they did not think would happen THIS EARLY in the season. Morey presents this to Melo, and he can decide if he is ok with that and stay. Or else be cut loose.
What is odd to me is that our team played well in the play-offs with some (but not a lot of help) from Anderson which faded to zip by the time we faced the Warriors, no real help from Mbah and then a good amount of help from Trevor who flamed out towards the end with the Warriors. We weren't going 8,9 or 10 deep. We were a good team against the Warriors and our only loss was Ariza. I get that we might be worse, or that we may need time to assimilate new players, but the idea that we went from great to terrible is crazy to me. I think Melo has played ok except for the Timberwolves game. Can he really have soured the locker room that much this early? Or is it the Jimmy Buckets distraction? Injuries? I don't know. But I still don't know what is true about who is saying what between Melo and coaching/front office so can't decide if Melo is creating a problem or not.
I thought it was primarily the Butler thing. But Melo needing to talk to the team about his role 11 games into the season is a giant red flag.
I get that. I'm not sure who approached whom or what was said. I may have missed it because I saw the "Melo Ball" tweet and then this morning I saw the D'Antoni quote etc. Do we have any credible information on whether Melo is actually complaining at this point?
Good article here in the Chronicle from Brian Smith (also agrees that Melo isn't the only problem and that other stuff needs fixing). This little quote got my attention, though: "I will also point out, though, that there was a behind-closed-doors understanding when the Rockets finally landed Anthony last summer. If the experiment was not working, the organization would move on as quickly as possible during a season when the only goal that mattered was finally overcoming the Golden State Warriors and winning the franchise’s first world championship since 1995."
Any old skool Rockets fan should know the value of Team Chemistry. The 93-94 and 94-95 Rockets werent loaded on talent. They had one of the best players to play the game and some excellent role players that knew their roles and enjoyed excellent chemistry. We used to thrash the Jazz regularly because our chemistry was great. A few years down the road we got Barkely and Pippen etc etc. While we were loading up on talent, we never had the chemistry of those championship teams. By then the Jazz had excellent chemistry which is why they were whooping us in the playoffs. The table had turned. We were very fortunate with how the team gelled last season. There were two big reasons we were able to challenge the Warriors in the playoffs. Defense and Chemistry and sadly we destroyed both this off-season.
The team lost confidence when Tillman showed no confidence in them. It's fine if he thought Ariza was aging and not worth $15M, but he didn't spend money on anyone else, either. Only minimum wage scrubs to replace key parts of the 65 win team.
boy, this is quite an extension of your boring narrative. Now Harden, Paul, PJ and Capela have lost confidence because Tilman wants to avoid tax, despite all of them loving their contracts? "Tilman, make sure you pay me, but if you don't also pay Ariza and Luc, then I'm going to totally lose confidence...I'll have no confidence, I'm serious, like non."
it was the playoffs, they were in form, they were serious about winning and played hard, harder than ever... you cant expect them to play that hard this early in the season
Its all speculation.... I'm not in the inner circle... I'm not there... idk - and neither do other people... It's one thing to accept a backup role on a championship... contributing in a limited fashion to a successful program... it's another to be a back up on a 4-7 team... and dealing with a bunch of internet pinheads blaming you for a teams downturn - even in games you didnt play in! lol If he wants to have a conversation - great! Thats known as communication - its what adults do... I'd rather have that (and hopefully reach a mutually beneficial situation) than have some guy all butt hurt bringing down morale... I'm not saying he has been bringing down morale - jus saying better to have a convo rather than that potential... but of course, it's Melo... so 'damned if he does and damned if he dont' on this board....
