[The Athletic] Rockets Film Room: Russell Westbrook is Houston’s ‘5%,’ plus preseason clips

Hmm, gonna be honest, Im skeptical of getting rid of the switch scheme. I think it's alot easier for our players to communicate defensively. But I donno, I guess we dont choice if our rebounding is gonna tank that badly as a result.

 

I can't read the Athletic but assume there's a lot in the article about DMo's pending move back to the Rockets?

 

What I gathered from this tidbit is defense will start to work after all-star break, at the earliest.

 

I am disappoint

 

Awesome, lots of stuff that was pointed out by several people here. Like Clemons impressing, Blossomgame looking decent, House’s role and the less switching defense. Thank the heavens for Turner!

That all switch defense still haunts my dreams as it put Nene on Curry and kept Nene out of the game when we needed rebounding. That was a complete coaching failure and largely falls on Bzdelik, but also Mike.

 

the switch everything defense was proven to be a top 5 capable defense. lets see what happens if these changes becomes actually true. it was put in place mostly for the way GS was constructed in the first place. I guess now that KD is gone, there's a bit of room to alter it a bit

 

Keeping the C at the rim doesn't play to Capela's strengths. He will struggle and of course half the board will sh*t on him for it.

I am not optimistic about being a top 5 defensive team with Harden and WB starting. Hope I'm wrong.

 

Why? Being in a drop coverage more means he will be able to secure defensive rebounds and not be switched onto perimeter guards, which he was bad at last year. They are doing this partially to play to his strengths.

 

I thought that the biggest downside to not switching is giving up more open 3’s. We smothered GS and everyone else in 17-18 with that scheme and rebounding was not an issue.

I guess we have to abandon it in order to get rebounds, but we may have to sacrifice giving up wide open 3’s in the process. I really want to see it vs GS. If Clint’s man goes to set a pick for Steph and Clint doesn’t switch isn’t that instant death vs elite shooting teams? This is the price that has to be paid for not adding length and rebounding to our front court the past 2 off seasons.

 

Media already buying into Tilman's book

 

There’s very few players in the league who can burn you when you employ a more traditional fight-thru-the-screens defensive strategy. Curry, Harden, Klay, Lillard, that’s about it.

Switching everything worked like a charm when there was absolute team cohesion with our CP3-Ariza-Tucker-Harden-Capela unit, but last year it absolutely fell apart. First, you had new rotation pieces (and this flabby statue named Carmelo) who didn’t show hard enough on the switches and allowed their perimeter guys to split the two defenders with ease. Then you had Capela who previously could lock down Curry on the perimeter in the playoffs suddenly lose that ability entirely.

The good thing about switching was that it allowed us to sit Harden’s ass in the paint where he proved an immovable force. If they wanna go back to Capela there, were going to have to ask Harden (and WB) to actually have some court awareness and not allow all the backcuts they usually do.

 

Ding ding ding. With gsw not the same I dont think.we need it as much. We will still use it tho

 

Thank god for less switching. I feel like switching can only be done well when you have 3 guys who could defend everyone but we kept switching even if the only elite defender we had last year was PJ Tucker.