Tha_Dude thought this was thread worthy. So here it is: This is regarding the effect on the plays where Harden sags high. I feel like Memphis is an excellent defensive team, but we opened the can they've had on our offense and Harden (or lack there of) was the can opener. To me, they are incredibly pesky to deal with because Tony Allen is a really clever, talented defensive minded player. That picked pocket play right by the sideline proves what he does. Harden's answer was to start the play from 35 feet out or more and stay there. The effect was that it was essentially 4 on 4 with Allen being baited out of position. You do have to guard Harden when he sags and if you back off and try to help, he can always hit a catch and shoot. Forcing 4 on 4 really changed their defensive schemes more than it did our offensive ones. I wonder if we'll see that again against better defensive squads. Something to watch for. Brilliant coaching (most likely coaching, but it could just be Harden's idea) by our staff! MDmA is legit! I wonder if our other deep threats in Gordon and Anderson can run similar sets?
Images are awesome. So is added spacing. This was an awesome idea that I feel like I've seen before during the season, but we really used it a lot to solve the Memphis puzzle. We took their best one on one defender and made him useless. As soon as Allen would go out, it seemed like Harden went back to playing regular offense. This strategy killed their 5 man defensive schemes. They weren't clogging the lane anymore, the three point line was free-ish. Really great job by the team last night. I'm just glad everyone was up for it.
It's almost funny how much this team has improved over last season, we have the 3rd best winning percentage in the league right now. Yet, this is a completely new team with new parts, new coaching, new player roles, young players getting time, so it's safe to say that the chemistry here is still a work in progress. Rockets have had one of the toughest schedules and more B2B games than any other team so far to start the season. This my friends, is the making of something great and we should all appreciate this. If healthy, I think this Rockets team is capable of going all the way. I know, there will be doubters among us and rightfully so because of how many years we've had to endure disappointment. But, just keep hanging on dudes. Don is showing you here why this team is different, because we have the pieces and the coaching to where we can make adjustments now. Dude loves all of you.
I'm so glad that D'Antoni didn't lose the love for coaching after terrible stints in Los Angeles (where you're from, Lebowski) and New York and assistant coaching with the lowly Sixers. Many would have given up on the dream of finding the right pieces to make it happen. Things have taken really great shape in many ways. The whole staff is doing great, even Bzdelik is making late game adjustments that are working great. The defense is surprisingly good this year. Not that we play lockdown d, but we're winning games with it in the crunch.
Well, Mike D didn't do anything wrong in L.A. He was just hampered with a horrible Kobe Bryant contract that was essentially make up sex from the Lakers. I also wonder how much of that went to Joey Crawford, but that's a topic for another thread. Dude doesn't live in L.A. The dude was born in Houston, but lived most of his younger life in Metairie, outside of New Orleans. I attended Ecole Classique academy. Dropped out of school, started my own business, moved back to Houston many years ago.
I'm pretty sure this is not a Dantoni play. Harden got a feel for the game and he does what he thinks might help the team win. Luckily now we have Gordon to be a play maker when Harden plays decoy. I've seen a lot more off the ball moves from Harden lately which I really like next to Gordon. But to be honest this thing of standing at mid court is not my favorite M.O in a playoff series. There are easy solutions for that defensively.
I would like to see how Houston does in their final meeting, because so far Houston in their 3 meetings, two of them were of Houston breaking out to big leads. It's far easier to correct an issue of giving up leads, as opposed to correcting the issue of playing from behind all the time. If Houston can break out to a big lead again in their final meeting and win convincingly, Memphis would perhaps not be as dangerous of an opponent as initially suspected. Gasol will always be a problem but putting Harden on him seems to be a pretty viable solution so far. They key is taking advantage of mismatches and making the open shot, because Memphis gave up a lot of them to Houston, and in particular Sam Dekker this game. Gordon and Harden in particular were completely carving up Memphis on the PnR and they had absolutely no answer for it. They opted to switch as a final attempt to stop the PnR, but Gordon and Harden were beating up on Gasol after that. However, this was actually the same strategy that SAS utilized, switching their bigs instead of giving up on the PnR. The problem was Houston failed to take advantage of the switches and did not extend the lead enough to beat SAS. I feel like if Houston can bring in a legitimate big man with a solid post game, it will open up an entirely new dimension for our offense. Both Memphis and SAS have utilized switching as an attempt to stop the James Harden PnR, but we cannot rely on Harden to beat the big man every time. It's far easier to have the big man post up on a smaller player.
I'm very curious to see the adjustment we make the next time we play the Warriors. In the 2nd half of that particular game the Warriors trapped Harden hard on every PnR. Forcing either a turnover or completely disrupting our offensive flow. We had no answer whatsoever. So im curious to see how MDA adjust. Don do you think MDA would use this philosophy against them in our next meeting?
One difference between the last few seasons and this one - COACHING Under McFail and BJ, we would just run the same **** on a different day and make no adjustments. Mike Antonio has proved to be a NBA level coach and make adjustments as needed.
I remember local high school teams doing it over a decade ago. So even if it was his idea, this set probably doesn't make into the 7 seconds or less volume 2 book. I'm sure McHale is blown away though, probably texted Lin to ask why he never drew that up.
nice write up... But you do realize this 4on4 scheme explains Dekker's big game, so might not be replicable with other teams....unless other teams clone Allen.
sounds good but i would say the only difference is we have better shooters this year...guys are making shots btw the scheme presented in this thread sounds nice also but if sam doesnt hit his open shots this game is close just like the previous one
its also unreplicable if he doesnt hit his open shots, and he wasnt hitting them lately ps there is article in dish about teams doing the same thing to SA early in the season, isolating kawhi and playing 4 vs 4 and it was seemingly sucessfull so much so that SA had better defensive rating with kawhi off the floor
Nice thought, but it doesn't really make logical sense. The rockets offense minus harden is never a better option. Sure you take Allen out of the play, but this is not a sustainable model because the rockets 4v4 are not as good as higher seeded teams 4v4. as @hakeem94 said, we got away with it because we made shots, but it absolutely will not work against good teams. Sometimes you see Harden cut from the top of the key when he can catch his defender watching, and the success rate is pretty high when he does, but if Harden wants to make this team even more dangerous he needs to do a lot more moving without the ball.
