Adding another player isn't going to fix what happened tonight . We have the talent man . At best we can hope for a marginal upgrade from Harrell ( in terms of talent ) and more likely our main hope from the FA pile is depth . Our roster right now has the players to win every night . But we've got to out the lineups together . We might be a bit weak at wing D and at big , but Clint and Trevor are more than serviceable and we aren't going to get an upgrade until he offseason . I've been saying this a lot tonight , but the coaching staff needs to step up and play some lineups that can work .
If we're not talking about roster changes, these are the 2 reasons I think we lost tonight: 1. We came out way too hard and didn't pace ourselves (coaches told players before the game to focus really hard on defense). Tired out by the end of the first quarter. Honestly we don't need to play lock down D until the 4th or if we're down by 7+, combined with our style of offense its extremely energy-draining. It's no coincidence that Ariza and Beverly had our two worst FG% tonight and they're our two most defensive-minded players. 2. Player minutes were all kinds of screwed up. Harden 39, Ariza 36, Dekker 11, Harrell 4... James came out playing so hard, looked gassed with some minutes left in the first, should have sat him. Makes me wonder how the minutes are managed. Is there a system among the coaches or do they just wing it? And back to the roster changes, if we had that extra 3&D that would solve the minutes problem. There's a few choices out there...
MPG tonight should have looked something like this: Harden - 34 Beverly - 15 Gordon - 20 Williams - 20 Ariza - 25 Dekker - 15 Anderson - 23 Harrell - 15 Capela - 20 Nene - 15 Morey where are your MPG analytics, I know you have them! (right?)
20 million for ryno that shows up once in a while and offense and no rebounding. Need more from our 4s. Thats why we are gettin crushed on the boards.
We don't play interior defense and James just stands around in the paint. Anderson goes into a funk if he's not hitting his shots. Basically useless if he's not scoring. Once he puts the ball on the floor it's 2 dribbles and a spin move. Teams are now playing us close forcing us to finish at the rim which by the way is a great defensive strategy instead of leaving us open for 3s. Only Lou, Gordon, and James can finish at the rim and James struggles if you push him to his right hand.
This team lives and dies by the 3 ball. Rebounding hurts the Rockets when the 3 is not falling and offense struggles to outscore their opponent.
Biggest weakness is lack of toughness & basic fundamentals (boxing out). Nobody wants to get hurt. I think management knows this, which is why they aren't panicking like most fans. Nene is old, Capela isn't 100%, Anderson & Gordon have been injured in the past and during this season, and so on. No one expected the Rockets to be THIS good and I believe once the playoffs start they will turn it up another notch. My opinion is that they're trying to win games but to also make it to the playoffs without anyone getting injured.
He only played 5 minutes last night in a blowout win & Cousins didn't play. But he did grab 5 rebounds in those 5 minutes. So yes sir, he wouldn't have been a nice pick up... but he's not here.
In the playoffs, they will try and take away their 3s, thus they need to attack the rim constantly. We just saw the Pacers do this to us, but we kept forcing 3s.
We could have really used that WING DEFENDER on Kawhi last night when Ariza had to play the 4 after Ryan went out. Officiating aside, our weak spot really stood out.
