I wouldn't underestimate mills, he has heart and fights hard. Now parker is out he knows its up to him to pickup the guard slack. He has shown in the past he is a capable replacement for parker
Thx for the site. But I thought you actually showed that @DonKnock was onto something. One of the biggest moments for our bench is that long stretch in the 2nd when Harden has his biggest rest. And like don said, it prevented us from going off That was one of the adjustments I posted in the adj thrread to look for....something to address our bench from beating them. Kawhi exactly matched Harden in game one doing Harden's odd full 1st and 3rd., and our bench destroyed them in 2nd by 13 points Pops changed it to have him play entire 2nd...significant adjustment, imo. As significant as Gasol starting, imo. Good call.. That was a big adjustment. I didn't really notice he played the whole 2nd q.
IT made a claim after today's game. Come out aggressive and the refs will let you play that way the whole game, punch first. If not, you're not getting calls later.
They figured our pick&roll. They hedged strongly or went under the p&r, daring Harden to shoot semi-contested 3s. They put Gasol on Ariza and when Harden was driving to the hoop, Pau left Ariza all alone and defended the pain instead. Harden and Ariza are pretty inconsistent 3pt shooters, so they picked their "poison" and won.
There is no strategy other than for Harden to actually TRY this game. If he comes out indecisive & lazy then we've already lost
Pretty much this, indecisive/lazy or injured (which is my take for last game), if Harden plays well/ok we can win (same for game 2), if he's a no show we have no chance.
Yeah. I see the point you and @DonKnock are making now. My bad. That said ... sample size of 1 is pretty limited. Granted that's the playoffs and you're making adjustments off one game... but there's also the fact that Lou Williams had just played 6 fantastic games in a row. The same guy who couldn't string together two when he got to the Rockets. Maybe he was just due?? Or maybe it was Kawhi. Kawhi didn't play to start the 4th and that was worse. Also I don't see how the team can win a championship much less one or more series against great wellmcoached teams if they can't figure out a way to squeeze out some victories in the playoffs with their bench just being meh. Double also... the radical move that MDA could do of course would be to sit Harden earlier like with 3 minutes left, bring him back to start the 2nd and 4th and give him another 3 minute break sometimes around 6-9 minute mark. But this isn't happening. I think Harden and MDA both prefer current rotation. So MDA is left with tinkering around the edges. Maybe he does the above with Ariza instead. Seems to make some sense to me.
I like the rotation for Harden in the first half. The bench usually comes in and pushes pace in the 2nd and we typically gain a lead because our bench is so good. This is why Kawhi was in there for the entire 2nd. We need to finish out the last 2 minutes of the 1st if Kawhi rests early again. Give Harden his rest to start the 2nd but maybe only 4 minutes or so. The 2nd half is where I would like to see a change. Give Harden rest at end of 3rd, like 2 minutes. Give him another 2 minutes to start the 4th. Staggering his rest with the end of quarter timeout gives him a much "longer" break than the minutes dictates and should be plenty of rest to finish the game. Also, I want to see Gordon come in earlier. With them trying to trap and deny Harden getting the ball out of his hands I would like to see another creator out there earlier. I really like those sets with both Gordon and harden with Gordon handling. It almost always results in an open catch and shoot 3 for Harden or a cut to a wide open basket for Harden.
Hey, I'm not really talking about if an adjustment worked or not...although, I believe this one definitely did. I think it's good convo just to point them out and discuss. It's also important to look at Game 1, imo. That 15-2 run to start the 2nd had to stop. You knew Pops had to change something. I don't need to make it sound like it will work forever, just saying that it was an adjustment as significant as Gasol starting, and worth fans like us discussing, because my bet is MDA surely is. As for the 4th, yeah, maybe it is just about the 2nd Q, because there you know Harden always rests 6 minutes. In the 4th, he has come back in much sooner...so strategy might back fire, by taking Kawhi out in the 3rd. Also, the 3rd was Harden's best quarter, and Pops might have decided on the fly to match minutes because of that. I agree with @JayZ750 on this Agree. That won't happen. We are too successful (in a fragile way) and entrenched (with balsa wood supports) in a rotation of Harden playing all the 1st/3rd to change now. Also because the ripple effect is bigger than the Spurs, since the bench and starters have settled in on that rotation.
Right.. it is a small sample size, but looks like the adjustment worked for one game. We'll see what MDA does. As far as adjustments overall go, the biggest thing is the return to trend of losing the first quarter. Yes, the Rockets bench was always good, and made much better by Lou when he's on. But the Rockets starters used to be pretty good, too. I love the resiliency the team has shown so far this playoffs. Even last game, they were still there are **** performances by a lot of folks through the end of the 3rd. But I hope by now MDA has noticed we're now talking about 6 out of 7 games where the 1st quarter hasn't been great. The team seems to really thrive on early starts. I don't think they need to go as far as scripting the first 5 plays (like NFL would script an opening drive)... but I wouldn't be opposed to it. I know MDA has some great play drawing up skills, and plays in his back pocket. We need like 3 good looks, in the lane, to start the game, to start the flow, and start the energy, etc. I cringe when I think about the reality of likely being down 13-7 or something like that 4 minutes into the game..
we shall see if mills can do it consistently in the playoffs now...having said that installing both Gasol/Mills in the starting lineup depletes their bench...no one scares me coming off the spurs bench...they can't pull both mills/kawhi off the floor at the same time without risk and LMA can't show up laying another egg this weekend...too many holes in my opinion...now Bev can focus on harassing kawhi pushing the ball up half court to wear him down as an option and harden can hang in the corner isolating kawhi away from the action as another option at times
The other thing the Spurs spent the whole first half doing is throwing the ball to whoever Harden was guarding and having them run around for about 5 seconds. This slowed the pace of the game down for their old legs while also making Harden's more tired. In the second half they did it more intermittently. They also began waiting for a double in the post and swinging the ball to wherever the double had came from. This also slowed the game down while simultaneously getting them open looks. Plus it let them keep playing their 2 big lineups to pack the paint defensively. What the Rockets can't do is let Kawhi cheat off of his man near the nail/elbow because he leans over and pokes the ball out mid drive. He did this 3 times in the second game, twice on Harden and once on Lou.
With Parker out we of course are going to see more mills , but also probably more Simmons ... Which could be a problem . When mills is off the floor , my guess is that they let gino/kawhi run the offense and perhaps try to work it into the bigs more often. Simmons presents a problem because he is athletic as hell . I'd like to see us match Simmons with Dekker and tell him to lock him down and keep him off the glass .
