When Harden is on the floor and russ is not , do we need to configure a big man（Hartenstein？）

Hartenstein is on a good way, I am not sure if he can be deployed against a Top team like the Clippers or Milwaukee but surely against teams like the Knicks.

Wished Hartenstein was Capela lite right now.

 

Harden not being an explosive finisher really relied on Clint's lob threat to make defenders not fully commit to him. Now they do and now he's getting swatted.

 

Interesting thought but my gut says no

We either believer in small or we don't

Overall, it has worked well and we should be better with a bit more time

Harden is new to this and still learning

Green got 0 rebounds in 12 mins of play last night and I think if have just got 2-3 def rebounds we would have won

Too early to talk about this. Let the team ride this out through playoffs and can re-evaluate during the off season but I think we will be fine

Go Rockets!

 

Extend the 'lineup

Reduce Harden's. Minutes.

Rocket River

 

i bet harty makes a lot of head scratching mistakes in practice.

but yeah i don't think it's asking much to run him the 10-15 minutes that russ isn't on the floor.

 

nope

 

We should atleast our Tyson on the floor when harden is alone with 2nd unit at certain times

 

This is where you lose any type of credibility. Everything is Hardens fault or due to his shortcomings.
Now let’s discuss what the Knicks defensively that caused issues. After the third quarter I counted 6 illegal 3 second violations that weren’t called. Robinson, Gibson and Randle would run to the paint and literally camp.
I stopped counting after that, they also left PJ wide open and again shaded Westbrook or Harden in the paint (illegal and not guarding anyone). Harden even point at the paint and yells at the refs pointing out the Illegal D MD did as well.
Now if a team is giving you that corner three we have to have someone who’s gonna hit that shot.
Secondly the shooter on the corner cannot cut across (BMac was guilty of this) you have to pull the ball back and get that illegal D call.
Knicks also never got a 3 second violation on offense, hate to say it but they bet the refs wouldn’t make those call and they were correct.

 

You really are aggressive huh. Those observations you just made are not mutually exclusive to the fact that Harden really relied on the lob threat to have defenders not fully commit to Harden to make it easier for him to finish around the paint.

He's really been struggling not only in this Knicks game but for the past few weeks with finishing around the rim. I've noticed his attempts at the rim getting blocked far more often.

Unlike Westbrook, he benefits from having a rim running big man rolling to the rim. Chandler might help with that during the minutes that Westbrook is on the bench and Harden is on the court.

 

Guys, I found asian @Williamson's CF account!

 

Unfortunately, the way this team is constructed is gonna be far more vulnerable to upsets than usual. We absolutely have to have high effort and focus, or else even a bad team can tear us up on the boards.

It would be very nice if we could still play Capela for 20-25 minutes every game when needed, but he had to go because our owner gave Morey no alternatives.

 

Totally agree with this. Someone on here (don't remember who) posted a huge breakdown of rockets lineups where we could see with/without Harden, Westbrook, Centers, or non-center lineups. Westbrook, obviously, thrived in the non center lineups. But if you look at situations where Harden is on and Westbrook is off, Harden actually did best with a traditional center next to him (Hart, Capela, and Tyson) compared to small ball, from what I remember. It does seem like he's getting blocked more, and having more trouble at the rim, especially compared to the super speed of Westbrook.

 

Wouldn’t have mattered this game offensively. rebounding wise yes a big would have helped but the way the had the paint clogged( illegally) you had 3 players in there at times. They key to break that is of course Harden gets out of his funk or we have PJ hitting that corner 3 consistently.

 

Harty would have mitigated it to 21? 31 are just hard to come by.

 

Since going small with Harden on and Westbrook off the teams net rating is over 10

No problem there.

 

I think the more options you give Harden, the better, but this has been his 2nd best season at the rim ever. 66% this year. This year, like last year have been a slight dip in percentage of shots at the rim, but not a huge drop off.

In his previous seasons in Houston combined he has gotten a shot blocked 1.2 times per game. This season it’s up to 1.4 shots blocked per game.