He can probably shoot as well, maybe even better. Casspi is a legit 6'9 and I saw him knock down some crazy shots. But you are right, they are not close in each and every other facet of the game. Just the fact KL is one of Pop's favs tells you the dude is special. Casspi will never attain that level...as Israeli and biased as I maybe...
I think Twin Towers is a great way to start the game. Force your opponent to take contested mid range jumpers for the first 5 minutes and disrupt their flow... then make them play catch-up to our high efficiency offense throughout the rest of the game. You know that saying, defense wins championships? I think it also implies that defense wins games.
I also like the Twin Towers, especially at the start of the game to get the defense started on the right foot. The starting lineup is very strong defensively with Bev now starting.
I think Casspi is better suited to come off the bench, not to mention we want to keep Asik somewhat happy.
Watching the Heat, they are obviously at their best when they are running their spread offense with Battier at the 4. They won the finals with that lineup. However, in the regular season they do start a more traditional lineup with Haslem. Rockets may be thinking along the same lines. Asik/Howard is a lineup that you play as much as you can as long as you can get away with it. By starting with it, they can get an idea of if the matchup is right on that particular night. Most of the time, I am expecting smallball/spread offense for the majority of the game after the first 4-5 minutes of the first and third quarters.
Not sure what looked worse tonight for the Asik/Howard combo, the offense or the defense? Defense: Allowing a career 30% 3pt PF rain 3s and even dribble drive/dish for dunks. Offense: Clogged the paint shutting down any driving lanes for Harden. Shut down passing lanes and caused turnovers with no room to operate. Slowed down the pace and completely took us out of our running game. Basically EVERY strength of this team last year was taken away by this lineup. Only 1 game, but it was pretty ugly. If they weren't playing the Bobcats, they would have dug deep holes in the first and third quarters. As it is, they only won the game in the second and fourth, when only 1 big man was in the game. Asik was the only player on the entire team with a negative +/-, and it wasn't even because he was bad. He was actually really good, when it was just him in the game. It was his time with Dwight in the game that killed his +/-. Rebound numbers look nice though, but if you watched the game it was NOT effective. It's still early, but if Josh McRoberts is lighting you up, what happens when we play against an actual stretch 4, like Dirk next game? And I don't see the offensive issues getting resolved either. If they want to keep running this to start the game instead of as a situational lineup, they have a lot to work on.
The Asik/Howard duo is hopefully done forever. It was bad in the preseason and it looks much much worse in the regular season. What really bothers me is that the Rockets offense looked completely out of sorts for 7 minutes after Asik left the game. Where is the guard penetration? Certainly nowhere to be seen. A complete mess. The Casspi experiment against starting power forwards is hopefully done also.
mchale is stubborn with this cause he thinks asik is a top 5 player... it's necessary to have one of them in game at all time for paint defense but not both.
Asik/Howard duo needs full-strength backcourt which is able to move, move the ball and hit their perimeter shots. Harden was visibly bothered by his back and couldn't drive to the basket like he normally can. Defensively we were fine, I'm perfectly willing to give up couple of threes to Josh McGalifianakis, who is, as mentioned, a 30% career three point shooter. And the Asik/Howard duo looked good in the preseason, great at times when the matchups were favorable.
I think it is going to become evident fairly quickly that small ball is by far this team's best lineup. I'd rather not dig a hole to climb out of every game before going to our strengths. If small ball is getting pounded, then you can bring in the towers for matchup purposes. Not the other way around, IMO. And if we do start small ball, it will be Casspi.
Casspi was fine. He kept the floor spread to allow the rest of his teammates operate, and stayed on McRoberts to take away his 3s. That's why the team was a +8 with him on the floor.
Actually, if we really wanted zero performance, it would be Dmo and Jones. You can check the boxscore for their stat lines. 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Asik still seems like the lesser of two evils. Also, this whole time I was misspelling Casspi's name as Cassipi, how silly of me.
Garcia was the real floor spacer tonight. +18 and 5 threes made top scorer with Harden Never heard you praise him
we out-rebounddc the cats with 20! we can shoot 20 more times than the cats! thats why we win even if Harden, Parsons had a off night.
