Everyone apart from Harden on this team has been converted in to a 3 point shooter. Players for whom 3 point shooting was never a strong point in their careers like Parsons, Patterson and Lin. Harden has the keys to do whatever he wants and everyone else just brings the ball up to the 3 point line and dumps it off to him. Well I guess as long as we can help Harden win the scoring title it will be a greater feat than anything the Rockets have done for the last few years. Great victory for Morey and company. True superstar in Houston. Dumb fans, who don't even have the decency to be seated before the game starts will also be happy watching a guy score 30 points every night, even if it means every one else will suck. This is just the Tracy McGrady experiment repeated again. Win win situation for everyone I guess. Harden is by far the best player on this team, but I can't imagine how others on the team must feel playing next to him. If he sometimes doesn't play well against good teams (OKC, Heat) it's okay since the team sucks anyways and there is no talent and the poor guy is being double and triple teamed yada yda yada. If he plays great (today), and score at the expense of other people, he is the savior and every one else on the team must be traded. Harden can't defend Mayo? Oh no worries, let's see who else we can bench. Ah there is Lin, our #1 escape goat. Off to the bench eremy. As for Lin, he better start getting his **** together, even though it's difficult to do that when your coach routinely benches you for whole quarters. I am thinking that perhaps it will be better for him to go to a team like the Bobcats or Hornets where he can just play and improve without the pressures of a whimsical coaching team. Rockets at the moment are lacking good bench options and he can perhaps be traded for a backup shooting guard or point guard, allowing Toney Douglas to be the new starting point guard since it seems (for whatever reason) that McHale and Kelvin both favor him over Lin. And remember this is a guy who was single handedly responsible for the Knicks' terrible start to last season and was regularly derided by his own fans. If it has come to a point where he is getting more playing time than Lin than perhaps things have reached to a point of no return. Something has to eventually give. Pacquiao lost too. What a terrible ****ing night.
So what are you trying to say? Harden is the reason we're losing? My word....I really hope that's not what you're trying to say...
I am saying that the coaching team should try to involve more people in the offense. They have killed everyone's confidence by handing Harden the keys every single play and making them stand in the corners for three point shots. This is not how a team should be run and it is disgraceful, quite frankly. There was a sequence where Harden was on the bench and nobody wanted to shoot the ball, leading to a 24 second violation. When you elevate one player so much over everybody else, and blame them for the smallest things, it just destroys their confidence. There is no team basketball in this Rockets team. There is only Harden ball. This is one reason I love how the Spurs play because they play like a team and have a coach that gets everybody involved in their offense.
Well I think we are all in the agreement that the coaching staff has done a pretty bad job this season overall. No disrespect, that's just how it is. But the Rockets are young. The chemistry is still growing, and it's gonna take some time. Spurs have been together for years, and having Pop as their coach obviously helps big time. They'll be alright.
What I don't understand about the excessive play time for Douglas is that he has already reached his peak and probably isn't going to get much better. It's not about being LOF or HOF it's about who gives us the best chance to win in the future. A developing, albeit struggling Lin or a peaked Douglas playing mediocre defense? I want to win games right now for the sake of attractiveness to FA but I also would like to see the talent we paid multi millions being developed. WHICH MEANS PLAY THEM! Ps. It was very hard to continue reading your post seriously when you called Lin an "escape goat". I believe the term is scapegoat.
Yes true. This is once again the difference between someone like Popovich and McHale. The first time I saw Popovich get into Duncan's face I was really shocked but realized that this is what true accountability means. This is one more reason I laughed watching the Knicks last season when Woodson came and said there would be "accountability" for everyone. Every game what he would do is scream in the faces of scrubs like JR Smith or Douglas etc and would never have the cojones to rant off the superstars on the team.
true , he shouldn't get a free pass for his lack of effort at the defensive end, but you can't totally blame him as well, our coaching staff played him 40+ min every single game and asked him to run the offense by himself most of the time . he probably just too tired to do stay infront of his opponent.
There is your answer. When they go away from using Harden no one can score... Any ways...McHale says some things about this. I'm not sure what else they are supposed to do? They do give Parsons the ball a lot and he can create and score...but the other players have proven that in this offense they cannot consistently do that. What are we supposed to do? Post up Asik instead? Let Patterson go to work? It's pretty much a ISO pnr offense with Parsons and Harden and sometimes Lin gets the chance to do some.
Well you can tell them to set screens but Patterson is only going to pretend to set them. It sucks. He's the worse player on the starting 5 and is hurting the team with his lack of effort on the boards and his greedy picks where he's not ever fully set because he's too worried about getting the ball after the pick. Honestly I think the team would be much better rolling with D-mo/Jones at the 4 and them taking their lumps. But we kind of have to keep playing him to keep his value going up. People outside of Houston are starting to think he's a good player. He's a solid player, a bench player that is about it.
Setting screens is not so easy with this team. Besides Asik, no one can really do it. It's sad and funny at the same time.
I'm saying this now. Asik and Lin will be traded eventually. Book it. Neither are a good fit with Harden.
Blame the guy who dropped 40 points with amazing efficiency. Is it really that hard for you to admit that Lin is an average point guard? Don't answer that. "Score at the expense of other people" lol
