We arguably the most unstoppable offense in the league. It has it's drawbacks, but when it hits (as it should more often with more seasoning and superstar players) it hits hard.
I wouldn't be surprised if the only reason why an early shot is encouraged in our offense is because our set offense blows chunks. "Fishing expeditions" is right. And how many times have we seen similar possessions over the course of the season? McHale has to go.
I cannot believe more people focused on this, Harden and Howard gave up the most points, that's just inexcusable regardless of your enemy. They better make sure that doesn't happen again!!
This team has absolutely no bball iq. To continue jacking up early shots with a 10 point lead with less than 5 minutes to go in a playoff game goes against every basketball principle ever. It's what's cost us many games during the regular season and will be what dooms us in the playoffs unless something changes. It wouldn't even be such a problem if the shots they got early were somewhat good shots, but they were the same types of shots one would easily get after milking the shot clock completely. Harden's ego needs to be toned down a bit, it's starting to get out of control. For all the talk of his bball iq and unselfishness, he is really trying hard to be a hero. Despite his immaturity off court, Dwight is the only guy on the team I feel is serious about winning. As for the guys who are critiquing coach Nick. Whatever you may think of his personality and what he had said in his other videos, he makes nothing but valid points in this one. To disagree with them without providing any arguments whatsoever only points to your ignorance. The coach's and players' decisions down the stretch were downright ridiculous and should not have happened in any sort of professional league. The same goes for our offensive sets. I, as a basketball and a Rockets fan, feel embarrassed that the guys in charge continue to let this happen.
Man, I still can't believe it. This team has all the talent needed to win a championship, if they'd just hire a competent coach to design a few plays and teach the guys how to play winning basketball. They could even do it on the down low and keep McHale as a head coach for appearance's sake. Just hire a guy with an actual basketball education, there's plenty of guys like that coaching random teams in Europe. Basketball is not rocket science ffs.
Everybody needs to calm down, this is just game 1 of what is sure to be a 6 or7 game series, you would think its us fans who are the youngest in the league with all the panic happening..... Alot of good came out of game 1, obviously we came out with a lot of jitters but were able to settle it down throughout the game until ofcourse the last 5 min. This houston team learn on the fly and i have no doubt these last 5 min will do more good than bad for this team in the future Portland are just not a normal 5 seed and these games will all be tough, but what i took from game 1 is this: Our Star had an off game while their stars dominated, and they needed a miracle to win +stupid refs...We are the better team, they are the better coached team...it comes down to how each team will handle pressure, we didnt do that well at all in game 1
You know, I was mulling over the crooked ref possibility before reading this. Now that I have, I need to know which match he will be reffing next? I've got a few bets to make.
There are two reasons. 1.) Most likely compiled by a LOF with a vendetta against the Rockets, so the numbers will be questionable and no one has bothered to check. 2.) It doesn't really provide any worthwhile information. The circumstances of each play are very unique. The breakdown of one defensive assignment could result in a player scoring a different player who was doing his job.
What I mean is why would the ref just change his mind like that? Is this what some people were suggesting in that he may have had some ulterior motive... e.g., intentionally trying to keep the game close (so he knew it was a charge, but then realized he needed to "give the blazers" that one so changed his mind at the last second?) Not saying I agree nor do I really buy into the whole conspiracy theory, but is this supposed to be one of those things that made some people suspicious? I understand that looking at data presented by an "LOF" may cause some skepticism, but IMO it shouldn't be dismissed entirely just for that reason. As you mentioned, if skeptics find the data questionable, then they should check it to make sure it is not blatantly made up or wrong. Or if the data is solid, but there may be some contextual information missing (i.e., as I suggested there should be info about FGA attempts from the opponent, not just points scored), then one should aim to provide it. LOF's may be biased (and as a Lin fan I know I am probably vulnerable to some bias as well) and they may have views that seem very different or alien or outright wrong to other posters, but if they back up their arguments with actual data, then skeptics should explore that data to see whether these views are completely off-based, or if perhaps there are little parts to their arguments that may actually have some merit. The data presented by that "LOF" is interesting to me, because it seems to suggest that Lin's defense was at least not as bad as many think. Again, it is not providing the full picture because it is missing some info, so his defense may look better than it really was from that chart, but it is something that would be interesting to look at (which I would love to do when I have the time). Furthermore, it seems consistent with the xRAPM numbers provided some time ago, which suggested that Lin is a positive on defense, and that it is his problems fitting into the Rockets' offense that is the real issue. So many people seem to have either missed that post, or ignored it altogether, and continue repeating that it is Lin's D that is the problem. Again, not saying that the "numbers are clear" (at least not yet, without further exploration of the data), and the truth of Lin's defense against the blazers probably lies somewhere in the middle between the views of LOFs and skeptics (or LOH, or LOFH, or haters or whatever the proper term is), but I wouldn't surprised if this middle ground still suggests that he was a positive on defense, as it would be consistent with prior xRAPM and recently released real adjusted minus data.
Lin is very fast, much faster than Parsons. He isn't as quick laterally as he is going up and down the court, however. And he doesn't fight through screens particularly well. Nor does he have Bev's fierce tenacity on that end of the floor. As far as Parsons is concerned, he has a size and length advantage over Lin. But McHale definitely isn't putting Parsons on Lillard because Parsons is faster than Lin.
Check out fosters regular season record. http://www.covers.com/pageLoader/pa...ata/nba/referees/2013-2014/referee403920.html
Based on the statistics Foster likes to even out the HCA to the away team. Can we get him on the road games to Portland?