ClutchFans Game Thread: Pelicans @ Rockets 12/18/2014

I am less unhappy with Black. He always puts in effort, and had at least one good drive/feed from Harden.

Dorsey, on the other hand... is perhaps the worst big we have ever had. A complete nothing. Last night the Pelicans scored inside and Clyde said... "thats what happens when you don't have a big shotblocker in there". That was when Howard was out and Dorsey was in. If Dorsey isn't in there for his defense ("the best defensive big in Europe") what else is he in there for... it can't be his offense, since he can't even score next to the basket.

 

You are over reacting big time. This is not a classic let down game. They just had a late night game in Denver in which went into over time. The starters played 40+ minutes each dude. And you actually expected them to with energy.

 

Exactly. The team probably didn't get to Houston until around 4am or later. The team played pretty much how I expected.

 

Anthony Davis is scary-good. SMH that he has already passed Dwight as the best big man in the league. Scary

 

Even scarier... he will get bigger, and better. Much better.

 

IMO in the game against Denver our defense was pretty sloppy. Last night's game, the defense was much better, but we had absolutely no legs underneath us to compete. You could tell on both of Harden's 3pt attempts and Howards missed dunks and layups that both players were fatigued.
The NBA has to do something about these back-to-back games in different time zones.
However, another thing I don't understand is why we played our stars so much last night when we finally had a number of guys on the bench. Let's build upon the success that those bench players had while Howard was out, and give our depth a chance to grow.
All in all it was a tough loss. When we are health and rested Pelicans don't stand a chance.

 

Just because he isn't shooting well doesn't mean he isn't a key piece to the team. Without him and hid D we wouldn't be 19-6.

 

Maybe. But, we definitely wouldn't be 19-6 without Harden. This team is only average or worse without Harden. The fact is Harden is the one winning the games at the end of the fourth quarters (and OTs) with the game on the line. We all know that. This team is going nowhere with that bench, though. The starters are going to burn out playing all these minutes. But, we will see what this team is made of in these upcoming games here.

 

Rockets played decent considering everything. Davis is a beast and we were second night of a tough back to back. Most of our shots were short. The missed layups were troubling, but Davis caused some. Dwight is working his way back and he will. I'm putting this loss mostly on Brow and tired legs.

 

Not that I'm looking for excuses, but come on... You finish a game in Denver, having all of the 5 starters playing 41-46 minutes in that game, and then you have 18 hours to travel a thousand miles and recover for the next one. The flight takes away 2 and a half hours. Normally, the guys are in the gym warming up at least 2 hours before the game, so basically the guys had just over 13 hours of recovery time. That includes getting home from the airport. Pretty crazy. Sometimes I need this much time of sleep just to be able to get up and walk next day after I had a local league game previous night...not that this is any kind of a benchmark, but least of what I'm trying to say, I get it that they weren't nearly explosive enough. And they managed to stay in the game competing almost until the end... against a team which had a day to rest.

First bad game for DMo after a good stretch. I was anticipating for this to happen some time. Now it's very important for him to come back strong again, this will say a lot about him. He got blocked, got pushed and hit, missed open shots, lost his man on defense multiple times. Had a bit of everything in one night. So this moment is very important for him as a player to try not to lose his confidence, as it's been a story for so many players, including himself last couple of seasons after he's had some good stretches. Especially as it is going to be a very tough stretch of games to end the month of Dec. All the five teams with very solid front court players. I'm already getting nervous about this.

 

Thanks for the info, hopefully it's not as bad as the labrum injury...

 

They looked at him a lot, why would they just abandon something that was so effective in prior games? He just had a bad matchup, it happens. He had trouble getting post position at times.

I was disappointed in the effort towards the end of the game. I know they were tired but they got discouraged and stopped trying defensively.

 

True, but at least less shot attempts.

I don't even care if he's open, just pass it up.