The Rockets get exposed by hanging their hats on D

Ow yeah, forgot about that top 5 defense Morey was spewing about after the deadline. Has he been watching us lately? We have gone from third to tenth, so that means we played some terrible defense and the scores alone should tell you that. We didn't give up a 100 points a lot in November, but lately we've given up 110/120 easily.

 

Spoiler

So they're getting D slapped?

 

Even with a 80-90% Dwight our interior defense and defensive rebounding will improve greatly.

 

Defense isn't as good without our All-NBA defensive Center.

This isn't surprising to anybody, is it?

 

We will be fine with all that flexibility we got. Look we have done pretty well so far.

Just SMH

 

cant see the rolling stone cover?

 

It looked good, yes, but it was largely overachieving. Not to discredit us at all, but there were many games where the opposing teams just didn't hit open shots, and yes, Tarik Black was playing well, too.

Dwight was pretty clearly unhealthy this season, but even then he was far better than what we have now. If he comes back before the playoffs, we'll have a shot. If not, we won't. I guess we'll find out.

 

Going from your previous post, you seem obviously biased towards Morey for whatever reason. Even with that in mind, come on man... are you freaking serious? We are missing Dwight Howard in our lineup. Repeat that to yourself about a million times and when you are done, repeat it about a million more times. WE DON'T HAVE DWIGHT HOWARD. Say what you want about his offense, but even an injured Dwight playing instead of Mini-Dwight is still infinitely better for our D.

 

Morey's defense (nor is any) built to sustain the loss of of a player like Dwight. Our interior D is clearly lacking without him, but its a matter of sustaining that ineptitude at this point.

With that said, this team is SCARY on D with Dwight in the middle.

To quote Tupac, keep ya head up.

 

It's pretty clear that our roster is built to force turnovers and get extra possessions by gambling, shutting down passing lanes, and getting shotblocking (D.How, jones, kj). It's like, an all-in moreyball concept of creating offense (more possessions) through defense. Unfortunately, teams have adapted.

We need to keep our own turnovers down and McHale's inept offensive sets are destroying us, as well as careless play from our players. the number of TOs we committed tonight is inexcusable.

 

"The Rockets are playing TOO MUCH defense" - Onion headline from 2013.

In all seriousness guys, it's important to wrap up your D, but don't let it compromise your O.

 

I felt for this season, the games in which our FG% was higher than opposite are around 50% of all game played, so I am not surprised that the defensive ranking is not on the top even with Howard on the court.

 

Brewer and Ariza both gamble a lot, when it works awesome, when they miss, the other team gets wide open shots.

DD

 

Carl Herrera = truth teller

 

In the first 11 games (1 w/o Howard vs GSW) the defense was ranked
#1 with a DefRtg of 94.3

In the next 11 games w/o Howard the defense was ranked
#6 with a DefRtg of 99.7

After 22 games ranked
#2 with DefRtg of 97.1

In the next 21 games with Howard the defense was ranked
#11 with a DefRtg of 102.1

After 43 games ranked
#4 with DefRtg of 99.5

In the last 10 games without Howard the defense was ranked
#18 with a DefRtg of 103.5

After 53 games ranked
#6 with DefRtg of 100.3

NBA.com Advanced Team Stats- sorted by DefRtg

 

i don't know if you've noticed, but dwight has been out for a while now.

it works when dwight is there to clean up their mistakes.

 

Sorry, I wasn't saying anything was wrong with your data. Just providing a timeline to the decline because NBA.com makes it easy to filter data with dates.