I'm glad you think you know exactly what happened based upon facial expressions you saw on TV. Dear god.
We built our lead when MIA rested their starters. They knew once they put their starters in, they could catch us. When we first got the lead, there was a stretch of plays when we just let them score easily. I felt we could have pounced on them and built a bigger lead early. That's what MEM did to them--built a double-digit lead even their starters could not overhaul. We added a wrinkle to our offense. Harden would pass out of a double-team to Asik who then would look for someone cutting or on the perimeter. I thought that was a good counter to MIA's double-team. For a stretch there too, we used Delfino as the playmaker, assisting Morris on a 3 on one play and then able to create a shot for himself another time. We'll have more opportunities in the future to practice our endgame plays.
It was pretty clear Harden had no intentions to run the play drawn up. He was in no position to pass to Parsons for a corner 3 without driving in and drawing a defender (he would've had to drive in deep to draw the corer defender), but he didn't even try to drive and would've run out of time if he had started to drive with 3 sec left. The only way that play would've worked is for him to immediately pass the ball to Lin, or take one dribble-drive and pass to Lin, then have Lin drive in and kickout to Parsons. Delfino probably the back-up 3pt shooter by cutting back to the top of the key, if Parsons could not get free. I think fair enough, he's a better player and shooter than Parsons, but when you're 1-5 in 3pt shots with LBJ guarding you, you shouldn't leave yourself without an option other than heave up a contested 3.
Good thread. Yes, everything seemed to go wrong at the end for the Rockets, which isn't really unexpected considering we are a new team of young players going up against the Champs. Lin misses a wide pen shot, we play poor defense on James, we couldn't rebound a missed free throw. It's just going to take some time.
Harden is in a huge shooting slump. In the past 5 games, he's shooting 33% from the field and 17.2% from behind the arc. The only saving grace is that he's averaged 9 FTA in that stretch, which doesn't look that good considering he's averaging 4.6 TO as well. Defences can live with the fact that they might send him to the line around 5 times per game when he drives, but he'll also lose the ball around the same amount times as well.
Why do you guys think it is that Lin rarely gets to run the offense, especially the pick and role. This is his only strength as a player. Harden I'd much better spot up shooter than Lin. Teams are double and triple teaming harden. Although lins handles scare me playing against smaller and quicker PG I still think he has a great cross over. I think they should run pnr more with Lin and he needs to keep his dribble if nothing is there. And use harden as secondary offense. But if you arent going to play him to his strength andharden is going to be primary ball handler you might as well put Douglas out there. And let lin be a spark of the bench. Lin has to have the ball to do what he does best.
I thought it was strange when Lin raised his hand up to signal he was free. At the same time I didn't think he was going to get another shot - you can tell when Harden wants to ISO. Not that its a bad thing - all in all a great game. But little things here and there contributed to our loss. We had a lot of momentum when the offense was free flowing and moving ~ Harden had some sweet ass passes for 3's around the arc by our other players. A few times he could have made better choices as well as anyone else on that team but it was pretty flawless at times. Believe people! Support! I just wish that Arena was louder.
Harden needs to learn to trust his team-mates in crunch time... from 6th man to franchise man... it may take longer time to adjust..
Careful you might upset the HOFs.....but I think most of them will avoid posting here cuz they can't make a strong argument against that article
Lots of hand-wringing and blind assumptions in here. In the NBA the final play is almost always the team's alpha-dog/best player going ISO. He makes it or he misses it, that's how it goes. I can only imagine how ridiculous many of you would be acting if Harden had dished to Delfino and Delfino had missed..."WHY ISN"T OUR 80 MILLION DOLLAR MAN TAKING THAT SHOT OH MY GOD JAMES HARDEN SUCKS GOODNESS THE ROCKETS ARE DOOMERED@@#@@" Relax - they lost a close game to the best team in the NBA. They lost because the champions made plays and the Rockets didn't. That's how it works. They will get better. I was proud of the effort last night. Sometimes the ball doesn't go in the hoop.
There were a lot of statistical breakdowns of the Thunder with Harden/Durant/Westbrook the past year. And I remember reading an article during the trade, where they showed that despite having ungodly offensive efficiency numbers with those 3... the Thunder were actually playing a lot of iso ball. That is, the offense wasn't a smooth engine so much as ridiculous individual offensive talent. In other words, Harden didn't really learn much about "team ball" or how to be part of a well-oiled machine like, say, a Spurs player. So it's not a surprise that he's having trouble trying to get his teammates involved. This is something Harden has to grow into as a foundational player. But he does seem to have the court vision required to be a playmaker.
Pretty sure Kelvin Sampson was doodling on his coach's board with Lin 5+ seconds after timeout horn sounded to NOT draw up an iso play for Harden. It's even more exasperating that Lin was wide open coming out of the baseline curl for whatever play they had sketched up. I think there's little doubt from what we can observe that Harden decided to take it into his own hands after remnants of hurricane Sandy left Lin's previous 3-pointer short.
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=229204 [Rox:Heat] The last 18 seconds Good discussion leading by Dxtreme & Yung T on last possession play.Why dont this two thread merges?
I just dont understand what Harden was thinking...you've passed up the chance to go 2 for 1 and make a move to go below the 3pt line. There's no other option, but to take a step back at that point. you need a 3. I think i'd rather have him just let it fly from 26 feet out than take a step back shot with Lebron knowing exactly what he's defending and at what time. I don't believe the play called forDelfino to get open. He's not athletic enough to get open and fire a quick shot in that situation. IMO, the play that was developing was for Harden to drive with Parsons, lin and Delfino at the 3 pt line. Delfino couldn't get free early enough and Pat tried to take his spot, both end up in the same spot in the end. the problem with that is the Heat don't need to double with Lebron defending Harden, so going one on one was the only outcome. I would have liked to seen more movement earlier on, including Harden. You can't just let a team like this sit back and babysit certain spots. The defense was good because we gave them something easy to defend. Make them work and think about multiple possibilities. They should have tried to pick off James at some point.
I agree. One thing about the Thunder is they had 3 highly talented players which meant that defenses could rarely afford to double-team them, especially with the number of jump shooters they have available. This lead to monstrous mismatches and open lanes that Harden, Durant and Westbrook were all able to easily take advantage of. Team offense was far from the Spurs for most games except during the OKC/Spurs series where you saw a concerted effort to share the ball in their last 3 wins. You most often saw poor ball movement when Harden AND Westbrook were on the floor simultaneously. While Harden is NOT the pure shoot first player that Westbrook is, he does have his lapses where the ball becomes "sticky" as soon as it reaches him. It seems to me that Harden is much more willing to share the ball early in the game, but into the 4th quarter he is much more likely to push an ISO play. I'm not sure how much of this is fatigue (falling into old instincts), and how much of this is coach instructed.
Hope Harden doesn't turn into Tereke Evans v2. It'll be even worse after getting his max contract. We need to stop letting him play PG even if he can occasionally do that to mix things up. His defense is approaching Kevin Martin level, and it's painful to watch especially when he struggled on offense as well lately.
I agree but I don't think the Play was for Harden or Lin to drive. The situation as such means that all the Heat had to do was open the red sea and give either a lay-up. I think the play was to get a quick 3 point attempt and not penetrate to dish. Either way it was simple and so what happened was...the Heat defended the play really well. I know you know this but I said it earlier. That's why people can only guess as to what the play was because quite simply the Heat blew the play up by having everyone covered. At that point Harden has a decision to make, if he passes to any one else they are taking a contested shot. This is what people are not seeming to remember when they want to bash Harden for taking the shot. When Lin ran out to the 3 point line...there was 5 seconds left. At that time any hope of Lin creating for Parsons or Harden is pretty slim, the pass to get the ball to Lin and then for Lin to make his move has to be literally a 2-3 second move to get someone else a shot.
