Contenders don't lose close games to trash teams on the regular like the rockets do... we can't get these games back. Guys on this team need to self examine themselves... defensively we are a lottery team...
This just isn't true. Most of the time his guy was in the corner off the ball. He didn't actually give up very many points.
Well we pretty much blew out the Hawks without Harden or Lin and they never even came in close to us because everyone played defense. But thank god Harden kept us from getting blown out by the worst team in the league by scoring 30+ points. I mean seriously, just because defense doesn't show up on stats like offensive stats does, mean we should ignore it. Everyone played horrible defense tonight. The question is WHY?
Parsons, but he's out. Lin can be too, but Lin tends to want to facilitate and be a 5 on 5 player who can also create his own shot and score when need be. He'll still look to pass even in crunch time.
Again, how were they getting their shots? You and others are trying to argue that HArden held up the offense and actually had a bad offensive night. Trotting the ball up the court has nothing to do with ball movement. You can still have tons of ball movement in a half court offense. Not Harden's fault that the Rockets don't have a complex halfcourt offense to fall back on.
The issue wasn't Hayward got hot, he got wide open lanes for layups to the hoop because our guards (in many cases Harden) were literally just standing there. The three Jazz guards scored 71 points on 60% shooting...not a single one is shooting over 40% for the season. People get hot in the nba it happens, but time and time our team gets torched by average to solid nba players because our perimeter effort is terrible and most of it effort and unbelievably poor discipline: not fighting through screens, cheating for no reason, poor rotations and just standing around (This is all our guards not just Harden). This is going to kill us both for playoff seeding and during the actual playoffs.
You don't seriously think Harden is running plays out there do you? The guy doesn't even follow the called plays from timeouts sometimes. He needs to get it together. Last thing he needs is to emulate his game to Melo.
Harden had 2 ugly turnovers. He sent the ball way over Garcia and passing the ball when Omri was not looking. That's what happens when you just play iso all game long.
True and NOT true. The entire Team is already aware that we don't have a strong half court offense, which is Why McHale is always screaming that we push the ball up. It's not like Harden can claim that he's not aware that much of our offense is predicated on moving the ball up quickly. When you trot the ball up, you give the opposing defense time to set up and get away from our core strengths. That's like saying that it's not Harden's fault if we're playing Indiana and he trots the ball up. Of course sometimes we're going to have to play half-court offensive sets, however, we don't ALWAYS have to play half-court offensive sets. So directly or indirectly, whenever you trot the ball up to half-court, you're forcing the team into a mode of offense that is NOT our greatest strength. This is diametrically opposed to the games where we're most effective... that's when we push up the ball fast and take advantage of cross matches and mismatches while the defense is trying to catch up in transition. Not only does it give offensive advantages, but by forcing the other team into running it takes away from their offensive game. Fatigue as well as being "lured" into our fast pace of play has cost many a team against us. Either we dictate the pace or the other team dictates the pace, and in this game, we dictated the pace to the Other team's benefit.
Where does the ultimate responsibility lie? Did the coach not stress urgency? Leaders and veterans on the team not step up and say the team is slacking, play with more intensity. The team played well down to the competition and the competition, Burk, Burkes, Hayward, and others, just upped their game, got confident, and played way better as a team.
I get the same feeling from McHale. It seems he is too soft with his key players (no balls as you said). You can't let your SG walk down the court, waste 18 secs dribbling the ball if you want to play transition basketball. With this basketball level and this lack of intensity we're gonna be beaten in the 1st round of the playoffs once again.
No, I didn't. I dare you to go find a post in this thread where I said so. I wrote several times that our offense was flowing just fine and at least once in this conversation.
In game urgency falls on the Players. The Coaches can't force players to play with effort. Once they're off the court it falls on the coaches to get them mentally ready to exert that effort both during game and between games. However, there's also the argument that a Coach should NOT need to tell his Max Contract players that they need to play with effort... especially on a team that is supposed to be working towards becoming a legitimate contender.
Harden was a one man break for a lot of the game, you seem to be judging him a bit too harshly for one time he bought the ball up slow in a close game where every possession matters in the clutch.
