Jezzzus! Reading this you’d think he was talking about the senior citizens basketball league. 5 games in - fatigue, lost legs, can’t breath, BP to high, need more blue chew........
If Mike D’Antoni thought the Rockets guarded the three-point line well last night, he’s delusional and he wasn’t watching the same game the rest of us did.
It does not. "This trade failed. The Rockets are over the luxury tax threshold with this trade and the incoming aggregate salaries exceeded what's allowed via the 125% plus $100K rule. Cut 10 million from the Rockets incoming trade value to make this trade successful."
The only Net that took closely-contested-three-point shots was Kyrie Irving, and that’s because they were in ISO situations.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sp...-still-misfiring-on-wide-open-3s-14804600.php [...] As the Rockets head to Sunday’s game against the Miami Heat, owners of the NBA’s best 3-point defense, they rank 26th in 3-point shooting percentage. They have missed an average of 33-pointers per game, more than 14 NBA teams even attempt. The Rockets, however, believe that because their three most high-volume shooters are misfiring, that the problem, as opposed to defensive issues, will correct itself. “Same shots we got the other night (when) we knocked them down,” D’Antoni said of the Rockets’ 159-point burst in Washington when the Rockets made 42.6 percent of their 3s. “We can get better shots, but I think the shots are pretty good. They’re wide-open. I’m not going crazy about the shots. I think they’re OK. We’ll get better.” The Rockets are getting good looks, putting up an average of 22.4 wide-open (with the nearest defender more than six feet away) 3-pointers per game and another 17 open 3-pointers. Of those 39.4 open or wide-open looks they are making an average of 12.8. “That’s how we play,” said Gordon, who through five games is averaging just 10.4 points per game, the fewest of his career. “When we play better defense, every time down the court we’re going to get a better opportunity to knock down shots. We got to create more opportunities for ourselves, hunker down and play better defensively. Offensively, will be much easier. “It has to be a better flow of the game. We’re just not in flow. We are scoring, but we’re not doing the hard part. The hard part is playing really good defense and making it easy for us on offense. When you do that, there’s going to be more shots, whether it’s layups, whether it’s 3s. It’s creating more opportunities.” Harden, however, does not get many of his attempts off the defense, often relying on step-back 3s in the halfcourt offense. The NBA’s leading scorer the past two seasons and again this season, Harden is missing an average of 11.2 3-pointers per game, more than any other player is attempting. “The 3-ball hasn’t been going for me, but I will still continue to shoot,” Harden, who is averaging 36.6 points per game, said. “I’m not worried about it. Those are great shots. Those are shots I’ve been taking the last couple of years. So, even if teams are trying to take the 3-ball away, I’m going to still shoot it. “It’s going to be tough for us to win when I’m not knocking down the 3-ball at a high clip and Eric, our guys that we rely on to give us those points, create offense for us aren’t playing (well.) We aren’t going to beat anybody.” Harden can get his looks against any defense. He can score without making 3s. He is averaging a league-best 19 points on drives, making 61.7 percent of his shots going to the rim. But the Heat can take away the sort of good looks the Rockets have been getting, with a league best 45.8 percent of the 3-pointers taken against the Heat contested. That could make it even more imperative that the Rockets made the open looks they do get — while working to shore of the defense. “Wide open. We got to make them,” Westbrook said. “We can’t come in and talk after the game about how it’s a good game when we make them and when we miss them, can’t go back on what we do. It’s what we do.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sp...-notebook-Clint-Capela-struggles-14804559.php Rockets center Clint Capela played for just 19 minutes, 40 seconds on Friday against the Nets, the least playing time he has had in 144 games, since the 2017-18 season opener. The reduction of playing time, Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said, came for a simple reason. “It wasn’t a good 20 minutes,” D’Antoni said. “To play 22 you got to play a good 20. That’s the bottom line. It wasn’t good enough.” D’Antoni has spoken on several occasions this season about having Capela defend more aggressively. Friday’s reduction in playing time, however, also came because backup Tyson Chandler played well in the first half and because the small lineup led a comeback from down 15 to within five in the fourth quarter when Capela never left the bench. “I thought (Chandler) did a great job,” D’Antoni said. “I’ve got to be very careful about using him too much. I might have worn him out in the first half. He did great. I thought he might have gotten a little tired. His defense, just his savvy, is invaluable. It was a good game for him. “He’s going to be important with anybody in there. He can play when we go small. Clint’s going to have to pick it up, also. Defense starts right there. We have to be able to guard the rim and do a better job.” After allowing 158 and 123 points in the first two games of the road trip, the Rockets’ struggling defense has slipped to close to the bottom of the NBA. But while the Rockets have produced the worst 3-point shooting percentage defense in the NBA, there are indications that is to a large degree a credit to opponents’ shooting in the first five games. The 43.2 percent 3-point shooting the Rockets have allowed this season ranks as the worst 3-point defense in the NBA. That could be a particularly troublesome and telling issue since their defense, with so much switching, is designed to defend the 3-point line. It is also to a degree the result of hot shooting against them with the Rockets defending 3s the third-most regularly, on 42.4 percent of those attempted, in the league. Just 16.8 percent of the 3s opponents have taken against the Rockets have been open (with the nearest defender four to six feet away,) the third-least regularly in the NBA. They have allowed 17 wide-open 3s per game, ranking 15th in how frequently opponents’ 3-pointers have come with the nearest defender more than six feet away. The 126.6 points opponents are averaging is the most any team is giving up. Overall, the Rockets defense ranks 29th, ahead of only the Warriors. “Just communication. Not real sharp,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Just breakdowns defensively, not getting into people, not understanding now to closeout right. A lot of it is just energy. Our energy level is not the greatest right now.”
They can guard the three as much they like but what everyone is doing is simply shooting over the rockets... it’s not rocket science.
The expected value seems like a fantasy value. It might come true or it might not, but could steadily gravitate towards it. Won’t bet on it though.
Sometimes fantasy is more fun than the truth. MDA lives in a fantasy world of midgets conquering giants.
3 pointer harden and Eric Gordon suck and miss a lot of shot. Defence sucks. Cp3 has good rhythm to bring the team in shape. westbrooks speeds up the offence, if the shooting percentage is low, I prefer cp3
David and Goliath, Jack and the Beanstalk, the Hobbit .... all classics. And D'Antoni has been using his small ball line up to slay Giants for his entire tenure with Rockets. Same during his time with Suns.
lol its like saying ill shoot the midrange and not the layup because who knows what will happen on the way to the rim...ill shoot the midrange i am here already and the layup is a fantasy
