The key on offense is to milk the best matchup. And all too often we don't do that given that Dwight and Harden always have the best matchup, while Ariza, Beverley, and Smith rarely ever are the best players in their matchups. Howard and Harden need to feed until those doubles start coming. I'd like for our game to center around ball movement, but out of double teams.
That's the tragedy of the Rockets. You got a Champion in Ariza and Terry. Then Bev can shoot his corner and pocket 3s yet some how it doesn't work out like that. Harden played a slow motion team in Phx last night, same as the Lakers, so against bad teams he shows very good ball distribution. It's too bad a good team won't allow any type of negligent bounce pass.
Something I would like the fans to note. Last night, Dwight Howard played one of his best defensive games as a Rocket. His movement prevented several layups and open shots. If Dwight Howard plays like that every night(you are getting a max caliber player) then this team becomes dangerous come playoff time. It is something to watch going forward, but he moves like a younger Dwight Howard last night.
He's been solid most games, it's our other 'big' men who keep playing like **** and the one who works hard can't get playing time and the other skilled one gets traded. If Ty, Brewer & TJ get a lot of minutes and keep playing like this, we will fall hard.
Now can he do it against a good team or team that got to settle down. I believe both Mirza and Kris played their first game as a Sun.
There was a noticeable effort in Harden's defensive effort as well. I think it's key for both our superstars to play with that effort, because it's very much so contagious. This team including Brewer/Ariza need to stop playing passing lanes as much. It will stop teams from beating us on back cuts as well as scrambling which we are so bad at.
It wasn't even a team thing. It was a combined effort improvement from Harden and Howard. There was just more effort overall and it was refreshing to see.
He and Harden have had Max Stats with 30+ rebounds and 15+ assists between them to go along with combined 45+ points and the Rockets still lose. I've said all along, how about a different approach to coaching?
At the end of the day there were really no trades of significance, so this is our crew and we're gonna have to ride with it. Even if that means not watching the games sometimes to stop your self from hating them, lol.
It's too late for that. One thing we could use as incentive for KD is that he could help pick our next moves and our new coach.
Even though we played a young inexperienced team, I was still impressed with the defensive intensity. It was really good to see everyone locked in on defense
