[ClutchFans] Recap: With offensive trends continuing, Rockets blown out in Game 1

False Harden is a star player & has superstar potential once he commits more on defense.

 

Not just defense. He needs to add more to his offensive game. Recently, we have been seeing more post ups from him on the strong side, but of course, his post ups don't look very good right now as he just added it. He needs to really focus on his post ups since he is strong, can shoot with a man in his face, and can't jump high enough to dunk on any1.


From the looks of it, it's not just harden who has been figured, but the entire team

 

lol just go away.

 

A few of my own thoughts:

- Jeremy will get better, but I think we are seeing some of the physical limits of his game. He will become a better shooter, but never elite. A quality distributor, but not a great one. And I get the feeling that Morey feels the same way. In all of his interviews, Morey seems "ho-hum" when someone asks him about Lin, but when Harden or Asik are mentioned, he elborates how important they are to this team.

- We cannot play small ball the entire game, because that would mean Harden and Parsons would never sit. Delfino must play some minutes at the backup 3 behind Parsons, which means one of the rookies has to contribute significant minutes. IMO, we should roll with:

Guards: Lin, Harden, Beverley
Forwards: Parsons, Delfino, DMo, TJones
Centers: Asik, Smith

- I agree with Clutch on FA shopping this summer. Either go big or stay home. Try to sell Howard, and if that doesnt work, see if there's a trade to be had for Aldridge or Love. Josh Smith makes us a perennial 4/5 seed, not 1/2 seed. Otherwise develop the young talent we already have.

- At some point Harden is going to demand help, and if we can't find an immediate solution in the front court, it's going to mean changes in the backcourt. Over the next two seasons, we will pay Parsons a rediculous $1.9 million to be a top 12ish starting SF, versus $20 million (real money, not cap) to Lin to split time with Beverley, who we will pay $1.7 million to be his backup. Unless Lin is making Les Alexander money hand over fist, Lin is the obvious odd man out. This may not be until the next trade deadline, or even into the 2014-15 offseason, but if Lin doesn't improve...it will happen. Llull is my best guess for his replacement, based on Morey's retweet in December about him being the perfect PG for Harden.

 

Any way you slice it you're not gonna win a playoff game when your starting point guard scores 4 points on 1 of 7 shooting and 4 turnovers.

It's just not gonna happen.

 

No disagree. Harden is elite in pretty much every offensive category. He needs to evelop his post game more & work on his off ball cutting but aside from that I am happy with him.

You are reading your feelings into Morey's words. I do agree though that next season is his shot & he has to make great strides & show that he can be an all star calibre player otherwise he is gone. Hopefully he doesn't get hurt in the post season so he goes into the summer healthy.

 

Why do most of our players go into a shooting slump at the same time?

 

I think Parsons was the worst offender. We rely on him to move, hit threes, and be the glue guy. He did nothing on either side of the floor. Totally outclassed athletically. The offense is pretty useless with him in there unless he is moving and hitting threes. Otherwise we can put in someone who can just board it or at least move and free up space for Harden/Lin to penetrate.
Well...shouldn't say Parsons is the worst offender. McHale was worse but we can't really fix that. He's going to be back next year as well.

 

Harden definitely needs to get better. Teams are learning not to reach so much when he drives. Just stay in front of him and force him to take a tough shot. Send a weakside big to block his shot as he doesn't really pass as much as you'd like on the drive. I think we'll see Harden use floaters, etc much more in the future. He likes to take it right to the rim but at some point the defense sits on it. Same with Lin but worse. He has trouble finishing at the rim so they just sit on all the interior teammates and force him to jack up shots or bad passes.

All this stuff happens when you're young and the scouting report gets out on you. When you're playing spot minutes they don't key a defense around you but when you're playing 30+ minutes all your tendencies get exposed. It happens.

Overall, we lack athleticism on the team. IMO, the 4 spot needs an upgrade and I doubt many Rockets fans would disagree. However, I think we also need to choose between Lin and Parsons. We can't start them both. Neither of them are top level athletes for their position. I'd say Lin is more athletic as he's big for a PG and has very good acceleration which allows constant penetration. Parsons would be a great fit on a super athletic team that gives him a lot of different looks from breaking down defenses that he can capitalize on due to his versatility. As we've seen, however, he really struggles when the offense bogs down and he's forced to create on his own. I don't think he can and probably never will. Lack of athleticism and ballhandling. Were it up to me, I'd look at trading him next season to a team willing to take on what should be a pretty sizable contract for him. Will be plenty of takers for him.

Or, we just need a coaching change. Maybe our players look worse than they are because they're basically playing street ball out there. Dribble handoffs and isolations don't make an offense.

 

You didn't watch the game did you?

Parsons was the only one that was really playing well and looked like he's been there before. He was getting hot too... right before he picked up his 3rd foul in the second quarter with about 10 minutes left to go. Parsons was knocking down the jumper and he was hustling on both sides of the ball. His follow up jam off the Bev missed layup over Jackson was the type of hustle plays we were lacking. The Rockets were close with about 2 minutes left but completely broke down during the final 2 mins before the half. McHale should've brought Parsons back with about 5 mins left before the half or at least at the 2 minute mark. In hindsight he should've never taken Parsons out in the first place and let him ride it out.

 

Yep. CP25 was really playing good D on KD and looked like he was starting to heat up on the offensive end of the floor.

 

Wow were those Harden's numbers?

 

We traded PPatt, now we can't have a stretch 4 to allow Harden to drive without tanking our defense.

 

A follow up jam off a blown fast break layup(yeah I saw the game. Did you think you could slip that bs by?) and a jumper makes him hot? I guess last night that qualified? We're not talking about a follow up dunk on Ibaka and Perkins off a half court set. Jackson didn't even jump because he assumed Beverley would make it and no other Thunder was even in the play.
Parsons wasn't moving at all on offense. No cutting. No screening. He wasn't even moving on the perimeter to open up passing lanes for the rare times we drove. Maybe this was the gameplan all along but I doubt it based on McHale's comments. McHale is awful but he at least wants the players moving around even if they don't know exactly where they're going.
The only guys who really brought it last night were Asik, Harden, Delfino, and Beverley. But that's only cause everyone was so bad their so so games looked good by comparison.

 

and remember, the miami coaches also changed the offense to fit them better, while asking lebron to work on certain parts of his game to take advantage of both his AND wades' talent so they don't duplicate their efforts. they asked lebron to play more as a PF and spend a lot more time inside the paint as before.

my hope is for the coaches to get creative this summer, and having a year worth of film, to tweak the offense to fit the skill sets on this team, as well as asking their franchise player to add other weapons to his game. with the lack of an inside scoring option, i would like to see harden develop a decent post game. he's definitely strong enough. or lin, since he's usually bigger than most pg's that guard him.

 

Beverly is quicker, puts more pressure on the ball, can grab more loose balls and blocks shots. He is a better defensive player than Jeremy Lin. It's ok, it doesn't mean Beverly is perfect, or that Lin is useless, but, dude, it is as clear as day.

 

Lin and Beverley are different players. Expectation is different. Lin is expected to product 16/8, while Beverley can be 0/0 and people are fine with that.

Lin has problem he needs to adjust.

1) He needs to improve his jump shoots. He need a quick release. I see many shooting opportunities after the quick PnR, but because his slow release, he didn't shoot it.

2) He need to run more, with or without the ball. What I meant running is like Parker. Parker is always running with or without the ball. But I think the issue is the system. It require people to leave the lane clear for the ball handler at the moment.

 

IT should be obvious to everyone that the Asik/Smith combo has no chance of working this series. Even though Jones is shooting pitifully from distance, we've got to go with him over Smith. Smith shoots 0% from distance and he can't finish against Ibaka. He plays poor defense. There's no reason to have Smith in the game this series except to give Asik a breather. We're missing PPat right now but can't do anything about that. Gotta throw Jones out there and roll with hit.

Another comment: Our small ball lineup should consist of Bev/Lin in the back court and Harden and Parsons at the forward spots. If you need more defense you gotta drop out one of Lin/Harden for James Anderson. Ibaka already proved he's gonna manhandle Delfino. And frankly, going small against OKC's starters has on chance of working. They are too athletic and too smart.

You have to keep Parsons on Durant dogging him. We have no other defender that can bother Durant. With that in mind, the only real chance to play small ball is when Durant sits down.

Also, we gotta cover Durant and continue to let Russ go hog wild. Gotta zone it up a little on him so he can't continue waltz into the paint. But really, the more Russ handles the ball up top, fooling around with it and attempting to drive into the zone or jack up jumpers, the better off we are. So, I say stay tight on Durant, box up the paint on Russ, force Russ to shoot the long balls or run into the zone. And if we lose that way, which we probably will, it is the best we can play them.

 

Ibaka's take on the Rocket's offense:

The rest of the article can be found here:


http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterockets/2013/04/thunder-report-ibaka-gives-take-on-rockets-offense/

 

Good piece, if we can take them to 6 games, I will be very satisfied. We'll win at least one game, there's gonna be one game where Harden goes for 40. Lin knows everyone is clowning on him after last night, hopefully he'll use it as motivation. His defense on WB was actually solid for the most part, shot selections weren't bad, but his decision making last night was uhh...well, not very Harvard-grad like to say the least.

I'm gonna be at game 3 and I hope everyone there is planning to lose their voice.