and those who are playing are not played to their strenghts...DMO won us a couple of those close games with his clutch and efficient postups...remember that game when we were saved by Harden finaly being fouled out then we were forced to go to DMO who saved us? last 2 games harden had a couple of clutch turnovers ...DMO postups are amongst most efficients plays rockets have...they are so efficient that management could be afraid of him becoming worth max money or perhaps forcing Howard to premature free agency
Good post Carl. We all need to remember that the NBA season is a marathon and not a sprint. No one should be sweating the ups and downs early on while we work in new faces, learn tendencies, and mesh. Best to work things out during the season and gel come playoffs. That is when everyone needs to be firing on all cylinders.
I was with you until the speculation part. I like D-Mo and what he brings to the table but I don't think he's a guy you build a team around. I see him as a solid rotation player with some spot duty as a starter when needed. I won't argue that we sometimes have guys play out of position. Is that on the player or the coach? Does read and react put more onus on the player to make correct decisions?
Definitely agree with th coin flip in close games theory. A big reason why I wasn't ready to immediately proclaim Portland the superior team after that playoff loss. Flukey things happen in close games. Bs calls, lucky shots and what not. I do think our current point differential isn't totally indicative of the team we will end up being, but not in a negative way. I think we are better. Injuries early made games against scrub teams closer than they should have been. Now trying to integrate new guys in a new situation has made things a little rocky.
Bingo. The Spurs didn't have more talent on the floor than we did, but they moved the ball brilliantly. The played tight defense. Yeah, the flopped their way to a few terrible calls in their favor, which I always find unfortunate to see for a talented team. Most importantly, though, they made free throws. Our gameplan is to play hard defense when it feels important, and then hope we get a fast break, and we've either been better defended or just suck more at finishing those this year than, say, two years ago. Even playing lights-out defense, we're nearly utterly helpless when we have to score points in a half court set up. There's just a leadership problem that prevents cohesiveness. I don't think if we had a Big Five or a Big Ten (no salary cap in this hypothetical world), that we'd achieve much more, because nobody would know how to work together. And I still just can't believe the free throw insanity. Tens of millions of dollars and we're still losing games solely because of abysmal free throws. McHale, take page out of the Pete Carroll handbook, and make players compete for starting spots. I'd say, at a minimum, a big player doesn't shoot 67 FT% consistently, they go to the bench until they do. Guards and SFs should shoot 75-80% to play. I bet you'd have a young team out there, but they'd be fired up to play, and they'd make things happen that wouldn't expect.
They did just have a significant line up change . .. . When things change .. they change Rocket River
The thing about the west this year, with there being so many good teams, is that every first round is going to have a lot of coin flip games, no matter what seed we get. Otherwise, I think your points are correct at this stage of the team's development. We must hope that the new additions (Brewer and Smith) get incorporated into the team by the coaching staff, and that their talents help get the Rockets over the top. If I were to place a bet, I would bet that this will indeed occur, and that, as Morey predicted, we will be better by the start of the playoffs than we were at the start of the playoffs last season.
I cringe at every JCDenton post. You know that feeling when you feel embarrased for someone? Yeah, that's how bad he is.
My impression is coin flip happens all the time. The team that can D up and execute (high percentage shots) move on. Rockets got the D. They lack execution. And they will continue to lack execution until they have a coach that know what to execute. The only exception is you have such great players that can just take it upon themselves- Harden has done it plenty of time this year, but can he continue (especially in the playoff)? Doubtful. Last year, the team can't execute and doesn't have the D. I think this year team is definitely better with the latest roster changes.
Half court sets seem to be the biggest problem. They were already a problem last year, as was evident in the Portland series, but it got worse. Our only play maker is Harden who has an AST to TO ratio of 1.7. He is not an elite distributor and he has to do way too much seeing how stagnant our half court offense often is. It is no wonder who when you look at who is starting next to him: 2 spot up shooters (Bev and Ariza), a center who rarely gets baskets other than dunks and layups, and a PF who thinks he's a jump shooter but should also focus on playing in the paint. You gotta have another play maker to make our offense less stagnant and allow Harden to play off the ball. And if you don't have another play maker, at least plan some sets and run more P&R. we are not a contender with a below league average offense.
Good post Carl, delighted to see that your recovery is going well and you are able to post. One point of disagreement is that I believe Van Gundy's premise that you are your record. Perhaps after that look at margins. Nonetheless, it's difficult to dispute your assertion that we are not contenders. My hope was that last year we could be pseudo-contenders with a third seed and perhaps scare some folks. We pretty much shot our wad with Howard and seem to be relegated to the types of personnel moves we just saw. We seemed to be heading for a four-ish seed, but now all bets are off. You almost have to be in a wait and see mode at this time. The trouble with Morey ball is that there is no long term system or player development. If you were at training camp, you are an old timer. If this does not come to fruition rather quickly, we will be looking at a diminished Howard and a mega buck Beard. I don't see this as a championship team, but my hopes are that they get their act together and can contend this year. Then with some tweaking and a little luck we might get there next year. Hopefully I am way off base and we should be picking our spot for the parade.
Yeah yeah we suck, we arent as good as our record, we arent making it far in the playoffs, we are worse than last year blah blah blah. How many threads do we need to discuss how bad we are?
are coin-flips more likely when there is no structure in your offense? i love the idea of read and react offenses, and not sure exactly why but the last 10 days or so the ball movement and player movement has stopped.... is it fatigue, is it opposition defenses (like playoffs last year), and now is it compounded by the new players coming in trying to learn our minimalistic system... whatever the reason the offense has become stagnant and static...its like the love child of Rudy's Dream Offense and Rudy's IsoMotion/Francis dribble fascination..... read and react can be awesome but requires everyone to play smart, commit to moving the ball and themselves.....
alot of people arent at work so Im assuming they're just killing time with pointless December threads
or maybe thye are at work and it is stupid slow so they'll post anything to kill time because that's what I have been doing this past week.
For the year, the Rockets are what their scoring margin says they are - a good, not great, team. With no changes, we should have expected them to settle into the 51-53 win range. However, there have been major changes -- return of Howard from injury, eventual return of Jones, addition of Smith, etc. The point differential cannot account for those, and doesn't measure the team we will see for the remainder of the season. I'm not saying that we will see a massive improvement (though I think we will see some improvement), but it simply isn't accurate to extrapolate future performance or "intrinsic quality" based on a metric generated by a meaningfully different team.
