These are the three things missing right now, we got off to a hot start by playing both ends of the floor, and playing hard. Now, our lane is wide open for layup after layup, we don't contest crap, our guys just let them through, our DEFENSE sucks.....because we lack a PROFESSIONAL approach, oh, sure, they all want to get out and run for that 3pt shot, but no longer are we switching effectively up top and shutting down the drives, now, we just let them slide on through...why? Because we lack the proper RESPECT for the other teams, we seem to have this...we are stars and better than you, so you should just lay down......and other teams are like.....we are gonna take it to Houston, as they are supposed to be one of the best. The Rockets have it all in their control, these 5 games are all on their lack of committment to D, professionalism and respect for their opponents. Where is that so-called leadership, I don't see it.... DD
Time to put on the thinking caps and come up with the master plan. Injury or not. Defense wins ball games.
I don't think a team with few solid veterans like our own can suddenly forget how to play defense or stop giving a ****, that's just not possible for me...there has to be something else, and it's probably related to their so called tired legs (i laugh every time i hear/read MDA saying this).
As bad as the ponies , undertalented ... they showing up everynight and actually leading over the ⚡ now.
Honestely its just a slump, might take a good coach meeting, player meeting next year to get straighen out come 2-3 days from now after the years over. Winning tonight would help.
Rockets' effort is too dependent on making shots. Real contenders can't employ such habit this frequently. Overall leadership is suspect.
Yep. I think people is just trying hard to find something to explain what's happeing cause no one can understand how in the hell we're playing this bad, but i think in reality it's pretty simple.
CP3 is the heart and balls now. Yeah, I take that 4 of the last 5 losses are on the tem getting cocky. They got a slap in the face in return, so I hope lesson learned. Enjoy 2018
It pains me to say this, but maybe the TNT folks were right to be skeptical of the defensive efficiency rankings for the Rockets early in the season. When a team goes on a long winning streak in the early going, the season average statistics will be unnaturally skewed. Perhaps a better indicator of defensive mindedness is how well the team defends in its losses.
538 did an article (posted here) that showed that the Rockets defense may have been a fluke (even though they didn't flat out say that) 1) Despite holding opponents to a low 3 point percentage, we were actually giving up the 5th or 4th worst percentage in terms of "open looks" which suggests we weren't defending well but were just getting lucky that they were missing 2) Teams were isoing Anderson and Harden A LOT with no results which was a dramatic change from prior seasons. We've now seen that revert. Teams can go at Anderson in particular and he can't do squat. 3) We were the best rebounding team in the league. This has changed as our great rebounding efforts have waned I'm not convinced we can be a "real" good defense with both Harden and Anderson on the floor for 25+ minutes.
I agree that defense needs a big fix. But that's obvious. Professionalism and respect are meaningless sports clichés. These are things that people who don't play use as a means to criticize players. Those are the kinds of words the St Louis Cardinals organization uses to describe themselves ***cough, hacking***. These are the words crotchety sports writers use to describe The Spurs. Moralizing sports gives it another dimension, one that is difficult to qualify. It's the opposite of analytics. It's not scientific, it's emotional. It's also always available as a criticism when things are going poorly because its definition is fluid. It's lazy.
