Despite having the worst coaching staff in history of mankind, we are still 4-4

I agree. I think Sampson has done well on the fly, and I especially like his candidness in the press conferences. I think some of the issues on the court should be more attributable to inexperience and players still developing rather than poor coaching. One thing Sampson explained tonight was that teams are forcing Lin to go left and it will be difficult to run pick and rolls to that side with him until he gets better with his off hand.

 

The Pistons contributed to half of the 4 wins

 

Does this all lead to another trade on Dec. 15? I just have a feeling that Morey will pull another deal before the trading deadline.

 

Who says you need to be perfect. Asik sat out the close many games and most likely costs us the miami game. We were up by 10 late. We needed stops and that's hard to get without asik. Memphis game, offensive rebounding killed us late.

 

What trade though? It would have be for a player with a lot of leverage against his current team who wants out. I could see Josh Smith maybe.

 

I have argued till I am blue in the face, that the Rockets coaching is a team effort. This is not the bad old days of egomaniac coaches. McHale was not allowed to hire the senior coaches. When McHale is not coaching. Sampson is coaching almost identically. The same would be true if Finch was coaching. Get over it people. There has to be 100 years of NBA experience on the coaching staff. Your opinions mean nada to the coaches, because you realistically know nothing about NBA coaching. I am in the same boat.

 

And they're not nearly as bad as people think they are. They just SMASHED Philly. They've had a very tough schedule. The only bad team they've played is Sacramento, and they barely lost that game.

Pistons aren't good, but they're not this year's Bobcats IMO.

 

They're not utilizing Lin's ability. It's all iso and passing the ball around. Lin is not even looking to attack the basket anymore. When is the last time you see him attack? There is no excuse for him to not go to the line at all tonight. He ought to go to the line 3 or 4 times a game.

1. Coaching sucks (they need to design more pick and roll for Lin). I swear they don't even use Lin for pick n roll at all. It's always Harden.
2. Lin sucks (play aggressive or tell the coach to let you attack)

 

Do people on this board not value experience???

Last time I checked we are the most inexperienced team in the league and people here are expecting us to be as consistent as the Heat, Griz, Spurs???

I've come to the conclusion that most people here are expecting:

1) an 82-0 season.
2) Lin to average 25pts, 10asts, 5rebs, 4stls, 0TOs while shooting 90% overall
3) Harden to average 50pts, 20asts, 10rebs while shooting 90%
4) a coach who will play every single rookie at least 30mins
5) a coach who is so perfect with drawing up plays that virtually leads to an 82-0 season

What, is a 4-4 record thus far waaaaaay below your expectation?

Even if Jesus Christ played for this team people would still be complaining.

 

I'd say more like "senseless bashing". Everyone seems to forget Parsons was a rookie last year and saw significant playing time. Royce White is nuts, Douglas has come to form so it's not like Machado will take his place as the #2 PG. D-Mo and T. Jones are being blocked by Smith and Aldrich who are are doing well off the bench. If PPat struggles I'm sure you'll see them get more minutes. Part of Lin's struggles is his shooting, not sure how coaches can be blamed for that.

 

Well if they are forcing him to go left wouldn't it be smart to put him on the left side at the top of the key so that he can drive to his right. The funny thing though was that last year teams forced him left all day but he was still able to blow past them after his teammates set picks/screens for him. He would go to his left then quickly go back to his right & convert at the rim.

 

I followed Lin last year in NYK, and it seems they (Rox coaching staff) have definitely converted Lin to a pure pass the ball PG (a waste of his abilities).

On offense, the coaches don't run any plays for Lin at all, like D'Antoni used to do, which allowed him to thrive. So, basically for points Lin has to create on his own, which does not seem to be his preference. He averages about 8 or 10 shots a game, but about three of those per game are 3-pointers as the shot clock is running down. The rest are from fast break layups and the rare midrange jumper. Even when he's open he does not look for shots at all unless it's forced. This contributes to him shooting like crap when he does launch a shot off. They need to allow him to shoot more often. Maybe run those high pick and rolls like D'Antoni used to do for him, where he has plenty of room to go straight to the basket and draw fouls. He was very good at doing that last year. He's a good free throw shooter if he gets fouled, and those plays allow him to put pressure on the other team's guards. It also allows him to keep his confidence up when taking shots. A few high pick and rolls a game for Lin won't take much away from Harden's game.

On defense Lin seems to have improved from last year. He is the #4 in steals in the league, and forces alot of opponent turnovers during the game, which can't be tracked on the stat sheet. He's also a pretty good rebounder for a PG, like he was last year.

His best traits are now obviously the PG skills. His passing abilities are still quite good. There's been multiple times when he's passed through traffic to get the ball perfectly in the hands of his teammates. Unfortunately for him, there's been multiple times when the recipient of the pass was Asik or one of the bench guys. They catch it right under the basket, and totally miss the layup. It's happened alot during fast breaks or in traffic right under the basket too. Perfect passes, crappy finishes. If they finish off those passes, Lin's assists would be much higher. His passes remind me alot of Nash's passes during the D'Antoni days in Phoenix (not a surprise since D'Antoni coached both). But Nash had Stoudamire and a few others who were much better at finishing off those plays.

Another thing Lin's done much better on is reducing turnovers. Much lower this year, at least so far. But he still faces the occasional double or tripple team and he reacts to it like he did last year. He needs to find his teammates earlier, and his teammates need to help him, when these double and triple teams occur.

Although Linsanity was only a moment in time, Lin still has the athletic ability to be much better than the limits he's playing within. He's got a big upside. But, players flourish only if they are able to play in situations that allow them to maximize all of their abilities (take Harden for example). So far, it seems like instead of maximizing all of Lin's abilites, some have been taken away from him because of the limits placed on his role.

Hopefully the coaches realizes where the upsides are and make enough adjustments to allow Lin to play to his abilities, which will only help the team down the road.

 

I think that Lin has a green light, but he is not shooting well enough for the defense to bother staying on top of him. Driving lanes disappear when the opponent backs off.

Play book modifications are coming. I can hear the coaches on the Monday after the Harden trade. "Well as you probably surmised we developed a new play book on Sunday. We are starting with the simplest most basic plays. As these more advanced plays are worked into the offense, the better our sets will preform. Somewhere around the end of the year we will hopefully have half a playbook in operation. You players are young players and we do not expect that every play will be run correctly until it has been run 20 times. Do your best".

And so this season is going to go forward in a disjointed manner. But there should be signs of progress every 10 days or so.

I personally am not thinking about critiquing the coaching staff until the season is over. And the critique will be on how steady and dependable the Rockets offense improves.

 

Team has looked more functional under Sampson. In the games he's coached we've put together solid games...instead of regressing they seem to actually be learning stuff. Lin needs to grow his balls back though and stop deferring to harden on 98% of offensive sets. He needs to find his swag again. The team would be much more dangerous if he actually looked to do something...and well....could sometimes actually do it...

Parsons and asik need to start finishing more aggressively around the damn rim too. Dunk the ball. Posterize someone. All these blown lay ups are killer. Morris has looked like a legit scorer off the bench. Douglas has even picked it up.

Patterson should be a bench player. He's not a starting pf. Harden has been solid. I'd like to see him start hitting some of those threes he's jacking up, but he's be good overall. He's basically the only guy on the team that you can give the ball to and have him consistently produce points. Soooooo......yeah.....we need another guy or three....

The blaze will be a nice test.

 

That's .500 ...what playoff spot will a .500 record get us in the west again? Yeah...

 

And legitimate playoff contenders contributed the other half.

And let's not forget we haven't been blown out by a single team, including Miami and Memphis.

Go look at the standings... how many completely rebuilt teams filled with as many young and inexperienced players as the Rockets roster are at .500?

Seriously, if we end this year as a .500+ team (let alone a playoff berth) with this Young roster with so much turnover, we will have done amazingly well for the first year of a Rebuild.

 

Miami and Portland were winnable games.

A couple breaks away from being 6-2

 

I am still really bothered by our end of game execution. I watched the Spurs last night & to win the game they ran a play to get Danny green free. Not Parker, manu or duncan there three best players but one of there role players. I hate the whole give the ball to one guy & everyone flatten out hero ball nonsense we run. It's so boring (Pops words not mine). I would rather run a play so Parsons gets the wide open 3 as opposed to Harden doing stupidness.