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Go to Dwight early in the game, early in the quarter, early in the shot clock

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by basketballholic, Dec 20, 2015.

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  1. Houstunna

    Houstunna The Most Unbiased Fan
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    So Harden is smart enough to not trust Dwight... yet, wouldn't allow Ty to handle the ball (after he requested ball-handling help), for, at minimum, the sake of conserving his own energy? Then, he uses fatigue as an excuse for his defensive lapses.

    Interesting


    Harden doesn't look enough for Dwight regarding lobs. Does James distrust Howard for dunks as well :confused:
     
    #21 Houstunna, Dec 20, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2015
  2. p10maggs

    p10maggs Member

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    Makes no sense for the kings. Ain't happening when they could get a young star for him rather an aging declining veteran.
     
    #22 p10maggs, Dec 20, 2015
  3. rocketseagles07

    rocketseagles07 Member

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    No one said anything about lobs or TY Lawson. If he does indeed trust Dwight just chooses to ignore him, then explain to me why d mo gets the ball in the post and Dwight doesn't..
     
    #23 rocketseagles07, Dec 20, 2015
  4. Dhoward12

    Dhoward12 Member

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    Overblown the Harden doesnt trust Howard

    He called for dwight to post up last night during a play.

    It was Dwight who didn't trust himself. First time he looked aggressive in the post.
     
    #24 Dhoward12, Dec 20, 2015
    1 person likes this.
  5. cml750

    cml750 Member

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    One good game and now we want to pretend Howard is actually good at posting up?????:confused:
     
    #25 cml750, Dec 20, 2015
  6. SF3isBack!!

    SF3isBack!! Member

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    +1 Repped Thank You. Finally some sense. I know some people in here just wanna breakout the pitch forks against Harden for someone unknown reason but Dwight has not been that aggressive all season. Ty Lawson also isn't aggressive. It's funny though in the Brooklyn game when Harden wasn't aggressive everyone was calling him lazy but Dwight and Ty get a pass no idea why.
     
    #26 SF3isBack!!, Dec 20, 2015
  7. Spacemoth

    Spacemoth Contributing Member

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    The Rockets with Dwight are like the Astros with Ken Giles. We could have performance approximating his in the regular season. But truly we have him for the playoffs. Regular season Dwight has been rendered scrubby on the low blocks because of Father Time and bone-on-bone. But come playoff time he's actually good in the post, and elite at D and rebounding. I dare you to show me Tyson Chandler, DeAndre Jordan, or (because of his crappy team) Demarcus Cousins match Dwight's performance in the playoffs.
     
    #27 Spacemoth, Dec 20, 2015
  8. bro2044

    bro2044 Member

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    This year Dwight has gone to almost 0 rim looks per game, its like he's not even setup to score on his own.

    Yes, he has nothing besides a hook, layup or dunk.

    The thing is we NEED him to setup the beginning of these plays a lot. Its not necessarily so he can take a rushed or bad shot (or lose the ball by trying to dribble low while starting to face the defense...), but it is a very fundamental approach ot better ball movement for us.

    Post, repost if you must, and pass the ball around to one another finding the best shot.

    This whole creating as you go offense is way too finnicky (sp?) and I think there is a balance between regular season Dwight last year and this year that could be found.
     
    #28 bro2044, Dec 20, 2015
  9. Houstunna

    Houstunna The Most Unbiased Fan
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    Trust (in this context) = smarts

    Harden has displayed much "un-smarts"
     
    #29 Houstunna, Dec 20, 2015
  10. basketballholic

    basketballholic Member

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    This team wins at a very high rate when Dwight scores the ball. When Dwight doesn't score the ball we struggle to win and our record hovers around .500. It's not just one game. It's 2 1/4 seasons worth of games.




    This is exactly what I'm talking about. I am so tired of reading posters talking about Dwight's post-ups being bad plays anytime we mention Dwight needs to score the ball. It's not about posting Dwight up. It's about getting Dwight the ball quickly when he's in position to score the ball.

    Here's an example of what I just said. For the gazillioneth time, I'm not talking about posting Dwight up when I say Dwight needs to touch the ball early in the game, early in the quarter, and early in the shot clock. I'm talking about getting Dwight the ball in scoring position. Nowhere in my post did I talk about posting Dwight up more.

    Dwight doesn't mope when he doesn't get post-ups. Dwight mopes when he doesn't get to score the ball.

    Dwight, without question, is the very best big man in the league at driving his defender down and sealing him underneath the rim. The man does it 5-6 times a game. The most basic entry pass a perimeter player can make is to pitch it to the guy with his defender on his back underneath the basket. These guys are pros. There's no way that they can't get Dwight the ball when he does that. But if you go back and watch video of all our games up until last night, they ignore him over and over when he does that. That play is a gimme play....especially early. Dwight has to get the ball when he does that. Because the defense is either going to let him go or foul him. And either result is great for us. On top of that, that seal play gives us something to work off of. Dwight can execute that play so well because the defender is typically running to the lip anyways. They run to the lip because they do not expect Dwight to get the ball 8+ feet from the basket and if he does get it out there, they're not worried about him doing anything with it besides trying to take it in for a dunk. But when we exploit that seal off often enough it will force the defender to adjust. They'll start picking him up higher. And that will lead to the back-door alley oop action that Dwight loves. Just off that stupidly simple seal off.

    Last night was different. They didn't just run 2 or 3 plays for Dwight at the beginning of the game. It wasn't about running a play or running plays for Dwight. Last night, you could tell there was a COMMITMENT from James to get Dwight the ball in scoring position. And James made it look so easy. And we caught fire and stayed up all game long with James finding all the bigs at different times. Even though he had a very poor shooting game, we still walked away from the Clippers because he was finding Dwight consistently.

    There's a lot of potency still to be tapped in the Harden/Howard combination. I want to see this "new-found chemistry" to continue. We get Howard going and everything will fall into place offensively with our shooters. And when James gets hot again with Howard going we'll be very, very difficult to beat.

    As far as your comments about Dwight taking his time on post-ups...you must be drunk. I'll stand with DraftBoy on his response to you.

    Perfect.

    Sorry....but last night was the first time all season that there was a commitment from James to get Dwight the ball. Last night it was different. If you watch all the games you know what I'm saying is true. James made it a point to make sure Dwight got the ball. He got the ball to him early, consistently early, and got Dwight going. This was, by far, James best game this season at L-E-A-D-I-N-G. He's had monster games this season. But his leadership last night was on a different level than the whole season. When he leads this way, Dwight will follow him and this team will gel big time. If he goes back to jack farting around and not really leading, but instead finding ways not to make things work..this team will crater.

    I'm hoping the former. I'm hoping this was the first look of a truly great player making the commitment to get ALL his teammates going....especially the second best player on the team and the one player James has to have with him to give James the lift defensively that he needs to truly be special.

    cml, don't know what to say to you. Did you pass reading comprehension in 6th grade? For the gazilion and oneth time, I'm not talking about posting up Dwight. I'm talking about throwing Dwight the ball when he's in scoring position.
     
    #30 basketballholic, Dec 20, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2015
  11. kjayp

    kjayp Contributing Member

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    How can u get D12 the ball early in the shot clock when its nearly half gone before Harden even gets the ball uo to the top of the key? And another third expires while James dribbles while staring at his defender... that only leaves 4 or 5 seconds on the clock... :(
     
    #31 kjayp, Dec 20, 2015
  12. basketballholic

    basketballholic Member

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    ....by making stops. What you are describing is what happens when our opponent scores and we're picking the ball out of the basket in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
     
    #32 basketballholic, Dec 20, 2015
  13. dream2franchise

    dream2franchise Member

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    I think the other great look for Dwight look is the catch and shoot. UNDER THE RIM. Those are the shots we fail to get him consistently, apart from last game.

    Once he seals his man and gets his feet in the block, get him the ball and let him put it up. That pass needs to be bulleted to him. No bounce, no surveying the offensive landscape, no chance to let the D read the offense.

    Catch and shoot.

    Regarding post ups. Obviously it's not pretty, but part of the problem is our other players just standing there. It's allowing the defense to double successfully because they're not being forced to chase their man. Some movement could allow for a better look for Dwight, provided the spacing is adequate.

    Part of me is disappointed that McHale never taught him (or it failed to sink in on Dwight's part) the virtues of keeping the ball high after a rebound. Dwight gathers way too much, shot block city.
     
    #33 dream2franchise, Dec 20, 2015
  14. thekad

    thekad Member

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    A waste of possessions for the most part, but if it's the only way to get him to give 100% on defense then, sure, we can deal with bad offense for a couple possessions every quarter.
     
    #34 thekad, Dec 20, 2015
  15. Aleron

    Aleron Contributing Member

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    Dwight is pretty good at what could be called the pick and post, we ran one of those yesterday, that's basically what SVG used to have run for him.

    Straight post ups though are awful possessions, he hit a couple, they were luck (lol clanger that went in), and the idea we need to give dwight possessions to get him involved on defense.

    Seriously, people talk about Harden's mentality and we're explaining how we need to treat Dwight like he's 4 years old?
     
    #35 Aleron, Dec 20, 2015
  16. heypartner

    heypartner Contributing Member

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    Well, this other guy on the BBS with the same name as you disagrees.

    http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=10156843&postcount=5


    Harden has made a concerted effort to get the ball to Dwight the last couple games. I can tell the difference.
    -- Nov 29th, basketballholic    ​

    Go ahead and try to explain this away...

    This was just two days after we had our Screen Shot battle where I showed time and time again that we were getting the ball to Howard...and aelliott was arguing with you about it, too. Many ppl were. So you finally looked for it, and saw it, and posted about it, yet conveniently forgot that again to start yet another thread about how this has just now happened "for the first time all season."

    So, are you going to backpedal to say, "Oh, well, so it's just three games."
     
    #36 heypartner, Dec 20, 2015
  17. jbasket

    jbasket Member

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    [​IMG]


    hp to holic:

    [​IMG]

    hp to the crowd:

    [​IMG]
     
    #37 jbasket, Dec 20, 2015
  18. J Hard

    J Hard Member

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    Cool story bro, hindsight's 20/20.
     
    #38 J Hard, Dec 20, 2015
  19. basketballholic

    basketballholic Member

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    it was different last night. A commitment is a different level than an effort. The effort didn't continue. We've gapped a whole bunch of games here without Harden making the same effort until last night. Last night appeared to be a commitment. There was a different level of leadership exhibited by Harden.

    Once again, misinterpretation and parsing.
     
    #39 basketballholic, Dec 20, 2015
  20. DraftBoy10

    DraftBoy10 Member

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    Take it easy, young fella.


    DB10
     
    #40 DraftBoy10, Dec 20, 2015
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