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Hi McHale, Did you watch how spurs defeated the blazers?

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by tangwentao, May 7, 2014.

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zipcrash Member

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RockStrosTex said: ↑

It's all about match-ups...
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matched up pretty well for 3 quarters

#121 zipcrash, May 7, 2014

francis 4 prez Contributing Member

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lol at people and the robin lopez quote. you realize we had an extremely high offensive efficiency in the series right? higher than in the regular season. 2nd highest in the playoffs behind the clippers. lopez can talk about how easy we were to defend all he wants, the results say we were very difficult for portland to defend. and that was with harden not being able to shoot for the first 5 games.

if we lost for any reason, it was defense, and even then i would say our D was fairly decent. there's only so much you can do against some of the shots lillard and aldridge hit. sometimes players just hit shots they don't normally hit. and when they do you lose a close playoff series. it doesn't mean every strategy we have is terrible and everything the spurs are doing is the work of genius (even if pop is a great coach). it just means portland and houston are close and their 2 best players had great shooting series and 1 of our 2 best players missed a ton of shots he can usually make.

oh, and portland got ridiculous calls that they probably can't expect against a respected team like the spurs.

#122 francis 4 prez, May 7, 2014
KlutchQT Contributing Member

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francis 4 prez said: ↑

lol at people and the robin lopez quote. you realize we had an extremely high offensive efficiency in the series right? higher than in the regular season. 2nd highest in the playoffs behind the clippers. lopez can talk about how easy we were to defend all he wants, the results say we were very difficult for portland to defend. and that was with harden not being able to shoot for the first 5 games.

if we lost for any reason, it was defense, and even then i would say our D was fairly decent. there's only so much you can do against some of the shots lillard and aldridge hit. sometimes players just hit shots they don't normally hit. and when they do you lose a close playoff series. it doesn't mean every strategy we have is terrible and everything the spurs are doing is the work of genius (even if pop is a great coach). it just means portland and houston are close and their 2 best players had great shooting series and 1 of our 2 best players missed a ton of shots he can usually make.

oh, and portland got ridiculous calls that they probably can't expect against a respected team like the spurs.
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He didn't say we were easy to defend. He said we are heavily dependent on isolation plays, whereas SAS is a study in beautiful ball movement. Both of those things are true, and one of them is certainly easier to defend than the other. Just look at all the times we dumped the ball to Dwight. Nobody cuts to the basket. No movement off the ball. Our other 4 guys are just standing around, and so are their defenders. I'd say that's an easier task than chasing your man around the court the way you'd have to vs. SAS, where every guy on the court is a legitimate threat.

#123 KlutchQT, May 7, 2014
count_dough-ku Contributing Member

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francis 4 prez said: ↑

lol at people and the robin lopez quote. you realize we had an extremely high offensive efficiency in the series right? higher than in the regular season. 2nd highest in the playoffs behind the clippers. lopez can talk about how easy we were to defend all he wants, the results say we were very difficult for portland to defend. and that was with harden not being able to shoot for the first 5 games.

and 1 of our 2 best players missed a ton of shots he can usually make.
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We scored a lot of points in the series, no doubt about that. But I don't know if I'd use the word "efficient". The Rockets were not very good in the 4th quarter in most of the games. And to say that our best player and leading scorer missed a ton of shots kinda undermines the whole "extremely high offensive efficiency" argument.

#124 count_dough-ku, May 7, 2014
sammy Contributing Member

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tinman said: ↑

I saw that they had a superior PG named Tony Parker
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True but our superior 2 didn't show up until game 6.

#125 sammy, May 7, 2014
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Losing Kelvin Sampson towards the latter part of the season probably hurt the Rockets worst than most people actually think IMHO.

#126 jump shooter, May 7, 2014
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fxbillie said: ↑

Oh, I miss to include Morey too. He needs to watch the Spurs too to see how bad his coaches are and what needs to be changed about the way the team play. If nothing is changed next year, poor defense, more ISO & more ISO, we will end up the same. Hey Morey, there are many good coaches out there if only to improve on our defense, JVG, Lionel Hollins, George Karl, and now Mark Jackson.
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The whole philosophy of the team, as many of the posters here gloated, was based on "Moreyball" and McHale was implementing that on the court as the coach. If so, then the way the Rockets played, good or bad, was not entirely as a direct result of McHale's coaching but it was due to the philosophy behind the play of the team. What is unfolding now in the Spurs vs. Blazers series is the contrast between Moreyball and good old basketball fundamentals as played by the Spurs.

#127 albuster, May 7, 2014

count_dough-ku Contributing Member

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albuster said: ↑

The whole philosophy of the team, as many of the posters here gloated, was based on "Moreyball" and McHale was implementing that on the court as the coach. If so, then the way the Rockets played, good or bad, was not entirely as a direct result of McHale's coaching but it was due to the philosophy behind the play of the team. What is unfolding now in the Spurs vs. Blazers series is the contrast between Moreyball and good old basketball fundamentals as played by the Spurs.
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What exactly is Moreyball when applied on an actual NBA court? From an offensive and defensive standpoint. If there's already a thread about this somewhere, I apologize. But I'd really like to know what an accurate description of that is.

#128 count_dough-ku, May 7, 2014
Lar Contributing Member

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KlutchQT said: ↑

I don't think that's his logic. The point is that success in the regular season is not a fail-safe predictor of success in the postseason, where the game is totally different. See current Nets/Heat series.
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Exactly that, thanks for clarifying.

Good counter-example involving the same two teams: In 1995, the Spurs beat the Rockets head-to-head 5-1 in the regular season. We all know what happened next in the postseason. The game just completely changes when the stakes are raised, you gameplan specifically for one team, and it comes down to execution in pressure situations. There is zero predictive power from the regular season to the playoffs.

#129 Lar, May 7, 2014
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Morey's system is sound. How we executed was terrible.

Drive and Kick Out
High Screens and PNR
Inside Out where the ball actually comes out.

I must highlight that Bev had some nice corner kick out threes in the first win and Lin beasted on PNR on the second win.

For the large portion of the series, all I remember from half court sets were just iso into foul calls either from the top of the key or Howard.

#130 Yohohoho, May 7, 2014
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Defense is another story.

#131 Yohohoho, May 7, 2014
zipcrash Member

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i think pop just uses the regular season as practice for the post season

#132 zipcrash, May 7, 2014
OkayAyeReloaded Member

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Three-Pointers: Spurs set the tone by clobbering the Blazers in Game 1

Tony Parker worked over Damian Lillard and the Blazers’ defense in Game 1. (Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)

What looked to be a fascinating, competitive second-round series between the Spurs and Trail Blazers was, in its opening act, a bit of a massacre. San Antonio led by as many as 29 points and rolled 116-92 for a wire-to-wire victory on Tuesday in San Antonio.

• Order is restored as San Antonio’s offense executes to precision. In their first-round series against Dallas, the Spurs hit more snags in their offensive flow than could be reasonably expected. They seemed to work out those kinks just in time for a blowout win in Game 7, though with a new series came a new opponent and an entirely new metagame. Portland, while superficially similar to Dallas in some ways, is a challenge unto itself; the matchups, objectives and fundamental schemes in play are different, and so too would be the series.

So far that has turned out to be wildly in the Spurs’ favor, as the vaunted San Antonio offense went off in Game 1 without a hitch. Tony Parker (33 points on 24 shots, nine assists, six turnovers), after six ho-hum games to start his postseason, embarrassed the cast of Blazer guards left at his mercy. Damian Lillard, one of the worst guard defenders in the league among regular starters, drew first watch on Parker and was promptly punked.

Mo Williams got his turn and had no better luck. Wesley Matthews finally slid over to try his hand, though his innately physical brand of defense seemed only to fuel Parker’s free throw total. This might be as dominant as we’ve seen Parker all season, as should be the case when Portland has so few credible defensive options against him. Even cross-matching Matthews comes at a cost, and were Terry Stotts to bend further by lining up Nicolas Batum against Parker, he’d risk Kawhi Leonard going to work against a much smaller guard as a trade-off.

More generally, the Blazers’ periodic dependence on a tiny Lillard-Williams backcourt puts them in a hell of a spot in this series. That pairing worked out to be a solid net positive for Portland in Round 1, as there were enough places to hide one of the two guards as to preserve their offensive advantage. With the way the timing of those lineups broke in Game 1, however, one of Lillard or Williams was often stuck on Parker with the other checking Leonard — all as Batum or Matthews focused their attention on Manu Ginobili.

Part of what makes San Antonio such a tough cover is the way they make opponents defend at every position. Lining up a weaker defender against a shooting guard might be the best course for Portland, though even then an active cutter like Danny Green or Marco Belinelli could spring free in such a matchup. The problem isn’t simply who will guard Parker, but who players like Lillard and Williams can guard at all in this series.

• For the first time this postseason, Portland encountered genuine scoring obstruction. The difference in defensive imposition between the flaky Rockets and the crisp, fully-functional Spurs is nothing short of titanic. It’s in that difference that we find the cause for Portland to shoot 38.5 percent from the field in Game 1 while turning the ball over on nearly a fifth of their possessions — both dreadful marks by the Blazers’ standards, in particular.

Portlandstruggled getting into its most basic actions on Tuesday, from the pick-and-roll down. Lillard (17 points on 15 shots, three assists, six turnovers) was thrown for a bit of a loop in the first half by how aggressively San Antonio was showing on LaMarcus Aldridge’s high screens (a clear deviation from the Spurs’ default) — a strategy that held Lillard to just four points on 2-of-7 shooting before halftime while the Blazers got pummeled. Lillard worked his way around that pressure to better effect in the second half, though by then the game had essentially been decided and Portland’s offense was hardly recognizable.

All flow was gone. The Blazers’ best means of scoring in this game were concerted, telegraphed post-ups for Aldridge (32 points on 25 shots, 14 rebounds) on the left block. Those work well enough in small doses, though they’re really just one oversimplified component of what is generally a much larger offensive package. An offense predicated on ball movement was held to just nine assists for the entire game, in part because San Antonio was so disruptive as to force Portland into the comfort of the basic.

That didn’t offer much opportunity for kick-out or swing passes, as the Spurs were content to play Aldridge one-on-one so long as Lillard could be derailed and Portland’s shooters were kept under wraps. Both goals were very clearly met in this opening contest.

Lillard struggled due to both the schematic tweak noted above and a vastly improved individual defensive performance from Parker. San Antonio’s lead guard was genuinely pesky on D in a way he hasn’t been for weeks, an important turn given how lifeless Parker looked in defending the likes of Jose Calderon and Devin Harris in the first round.

As far as controlling the three-point arc, for the entire game the Blazers went just 3-of-14 from long range. Those three makes tied a season-low. The 14 attempts stand as Portland’s second-lowest total this year.

• Depth matters. Postseason basketball is typically understood to be the domain of starters; many coaches tighten their rotations over the course of the playoffs, with the climate of a particular series rendering some regular players less useful. The early subtext of this series, though, is the importance of bench play — an area in which San Antonio has a commanding advantage.

Gregg Popovich again set himself apart in Game 1 by relying on a hefty cast of contributors: 10 Spurs logged six minutes or more in the first half on Tuesday to just six Blazers, and by game’s end three San Antonio reserves — none of them Manu Ginobili — had scored in double figures.

While Blazers head coach Terry Stotts was coming to terms with just how few of his reserves seemed at all playable in this series, Popovich was drawing a 10-point, seven-rebound performance from Aron Baynes — a bottom-of-the-barrel center who logged all of six minutes in the first round. While Williams contributed to Portland’s defensive struggles, Belinelli (17 points on eight shots) and Patty Mills (10 points) helped lay it on the Blazers with perimeter shooting. San Antonio’s subs won’t be this good throughout the series on an individual basis, though collectively they have the talent and opportunity to make a considerable swing in the outcome of every game.
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http://nba.si.com/2014/05/07/san-antonio-spurs-portland-trail-blazers-tony-parker-damian-lillard-game-1-recap/

#133 OkayAyeReloaded, May 7, 2014

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without Harden, Blazers suck on offense; without McHale, Blazers suck on defense.

#134 masc0635, May 7, 2014
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#135 tefunk, May 7, 2014

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Lar said: ↑

Exactly that, thanks for clarifying.

Good counter-example involving the same two teams: In 1995, the Spurs beat the Rockets head-to-head 5-1 in the regular season. We all know what happened next in the postseason. The game just completely changes when the stakes are raised, you gameplan specifically for one team, and it comes down to execution in pressure situations. There is zero predictive power from the regular season to the playoffs.
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I don't think it comes down to "better player" that we lost the series. Regular season is not a guarantee, but it's an indicator. Any team can adjust, and we did poorly, that's why we lost.

#136 blueice604, May 7, 2014
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meh said: ↑

Clearly if you just watch the Spurs play, then you'll be championship caliber.

Signed,
Mike Brown
Brett Brown
PJ Carlesimo
Mike Budenholzer
Jacque Vaugnhn

Disciples of Popovich and clearly the bestest, amazingest coaches in the world.
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LOL. Budenholzer is a good coach though, he had his team overachieving. Would love to have him coach us. ATL's offense at times looks like spurs-lite

#137 JJHardLin, May 7, 2014
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OkayAyeReloaded said: ↑

http://nba.si.com/2014/05/07/san-antonio-spurs-portland-trail-blazers-tony-parker-damian-lillard-game-1-recap/
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Haha. Looks like we sort of softened the Blazers up.

#138 langal, May 7, 2014

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count_dough-ku said: ↑

We scored a lot of points in the series, no doubt about that. But I don't know if I'd use the word "efficient". The Rockets were not very good in the 4th quarter in most of the games. And to say that our best player and leading scorer missed a ton of shots kinda undermines the whole "extremely high offensive efficiency" argument.
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http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_2014.html

According to bball reference 3rd in the playoffs in offensive efficiency. 0.1 points behind Miami

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats/_/seasontype/3

According to Hollingsrs numbers on ESPN 4th in the playoffs in offensive efficiency

And like someone said before, that's with one of the most efficient weapons in the entire league crapping the bed in all but 1 game.

#139 jordnnnn, May 7, 2014
zipcrash Member

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jordnnnn said: ↑

http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_2014.html

According to bball reference 3rd in the playoffs in offensive efficiency. 0.1 points behind Miami

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats/_/seasontype/3

According to Hollingsrs numbers on ESPN 4th in the playoffs in offensive efficiency

And like someone said before, that's with one of the most efficient weapons in the entire league crapping the bed in all but 1 game.
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until the 4th quarter

#140 zipcrash, May 7, 2014

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