A reasonable take. My money is on Morey seeing how D-Mo and Jones develop over the summer. Against certain match ups Jones works. D-Mo quietly has become an excellent defender and if he can hit 35% from behind the arc might be the ideal PF for the Rockets. Against bruisers like West Asik is available. And Morey has the option of going small. I think the Rockets may be OK at the PF. Not great, but OK.
I agree, a necessary evil. I just want the Rockets to optimize that necessary evil. I want McHale to keep preaching push the ball attack the rim, look for the open three. And when that fails dump it into Howard but keep pounding in his head move quick. If you can't move quick the alternative is not move slow. It's pass. I also think they do not repost the post enough. Of course that is partly because Howard doesn't pass out of the post enough or quick enough. But that's something else that works. Post pass out repost. We can improve this area of the offense without having to improve Howard's offensive moves. Just do what he already does well. Only teach him that if it's not easily there than pass. If the doubles coming pass. If a guy is wide open on the wing pass. Keep beating that in his head. The minute he has to think how am I going to score chances are he won't. It's not there and he does it anyway and the results speak for themselves. He is a monsterwhen he beats his man. His a monster on alley oops. He's a monster on rebound put backs. He's not a monster on backing his man down and dribbling and shooting 6 foot hook shots. Minimize those and maximize the others and you got a new and improved Dwight.
Howard's post game is a necessary evil. If teams single cover him he does fine. If teams double cover him, it leaves a man open. So it's not as efficient as our other scoring options (PnR, perimeter, drives), but without it we're MUCH easier to defend. As long as we accept that he's not Hakeem 2.0 and we're going to scream at the TV once in a while, we'll get used to it.
Howard's low post game is ugly. It's effective sometimes, but he needs to participate in more pick and rolls...Not just with harden and Parsons...With who ever is out on the court. And really he shouldn't be as bad as he is, but he just misses some easy ones sometimes...
The Rockets have a top 3 offense when they run the floor. I'd bet their offensive numbers aren't close to top 3 when just talking about the half-court. In the playoffs, teams aren't going to be lazy and not get back on defense. The Rockets will have a much harder time running the floor, and they will have to rely much more on their half-court offense. That's why I'm not sure about the "top 3 offense" number.
I agree also. He should post up only in mismatches or opportunistically. Otherwise, do high-end utility duty around the rim.
He needs to commit to moving more on the offensive end. We don't play nearly enough pick and roll. Whether Harden, Parsons or Lin, he needs to be rolling toward the basket more.
Also, to keep Dwight happy. To let him realize for himself the need to run more P & Rs come playoff time, and not force it upon him. If you think about it, it's well worth much sacrificing 4 or 5 possessions a game to a slightly lower efficiency post and have Happy Dwight for everything else, including defense, than unhappy Dwight for everything period. To allow Dwight to re-establish his post game to pre-injury level. To expand his game further (Who knows? - his moves look a bit clumsy, but he's a true athlete... like the TT experiment, the coaches give these guys trial periods to expand their game, to give new things a chance... it's worth the investment).
My point is, where do they stop measuring "transition offense"? Maybe a team stops the initial break, but they are out of position and give up easy points in the early offense. I'd like to know how they measure. And looking at the stats, the majority of the plays which would probably be in the half court are iso, PnR ball handler, post up, and spot up. The rankings for those are 24th, 5th, 29th, and 13th respectively. That's not very encouraging.
And I wasn't saying I don't believe the Rockets are top 3 in offense. When I said "I'm not sure about that top 3 number", I meant I'm not sure how much that number will be relevant during the playoffs.
It hasn't been lately, but throughout the year good things have happened when we feed him the ball. He's been turning it over from the post at an alarming rate lately. Otherwise he's very effective from the post. He gets good looks and sets up his teammates. A lot of our scores are a result of the defense focusing their attention on the post. Our offense is much better when we play through him.
D12's post game is actually a lot better than it was last year, (Not saying that much) but it's a good sign for (hopefully??!?!) future improvements. His post-game is not elite by any means, but his power and athleticism is, which means if he's playing against a Center who can't body him up 1-on-1, he can score quite efficiently, however, if the opposing Center has a really strong core and is a good post defender (Adams, J. O'Neal, Bargnani...) then Dwight is going to have to rely on his skill to score in the post... which is where things go wrong. Anyway, having a semi-decent post-option is always a plus for a team, so having Dwight in the post helps the team more than it hurts them overall. Problem is that to get through the West in Playoff time, Dwight's going to be guarded by some pretty good post-defenders. I don't think it's possible for D12 to carry a heavier load than whatever he's doing in the regular season because of this. The heavier load that comes by during Playoff times will therefore need to be carried by Harden & co.
Amazes me with how much improvement he has shown in the post that after 1 bad post game he is now just so bad.
