Is Mchale's lack of in-game adjustments going to cost us this series?

No misdirection on that last play. Everyone in the building knew Harden would take the last shot. All 5 POR players surrounded Harden.

Harden had no one to kick the ball out to. Morey and the coaches have to look at our line-up. Harden is too young/inexperienced/stubborn to give all that freedom to. He needs structure, instructions. He's not a Lebron or Durant who can will his team to win. Howard is too one-dimensional; he cannot dominate.

McHale needs to do his job--coach the team up.

 

Are you referring to the guy Lin was guarding shooting 1/6? Or when he was left on an island after being picked?

You might want to rewatch the game. In terms of defense, Lin played pretty well for most of the game.

In the 4th quarter Lillard scored nearly ALL his points on Beverley or when Lin was out of the game.

4th Quarter

Damian Lillard 4th quarter

5:16 Damian Lillard fouled (by Beverley)
4:00 Lillard draws blocking foul (Lin), makes 1/2. Lin was not covering Lillard, he did however attempt to draw the charge.
3:49 Lillard makes 3 pointer and draws foul (Lin), misses FT. Lin was screened off a high PICK, not beaten off the dribble
3:13 Lillard makes driving lay up in Transition off James Harden turn over
0:32 Jeremy Lin leaves the game for TJones
0:29 Lillard makes 3 pointer (assisted by Batum)

http://espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?gameId=400553097&period=4

So 3 points you can attribute to Lin, 4 if you want to count the blocking foul as the help defender.

And in OT, here are the points that Lillard scored...

0:44 Lillard lay up + foul (Beverley draws the foul)
0:17 Lillard fouled, 2/2 FT's (Garcia foul)

Total points scored... 4.

http://espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?gameId=400553097&period=5

Review the tape, record it and do an actual analysis of where the defense is actually breaking down. See how many times Lin is actually directly responsible for Lillard scoring and you'll realize how unfounded your assertions are.

As for Lin's 2 TO's yesterday, none were due to his picking up his dribble or a pass. The first TO the ball bounced off a defender's foot and the ball was lost in the scramble. The second TO he was stripped while driving into the lane. When a player is aggressive while driving to the lane, TO's are to be expected.

If you don't believe it, pull up the synergy video and click TO's for the Blazers game.

Or you could just go by your memory, which is obviously incorrect when compared to the in game video.

 

Larry Brown out-coached him and got his less talented Detroit team to beat the Lakers in the finals.

Terry Stotts could easily "coach" this Blazers team past the more talented Rockets. I was impressed with his opening game strategy... post-up Harden, have Matthews/Batum both take turns guarding Harden, go small to combat the Rockets going big, guard Dwight one-on-one and force him to do enough to beat you, commit to the Hack-a-Howard.

That being said, McHale should be able to counter those moves without issue. I don't think his game-to-game preparation is lacking, its the in-game adjustments that can be slow to formulate (along with trying to "take" what the defense is giving you... they kept trying to force-feed Harden, which played right into the Blazers defense... when the Lin/Harden/T.Jones pick and rolls were having them back-pedaling and clueless as to who to guard).

 

Top of key is where harden takes 80% of his shots and Portland was ready, McHale needs to add some ball movement plays or screen plays

 

A gross misperception. Damian scored 31 with Bev. Guarding him.

 

There were a couple of rough defensive plays by Lin in the second half but if I remember right at least one of them was while he was guarding Batum. Having 6'3'' Lin guarding 6'8'' Batum, not a good idea.

 

If Asik is too important to us, can we ask him to quit setting those screens that just gets called for fouls? Ask the wing players to set screens instead.

We need to get more defenders in the game. Jordan Hamilton--I'm looking at you.

If Harden isn't shooting well, get Troy Daniels some run.

 

McHale is not a good head coach.

Probably would be a beast assistant coach though.

 

Er, that just happened last night with our team...

 

I don't know if some people paid attention while watching the game. Both the Rockets and the Blazers made plenty of "adjustments" last night. Some worked, some didn't. We ended up with a coin-flip game. Both team will most likely take the lessons learned from game 1 to develop strategies for the rest of the series.

For example:

- The Rockets went with conventional lineups (Jones at PF), a super-sized lineup (Howard+Asik together), as well as small-ball 1 big, 4 perimeter guys lineups. The Blazers similarly went both conventional and small-ball.

When the Rockets went small and Portland stayed big, the Rockets went on some runs. Portland then matched up with their own small lineups. And the small-small lineups were about even overall.

- The Rockets guarded Aldridge with the following players at various times during the game: Jones, Howard, Asik, Parsons, Harden and even Garcia.

The team didn't play DMo and Casspi and didn't run a hard double team at Aldridge consistently, but these are for good reason, I think. DMo and Casspi have not played well in recent games and the small-ball lineups were effective last night. Also, Portland was often spacing the floor with very good shooters so there would be a price to be paid for double teaming.

- With Asik in foul trouble and not playing very well, the team went with Jones at the 5 and 4 smalls (for offense, presumably) when Dwight sat during some stretches. IIRC, this didn't work very well (the team was shooting early contested Js on offense, and missing them, and no rim protection hurt).

- The Rockets made many 1-possession lineup changes at crunch time-- swapping Lin and Jones in and out depending on offense/defense, matchups, need for shooting or rebounding, etc.

- The Rockets ran the Lin-Harden pick and roll first to force a switch and get Mo Williams on Harden. When Portland decided not to switch, Lin used the pick to blow past the defense for layups (including a couple in overtime).


The one tactical thing that bothered me was too many iso-Hardens at the end of OT. They didn't work out, but Harden has come through numerous times in these end-of-game isos, including toward the end of regulation, so it isn't insane for the Rockets to give him the ball and have him create. No strategy is 100% guaranteed to score points.

 

Thanks Billy.

 

If you can't beat em... recruit them next off season.

LMA + Lillard = Lin + picks

 

It's not his lack of, it's the actual ones he makes.

 

Good post. I have a couple of tactical things that bother me.

(i) On the last minute plays out of timeouts. I don't mind the "play" itself... I can't stand the inbound portion. Portland ran 2 plays at the end of the game to get wide open 3s at the top of the key. Even though Matthews didn't go in, it was still key to them winning as the play created the slight confusion that allowed for the 2 offensive boards. It was the same play, and it worked great. The Rockets inbound play consists of Harden unable to get open until 4.9 seconds have transpired, and then being covered incredibly well.

On the very last play, this was a problem so TJones ended up with the inbound pass. Even though he immediately got it to Harden, it still screwed up the play. Now at the top of the key, Jones decides to set a pick for Harden. #1 - I guarantee you Harden didn't want a pick there. #2 - I guarantee you if he did, he didn't want to go right, and for it to be a average pick at best. The last play of the game was Jones fault... but more to the point was McHale's fault for not being able to design a single inbound play that is effective.

(ii) Not putting Asik in on the Blazers last play of regulation, where they got the offensive tip. This is a trend amongst NBA coaches that you would think they would have learned by now. Pops lost a championship last year because of it. The Pacers lost a game to the Heat last year by taking Hibbert out. I get that coaches are afraid their bigs will be helpless against the dribble penetration. But with only <10 seconds left, I think it's a tactic you have to do. Securing the rebound is obviously as paramount to the play as disrupting the shot.

Would I like to see more "plays"? Sure. But I'd rather just see them execute the things they are doing better. Take the Harden post-ups. They always struggle to get him the ball. They don't need a play per-se. But they do need a better strategy to post him up.

Stuff like that

 

Nice reminder of some things that actually happened.

 

Why weren't we doing more PnR when (1) Howard's post up against Lopez wasn't effective, (2) we have two of the best PnR ball handlers together with two very good finishers at the front line, and (3) Harden's long ball was NOT falling?

 

Copy & Paste in every single game thread is very easy, but I thought you wanted to make a point regarding last night. Never mind.

 

classic CF. thread turns into lin bashing thread. every lin TO is scrutinized while other players' TOs are ignored. revisionist history strikes again...Lin hardly guarded Lillard. it was only until Bev fouled out. And yes, Lillard blew by him a few times, but he does that to everyone, he's a freakin all-star pg for crying out loud.

the problem last night was defense, defensive rebounding and mchale (same as the entire season). lin can only control two of those things and he was actually pretty good on the boards for a guard. his defense on mo was pretty solid in the 2nd Q. if not for Lin, we would have lost in regulation. he was a plus player on both ends so quit your hating. save it for when he actually has a bad game.