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

neither was Lin. lillard scored off of switches and in transition. only til the end of regulation and OT did lillard start going at Bev AND Lin one-on-one.

 

Wow, no one can guard Torocan :grin:

It's like they have some kind of selection bias where they only notice certain things about certain players while ignoring it in others.

 

If i remember correctly, the one loss we loss to Portland during the regular season was a result of McFail putting in the wrong lineup. He contribute to this loss as well by not changing up strategy. He could have gone zone defense to try to stop Aldridge...this fool did absolutely nothing. We might as well not have a coach and still play the same.

 

This. It was a coin flip game. Offense wasn't really an issue. Seems this series will be about who is able to get the most stops.

 

With 2:05 left and it's Rockets ball. Coach already pulled Howard out for a few minutes due to Hack n Howard. Why not burn the clock down to 1:99 then call time out and insert Howard at that point? That way, they can't do the Hack-n-Howard under 2minutes. This will give you an advantage as far as rebounding. I just think this coach McFail is fnking stupid. Don't have any sense of strategy. In NBA Playoffs, you win games by playing smart and it's the little things that count and this coach doesn't do shyt in this game.

 

Mchales lack of defensive adjustments really scare me.

Aldridge was killing Jones, he put Parsons, that didn't work and then nothing else was tried. Why not have Asik in for the last possession of the game to secure the rebound or why didn't we take the ball off Aldridge hands using double teams?

The best defensive plays against Lamarcus were when Howard acted as a shadow defender and got the block (similar to what OKC does with Howard himself), yet we saw little of this.

Yes, Aldridge hit a few miraculous 3s, but the inability to make defensive adjustments will be Houstons downfall (hope not)...

 

I think McHale threw the kitchen sink at the Blazers yesterday. He went big, he went small. Eventually, he'll find something that works consistently.

I love the chess match that occurs during a playoff series.

 

He is probably using a really bad stream and mistaken Parson for Lin. Happens all the time.

 

i think we can beat this team. things i personally would have done, different than mchale and just in general things i really noticed about this game.

1st half-

twin towers- did prevent penetration from their guards, which was actually a decent move at the time because the blazers were hot. but for extended periods of time we dont get much out of them offensively. mchale slowed them down with the twin towers which wasnt a bad idea.

i would have actually taken dwight out at the beginning, that guy was fumbling and missing everything the first quarter. but we kept giving him the ball, that frustrated me. dwight is a player on this team like everyone else, and if you miss 5 shots in a row you need to hand the ball off. most importantly team mates need to not give him the ball if he is not making his shots from 3 feet away. the guy needs to be 1 foot away from the rim to score. hes not a strong offensive scorer outside of the 1 foot rage unfortunately.

parsons- straight balled and got us back into the game. mchale should have not taken him out, that move was a bit of a head scratcher for me. maybe he wanted to rest him, but i would have kept him in while he was on fire.

3rd quarter kind of got sloppy from both teams, i think this was just a slump in the game. at the beginning of the 3rd our small line up was chopping them up. i really believe our smaller line up is better than their small line up. but they chipped away at the lead until the 4th

4th quarter- things got chippy, portland made there press and honestly they we playing better than us. i knew they were out playing us even though we had the lead, they came in really wanting this game. i really felt we were going to lose this game especially when lilliards 4 point play sparked that run. harden missed a lot of shots, which is unusual IMO around this 4th quarter. i dont think we will see him miss that much next game. dwight and lin stepped up and really kept us in the game. but i think a major point, is the ball got sticky. it really got sticky and we were jacking up shots that werent falling, when we should have been moving the ball.

but final verdict, we were getting some really open looks, but the shots werent falling from our shooters. the ball got sticky and we had no ball movement, every player was going 1 v 1. the only way were getting points from our guards was by taking it to the basket. harden made a bad shot with that final 3 in overtime, and whenever he hesitated and got caught up in traffic towards the end.

we couldnt buy a shot in the 4th/ overtime and portland made everything. something i dont think is on coaching, rather the players. but there was some bad plays by everyone on the team, there is enough blame to go around for everyone.

team ball is the answer when the going gets tough

 

I was thinking the same. Was so upset and confused when McHale did that. Who takes a player out when he's dominating?!

 

There are some decisions that can be questioned from game 1-- same is true for every coach and every player. The nature of basketball is that coaches have to decide based on their best educated guess on what will work but even a decision supported by prior evidence and analytics data doesn't achieve the desired result 100% of the time.

But to say that the Rockets "didn't make adjustments" is just silly. They may not have made the adjustments that you wanted and not all of their adjustments worked (some did very much work in this back and forth game), but the team certainly made plenty of adjustments according to what's happening on the floor. Making no adjustments would be something like sticking with a conventional lineup even after a first quarter in which this lineup failed to score.

Moreover, there is no evidence that McHale's staff is unwilling to make drastic tactical changes in a playoff series based on what does and does not work. Think back to last season: the Rockets got blown out by OKC in game 1 playing a conventional lineup with Greg Smith starting at PF (Smith had done well as a starter in the final 10 games or so of the regular season) and immediately went small FULL TIME with Smith NEVER seeing PF minuted again all series. Meanwhile, OKC helped the Rockets out by staying big and sticking with the ineffective Perkins for far too long.

If there is similar clear evidence that something works or do not work, there is every reason to believe that the Rockets coaching staff is willing and ready to "make adjustments," even drastic ones, during the course of the series.

I think this thread and some other posts are really a result of fans throwing out cliches overreacting to a loss and trying to cast blame irrationally.

 

I thought his defense on Mo Williams was fine.

Lin had some costly turnovers in the 4th, but honestly who else can we play on our bench? Sadly Lin's our most productive bench player at the moment.

 

Dude has no idea what he is doing.

On the bright side, if he cost us this series, he be shown the door. And that's great.

 

Sorry, that's just a bunch of excuses for McHale. He made adjustments alright, but most of them a bit late or strange to put it mildly.

- When we went with the TT to counter LA and Lopez (all good), Portland went small (Robinson in, Lopez out). We stayed with the TT as if that was part of the game plan and we can't adjust to their adjustments. TT should only be used against their two big, not a big and a typical PF. Jones against Robinson would be better for Houston.
- Taking Parson out when he was red hot was strange.
- Up 5 still in the 4th, taking Howard out and going small when you need defense more than offense was really strange.
- Again taking Howard out with 24sec left in OT on a defensive possession and Hou Up 1 leaving no paint protection. Lillard ended up driving to the basket and got 2 FT from it. This is McHale adjustment to Portland adjustment (when Lillard got 2 and 1), but it's all wrong.
- Not a single trap or hard double for their two stars especially LMA. They have good shooter, so this isn't that strange, but after some point (40+pts, you think you need to do something).

 

Idk why we NEVER RUN THE PnR!!! Lin and Harden make it rain for days when Asik gives them a pick, but when Dwight's in, it's just feed it to him on the low post.

We need to run PnR much much more for game 2.

 

Yep, all Lin's fault.

 

Ok, it's one thing to insult other posters by denigrating the size of their sexual organs and brains or by casting aspersions on the honor of their mothers, but accusing them of blaming players and coaches irrationally! Referring to their choice of words as cliches! On an Internet forum! NOW YOU'VE GONE TO FAR CARL HERRERA!

 

*TOO FAR

 

If we lose this series, then goodbye McHale. Harden for Melo would also be a nice adjustment and Lin for anybody.