I'm not buying into any such hype yet. This is just wishful thinking. Every offseason people act like this about the next season and get unreasonably pumped about what could be. Last year we were set to compete in the Finals. It takes a lot of stars to align for player and a team to be great. MDA has had a bad run lately and we were a horrible team last year. I'm not psyched.
The new offense will be fast and not alot of iso. Harden will have to move inside the 3pt line without the ball for the first time in his rockets career
Why do you believe that there won't be a lot of ISO? D'Antoni's Suns teams ran ISO 13% of the time. In comparison, last year's Rockets ran ISO 9.4% of the time. D'Antoni's LA teams and Knicks teams ran lots of ISO too. Anytime that D'Antoni has had players who could iso then he took advantage of it. We very well might run more iso this year but it will be in less predictable situations, from better sets and hopefully with additional weapons that have to be defended. That would prevent teams from loading up to stop Harden and allow him to play more 1-on-1 rather than 1-on-3.
Does 1v1 post play (a la Dwight) fall into the "ISO" category? Not sure where you're getting your stats from, but I don't remember the MDA/Nash Suns ISO'ing that much. Hopefully without Dwight clogging the lane, the offense will be more free-flowing. Harden PnR/PnP should be revitalized.
Sorry, it was actually 12% for the Suns rather than 13%. Here's this season's ISO leaders: http://stats.nba.com/league/team/#!/playtype/isolation/?Season=2015-16&SeasonType=Regular Season Houston is 2nd at 9.4% of their possessions. stats.nba.com had a summary of all definitions of various play types but I don't see it there anymore. I believe their definition of ISO had to be faceup and above the free throw line so postups wouldn't be included. I'll look around and see if I can find the definitions. D'Antoni has always tailored his offense to his player strength's. Harden will still ISO but it will likely be in situations that are less predictable and contain more options. Here's a D'Antoni quote from his time in NY:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"A Center but gotta get some ****** shooters." <br>"Our FA targets are now, not 2017."<br>Was told Rockets will NOT move into Rd.1 but he laughed.</p>— Doc Rocket (@Thedocrocket) <a href="https://twitter.com/Thedocrocket/status/746129970066403329">June 23, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oh, & Les was dropping F-bombs like crazy a few days ago. About what, IDK. But he was REALLY mad about a player & it wasn't Dwight. IDK</p>— Doc Rocket (@Thedocrocket) <a href="https://twitter.com/Thedocrocket/status/746130571684782080">June 23, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I COMPLETELY AGREE HARDEN is the real deal. He just needs some SHOOTERS around him. MVP season coming up, God forbid any injuries.
at least doc rocket takes the time to make it interesting with the riddles. sure beats "i heard from such and such...."
