Rockets need a PF along Dwight that can play D, rebound, and can score in the paint. Rockets will not get anywhere near a title without a true PF. Don't expect DMo to come in and save the team. He has not played any game time basketball since this past March. Morey needs to make a trade for a PF.
Agree with everyone that it seems like last year was a fluke, which we deep down all knew anyway. If it wasn't for Harden's team USA experience carrying over in terms of some effort on defense and going nuts on offense, we wouldn't have gone anywhere. The Clippers series we looked horrible outside of Game 5 & 7 + fourth quarter in game 6. The defense was gone, the effort was horrendous and we quit in games 3 & 4. Not exactly the sign of a great team. Yes we won the series and it gave us confidence, but now it has turned to a certain arrogance. The effort is just not there and our lack of an offensive system, which most of us knew all along, and accountability on both sides has hopefully finally brought us back down to earth. If it hasn't or doesn't soon, then changes need to be made. McHale is a great personality, but he will never take the team as is to a championship. Not now, not ever. Firing him probably won't solve much in the short run, but in the long run it will.
I'm pretty sure DMo is going to come back and look very good this season. But it will mostly be from the perimeter. I think that's probably part of the overall plan for his back, to keep him mostly on the perimeter and help him avoid a lot of the pounding on the interior. Hence the absurd amount of 3-point shots he has taken all summer and fall. Defensively, I think it's time to experiment with another Twin Towers arrangement. If we're going to actually try to play two bigs together and not play small ball, then the two bigs we should play together are Dwight and Clint. We don't have a big that can shoot the ball outside of DMo. So, we might as well run Capela out there alongside Dwight in a two-big lineup and see what happens. It's early. And our D can't really get much worse at this point. And we might find a dimension offensively with Dwight/Capela's combined size and athleticism cleaning up the offensive boards and providing a great anchor for our defense. That by itself, even if it works, doesn't solve our problems. We still need another big, especially as long as DMo is gone. But one thing anybody with common sense should be able to tell by now is it's a total waste of time playing Terrence......if we're interested in maximizing our odds of winning. Harrell should get any minutes that would possibly go to Terrence. There is no question Harrell is better than Terrence, even though he's a rookie lacking NBA experience. By the same token.....if we're gonna go small ball......why aren't we playing small ball for 48 minutes????????? That makes no sense to me. We should either play small ball for 48 minutes with Dwight/Clint alternately occupying the middle for all 48 minutes, surrounded by 4 smalls.....or if we're going to go big, we should go big with Clint at PF. On this current active roster, Dwight should be playing 30-35 minutes, Clint should be playing 30-35 minutes and no other bigs should be playing more than a few garbage time minutes. That means either 48 minutes of small ball or around 35 minutes of small ball and 12-13 minutes of a double big lineup with Dwight and Capela together. Clint is a much better defender and rebounder than either Terrence or Harrell. Even at the 4-spot. He's longer, more athletic, and he can defend perimeter 4's better than either Terrence or Harrell can right now. And the most success we've had as a team is with Thornton injected into the lineup with the other smalls around one big. So we play small ball and if we need to go big because somebody is punking us, we should get Clint out there alongside Dwight and see what happens. We already know that all our other double big lineups with Terrence or Harrell in there with a center are going to fail.
There's also no weakside help in this scheme inside 10ft. It's leading to offensive rebounds. Dwight steps up to cutoff the lane to the paint and there's an opponent untouched on the opposite side of the rim every time. I'm not even asking for a weakside shotblocking threat, I'm here begging for a simple defensive rebounding philosophy that doesn't leave us completely vulnerable.
It is simple. Our defense, (perimeter players) don't man up and play hard, maybe besides Ariza and Bev. But you just have to stick to your man through screens, get up close when they have the ball and make them take a contested shot. We are way too passive on defense, and when players drive, what happens? Dwight and Capela help and the offense gets the rebound. We are a small team, we need size, we get outrebounded way too much.
I remember someone making a similar thread three days ago and he was laughed at. "We are winning and you complain?" BS. Without good defence things like that happen even in the RS. You allow other teams to go on big runs, you allow teams to come back adn when your shots stop falling for a while which happens to even the best offensive teams, esp one that relies sooo much on a single player, then you lose. As for the op post. You CAN'T expect the guards and wings to deny penetration completely. Esp with Lawson and Harden. You can expect tho to delay it until further in the shot clock. As you correctly said we depend too much on Howard. The basis of every defence is communication. That's why the help defence is awful. There is no communication and no cohesion and then after that there is no hustling. I think the Rockets are bottom 3 defence right now and it won't get much better even with DMO unless something happens. Lawson coming off the bench, Brewer settling down and not be so horrible, Harden start speaking up -not accusing Capella like I saw during last match- but communicating with his teammates. And above all multiple practice sessions focused solely on defence. I have no confidence in Mchale to make this a good or even average defensive team.
I still say we need to give McDaniels a shot at playing up top on our defense. And I'm beginning to believe it's the only POSSIBLE solution given this current roster configuration and Bev's subpar DEFENSIVE (as well as offensive) play.
Related to the OP -- yikes. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/HPbasketball">@HPbasketball</a> Opponents are shooting 63% inside against Dwight, worst mark in the NBA. So there is that</p>— TM Warning (@tmwarning) <a href="https://twitter.com/tmwarning/status/664854977853149184">November 12, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I noticed that too. I don't know what Harden was saying, but IIRC, Clint seemed to play very timid immediately afterwards.
It was tweeted by Bima, but I think Dwight and Capela need to resist going after the big blocked shot, and just focus on getting hands up and boxing out. We're getting killed once our center is out of position, and that stat posted above only reiterates that.
We have polar opposite takes on this: I think we have the good enough players for a defense first team, and the problem lies entirely in our mindset/philosophy/schemes. Also on the absence of chemistry between Harden and Howard/Lawson. James needs to step back into a positive leadership role from last year. I look at any of the good defensive teams of the present and past, and don't see an entire team of standout individual defenders. I see great units made of decent defensive players. I agree on DMo but don't expect great individual defense from him. I also agree that we need one more defensive big man like Josh Smith. I don't think the individual offense of this player matters too much. Agreed that small ball lineups and lengthy lineups are both necessary for success. Lineup adaptability/flexibility helped us a lot last year. It'll be a luxury this year since we don't have Josh Smith and potentially a low-post D-Mo. That's what I meant by the Rockets are bad at rotating: they subsequently provide basically fake/no weakside help. It's clear there needs to be a change in the way this is planned/practiced. Yup, mirrors my thoughts in the OP! No-one expects them to deny penetration completely, but there is a reasonable middle ground between that and being a turnstile that even notorious defenders like Harden can achieve. Communication is necessary but the chemistry is just not there, and really wasn't there last year either. Particularly between James and Howard, and now with Lawson too. Looked like Dwight & Lawson have a decent feel for each other already based on the baseline drive & lob between the two yesterday. Right, would be nice to get this fixed. Easy problem with a tough solution.
No Howard, No Beverley, No DMo. 3 out of 4 best defenders on the team by far. 4th - Ariza hardly walks injured. So tonight's humiliation is understandable, no defense leads to no offense.
Yeah, I am that guy bumping a thread from the first 2 weeks in the season. But it is a good talk about the Rockets biggest problem, defense. And how the heck are the Rockets going to improve from being rated #28 to being a top 10 defense again?
One simple tip that our perimeter guys aren't doing. When they get beat on the perimeter now what they are doing is standing, waiting, and going to the other end in hopes that their man misses the shot and we can get man advantage. What they should be doing is trailing the ball handler to his shooting arm side as he heads for the paint. Gotta run up his backside and get to his shooting arm, not stand around and leave the scene of the crime.
Too much of a reliance of fast break points. Play solid defense and have an efficient half court offense. Fast break points should be value add and not core to the offense. That has to change. Because that is the reality of the playoffs when things get tight.
Teams attack the Rocket really simply, put James and D12 in a PnR and watch open shooters emerge as everyone else scrambles to play from their faults. James refuses to hustle on defense and switches everything. Our defensive strategies are horrible, we always switch and it doesn't work. Can we at least trap or fight over/under the screen. Can we not let our man get easy penetration, which also crumbles the D. PBev thinks he's this offensive machine and can't consistently score from the outside and then becomes hesitant on the offensive end. Teams approach to Rockets 1. Attack James at all times and make him play one on one D 2. Put James and D12 in PnR and force D12 to play perimeter D 3. Post up Brewer 4. A lot of player movement forcing the Rockets into mistakes.
