The Houston needs a defensive system; When the team's offense can't work, the team must still play good defense. Morey should bring a special defensive coach
Without Canaan and DMo on the floor the rest were YMCA material. Except Johnson, he's got interesting skills. Here's hoping !
my hope is rockets sign do what they have done the past couple of seasons and sign players for the vipers. dawkins is my guess, perfect for coach Nevada Smith
Maybe its my Wildcat bias, but there were plays when I said to myself "if Howard was on the end of that pass its two points, guaranteed". I think his turnovers can be mitigated, his court vision and his athleticism have me floored. This isn't the Nick Johnson we saw at Arizona, if the wildcats had this guy we would have gone farther in the tournament.
I still suspect D-Mo is a 4A player who will never be good in the NBA. Canaan will start the season as backup PG. Nick Johnson will begin his career in D-League and hopefully be in the Rockets rotation by late season. Nobody else on the roster will ever play one minute in the NBA. Stauskas will have a nice NBA career. He's like a smaller, less physical version of Mike Miler. I remember Ray McCallum's dad playing college ball at Ball State and coaching (briefly) at Rice. Glad to see him doing well. He will follow his father's path and become a coach. I still don't know what McLemore will become. The talent is there but he has a problem between the ears.
I think Dmo will be in the rotation, Canaan can be in the rotation, and Nick Johnson will have a shot but needs to beat out Troy Daniels. Dawkins should play for the Vipers, and everyone else should be gone. Oh, and Covington's greatest value is his non-guaranteed contract for trades.
Come regular season, D-Mo will be in foul trouble while being inconsistent with his jumpers and flat footed on defense by playing small and opting to take charges rather than protecting the rim. Hope i'm wrong but i'm not holding my breath. I don't trust any of our power forwards. Need a legit stretch 4 to maximize Dwight's talents.
If there's one thing that would probably get a near unanimous "Yes!" vote here in the GARM, it's that we all want the Rockets to sign a top notch, Class A, Super Duper, once in a generation defensive specialist to sit on the bench next to McHale and not leave a few weeks before the playoffs to coach a college team. Yet, to be fair, how can a real defensive "system" be installed in a team of rookies and second year players, with a sprinkling of dudes from Europe over the space of a few weeks? That's one of the challenges about taking summer league play seriously. Summer league can be highly entertaining (weren't we all entertained?), but also highly misleading. Crisp defensive rotations, knowing where to be, when to switch, all the myriad things that make up a good defensive system - how can that be installed and instilled in this diverse group of young players with any real effectiveness? We saw some terrific individual defensive plays, but not a lot of good team defense. At least I didn't see much in the way of good team defense. I loved the effort from a lot of our guys, though. Tonight late in the game, for example, Nick Johnson dove to the floor to poke the ball away from one of the Kings' guards. No, he didn't get a steal, but he forced the Kings to bring in the ball down by our basket. That's the kind of effort I love to see. You won't find that in the box score, but it's the sort of thing that has me excited about Johnson.
I had two observations: 1) Isaiah Canaan is ready for NBA minutes. He was ready last year. He'll be a great replacement for Lin -- giving us that big scoring punch off the bench. I wouldn't be surprised to see him close games over Beverley as well. His ability to hit the spot up three at a consistent rate will be big for our offense. 2) Robert Covington is terrible. I mean absolutely terrible. How did we pick this guy over James Johnson? He's tall and a good shooter, but that's about it. He's not very fluid/athletic, has no handles, plays terrible D and struggled to make layups against non-NBA players. Right now he's a waste of a roster spot.
I've learned that Morey will stick to his stupid basketball with his yes man Finch. Not that anything really counts in summer league but you can see that again, there's no emphasis on defense, ISO type offense and looks like nothing has been learned. Just hoping I'm dead wrong with my assumptions
How I hope you're right about Canaan. Right now, we have a big "Vacant!" sign at backup point guard. If Canaan can keep his turnovers low, keep the offense running, the ball moving (we're at our best when we have good ball movement, obviously), and shoot 3's with confidence, we might have that guy. I'm not sold yet, though. I think Covington may be a good example of the Peter Principal. He rose to his level of incompetence. Sadly, that level seems to be the Summer League.
