The case for starting Asik at the 4

The inside defense is overrated in morden NBA.

 

I want to see the twin towers of DMO-Howard and Asik-Howard

 

yeah i can imagine asik guarding a 4 who can shoot from the outside, or even the 3... alone on an island.

 

Inside defense and rebounding is never over rated.

Losing leads is over. We get ahead, then we put up the twin towers and ride the defense, offensive rebounding and pic n roll to the win.

It's gonna be a fun season.

 

what about help defense? can you imagine that?

 

Well, the answer is by watching the games and knowing what the trends are and what happened to us during those games. For instance, go back and look at our 2 losses to the Lakers last year. Watch the video. They completely annihilated us on the interior. It wasn't Kobe and Nash beating us to smithereens. It was Pau and Dwight simply torching us. Watch the Memphis games. Zach....went off. We're trying to defend Marc/Zach with Asik and Mook Morris or PPat or DMo. Watch the games. Then look at the stat lines. Not just the raw stats but the efficiency stats, rebounding rates, etc.

Then also look at the scoring swings in a game, look at the +/-, and notice that we simply gave up lead after lead after lead as soon as Asik went to the bench. Greg Smith cannot defend in the pivot. He's piss poor. PPat was our next best pivot defender and we traded him. I was saying then that PPat's best position on that team was backing up Asik in the pivot. We needed his D out there when Asik was on the bench...but we still got killed on the glass.

So, taking those things into account....it should be obvious....last year we could not defend 2 skilled bigs or 2 workhorse bigs in the paint. Didn't matter if we had Asik. He could only do so much. All those teams with 2 highly skilled or workhorse bigs in there...they beat us at the power spots. You might be able to iso Asik and show that he was better than the opposing 5, but when you combine the 4/5 spots...we lost the vast majority of the matchups against the better teams in the league that play with 2 power bigs. It didn't matter if Morris and PPat and DMo were hanging out in the corner bombing away. They gave up more defensively than they gave us with the corner 3.

And I'm not even talking about the East. Go back and watch us play the Pacers for heaven's sake. Tyler Hansbrough and David West were handing us our head in a lunch box. Hibbert, West, Hansbrough...another inside power combination. And it goes on.

Now a logical argument could be made that none of those guys were effective enough from the corners shooting the ball. I would agree with that. They weren't. But guess what? We got the same bunch back this year. Except worse. DMo and TJones have not proven to be as good a shooters as PPat and Morris. So......what's changed. What's changed is we have 2 premier power players. We might as well use those 2 guys matching up and ratcheting down on Memphis, LAC, etc.

Frankly, I think the Asik/Dwight matchup against Blake/Deandre weighs so heavily in our favor now that I seriously doubt LAC can even beat us...maybe one game. But I think we would take them out in 5 games in a playoff series. Asik on Blake....Asik will give him absolute hell. Dwight on DeAndre...no contest. Bev giving Paul hell on the perimeter. This is a better team than the Clippers. They're getting way too much attention. When the games are played on the floor....their spots will show. We have them locked down at teh power spots. That means Paul running around trying to create shots for Dudley and Redick. Cross match Parsons on Redick and let Harden take Dudley. Those matchups favor US!

Memphis....same thing. Zach going against Dwight?? Gasol on Asik. He'll be stuck taking 18 footers. In this matchup Asik and Dwight can flip defensive assignments at will. Advantage US!

There's no reason to continue to talk about the defensive potential of these two in tandem. Just defensively alone they even the score against most of these teams. It's a matter of getting them to sync offensively.

 

This is one of the most incorrect statements I have ever seen on this board.

 

good post again but you are being way too logical.

I mean who needs a super duper elite defensive inside tandem?

Its all about clogging the lane and how bad we will be offensively too. Asik is death on wheels offensively too. Dmo is the savior and Jones looks good in summer league. or that we should get aldridge.

 

IMO, inserting DH into what this team is already doing and gaining the ability to keep an elite level defender at the five (Howard/Asik) for 48 minutes is a better option.

Plus that Asik/Smith combo that worked well at the end of the season would now be coming off the bench. They'd be a force against other teams' 2nd units.

 

Duncan/Splitter
Gasol/Z-Bo
West/Hibbert

Yes, inside defense is overrated in the NBA. So overrated that 3/4 of the final four teams features them.

 

You can sub so that the bulk of time it is twin tower.. with periods where at least one of them is on the court at all times. So the idea is we ALWAYS or almost always (unless we are running some kind of small ball) have at least one.

We sub it to flow of game and no hardfast rule, but the idea is to start game with both and try to establish that early nasty dominance. Asik outlet pass to lin harden/ howard/ parsons run run run. We still run and we run hard. I think that offense plays to howards strength vs. dump it down. We need movement and running and when in half court its pick and roll /penetration/3 point offense

 

I see what you're saying, but I still don't believe that it's this team's best lineup. If the Rockets don't get any improvement from D-Mo or Jones that's one thing, but if they do, thier versatility at the four will make this team ungaurdable in the half court and DEADLY on the break.

They'd practically be playing small ball without a small lineup.

 

Maybe Im reaching here but on some level you are arguing

Dmo JONEs> Asik

Thats not the case. Dmo and Asik are nice stories but their offense is nowhere near the offset of what we get in the nastiness of 2 elite defenders inside.

We can still play DMo and Jones but feature set most of time needs to be Asik and Howard.

Hey Im open to the concept that I am wrong but we need to really really try this and really push the idea. Even with drexler and olajuwon after the trade 1st happened and we got drexler it took about 20 games before they started really gelling. I want to give this howard asik tandem whether its howard or asik at center or PF I dont care but I want a good solid 20 game hard look at it.

Maybe start season with Smith as starting PF but right away from game 1 we run the Howard Asik set for long long periods and really take a strong look.

 

96 minutes at the 4/5 spots. Plenty of minutes for both Asik and Dwight to get 30 each and at least one of them be on the floor all the time. And plenty of minutes left to give a 3rd big who is more perimeter oriented. Who that be??? Totally unknown at this point. But I will say this....that third big is most likely going to be the most efficient shooter/floor spreader from among TJones/DMo/Casspi.

I don't think Greg Smith has a role on this team besides scrap minutes. He is at best the 3rd center and might be the 4th center on the depth chart (behind Camby). It wouldn't surprise me if we traded him. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to training camp and featured him in the preseason...letting him ramp up some crazy numbers and then we traded him after peaking his trade value.

 

I have been poking around asking questions about your analysis because it really did not smell right. So I went and pulled all of the box scores against Mem, OKC, LAL, IND, and the Clips. Four of the top six teams in the NBA. And the LAL front line of Howard and Gasol. Against the Rockets here are the season averages at the starting center and PF positions:

Center: 11.3 ppg 6.7 rpg
PF: 16.6 ppg 9.3 rpg

And do not give me any grief for rejecting for rejecting your "Thabeet started" premise. You cannot arbitrarily reject data. Any argument that considers the damage that backups do just points to deficiencies in the Rockets depth.

Actually most of the damage against the Rockets came from the opponents all star wing players. And these are some of the best teams in the league. And some of the best front lines in the league.

So you can just take your we need to play Howard and Asik together premise and completely reconsider it. We need better wing defense.

 

2eachhisown

 

But your incomplete analysis fooled me for a while. And so how long is your faulty analysis going to fool most CF readers? Spreading incorrect analysis is much worse than spreading faulty opinions. Please get it right next time. Do the work. Nothing is worse than a lazy analyst.

 

2eachhisown

 

IMHO you should apologize for your incredibly long and incorrect posts pretending to be able to analyze the Rockets lineup needs. Anything else would be the action of a chick***** coward. Take ownership of your mistakes. It is a mark of a man.

 

LOL. You're funny. Hope you get away with the bashing. I'd get neg rep for doing that.