I don't recall the 72-10 Bulls losing to any sh-tty teams. Mediocre ones like the Suns and Nuggets, but they beat the truly awful ones even if it took late game heroics like against the expansion then-Vancouver Grizzlies. Anyway, that's beside the point. I can't speak for anyone else, but I was not fooled by the narrow wins over OKC and a Chris Paul-less Clippers(aided by a blown non-call against Dwight). This Rockets team has been horrible defensively all season. Their offense is inconsistent to say the least as the first and second halves against Miami showed. Right now this is not a good basketball team. They've lucked into a few wins and have looked awful in all of their losses. And look, we're 8 games in, so they can no longer blame it on the preseason or training camp or not being in shape. Something ain't right with this group.
I'm personally going to work on viewing this squad as a potentially fun playoff team, rather than a legitimate championship contender -- for now, anyway. Temper my expectations.
If they acknowledge they should have done that, then why the hell didn't they do it? Shows they didn't take the game seriously, just like they always do with inferior teams.
All Mchale ever talks about is playing hard and effort and hustle. And we constantly don't have those things. What does that say about Mchale?
How do you know? McHale hadn't done jack sh** and he gave him an extension Maybe if hadn't done that McHale would be motivated to come up with better solutions because his job would be on the line
we obviously need to re-make/re-vamp the roster with players that can match mchale's expectations and mirror the intensity he shows on the sidelines. as a hall-of-famer, he deserves better than what morey has given him to work with.
Thoughts from this game: 1) Either the Rockets are playing down to the level of competition even more so than usual or we just aren't very good, I haven't been able to figure that out yet. Maybe Harden going off for a few games fooled us. 2) Thornton has played really well but he should come off the bench. We have no balance with the 2nd unit at all, and I'd rather Lawson be more aggressive in the 1st unit than having Thornton take a ton of shots. 3) Speaking of Lawson, this team ain't going nowhere unless he is more aggressive and handles the ball more. This team is still too dependent on Harden and Lawson was supposed to change that. We are still the same offensively as last year, mediocre and if Harden has a bad game we suck offensively. Unlike last year though our defense doesn't bail us out. 4) Speaking of defense, it's clear we are severely under prepared and poorly coached on that end. I'm not sure what changed from last year to this year but something is seriously wrong and I don't think it's just effort (even though that's a big part of it) 4) Again, one problem leads to another. Speaking of effort, we just don't play hard. Again, poor coaching. 5) We've got to get Terrence Jones going. He was so much better last year, now he just looks awful. He and Dwight play well together, stick him in that starting lineup. If we don't get him going, we're ****ed until DMo gets back. 6) Dwight is putting up nice stats, but it's obvious he's lost pretty much all of his explosion. There's no way he should get stuff by Lopez of all people twice in a row under the rim. It's too bad but I guess that's the reality now, he is still doing his part otherwise so I'm satisfied with him. I kept telling myself that it was a fluky start and not to worry, but wow. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in a team before as a whole. This may even be worse than the 2014 and 2007 first round losses. Those years we were going to the WCF at best, this year our expectations are much higher. This is just not a very good Rockets team. Sure, fire McHale, but you're basically just punting the season at that point. Has a team ever won a championship after firing a coach mid-season? Anyway, this was supposed to be one of the best seasons but it's quickly turning into one of the worst. At least in our mediocre years we weren't expecting a lot and fell in love with a team that wasn't very good but played their hearts out.
Players should t be mindless drones out there but it'd be nice if a coach was pointing this stuff out to guys during the game. Like besides saying stuff about playing harder and "amping this thing up"...how about talk actual strategy and communicate with guys about what he's seeing. Hey guys this seems to be working well, this doesn't so let's get back to this. It's like he doesn't have simple conversations like that because they just keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over. Either he's not asking them to stop, or he is and they just aren't listening.
Yep, those are my Rockets. They'll play hard against Clippers and Thunder but half ass it against Nets and Nuggets. This team is so awesome...Mchale is a good coach. Play Harder!
Letting sorry teams beat you also hurts the team that loss confidence. The loss today is the last thing that we need.
Also, how do you have 3 days off and come out with this performance? Terrible preparation. If they can't go 8-2 over the rest of the month, they seriously need to consider a major change. This is the time in the schedule where we should be building a lead in the conference, not struggling - we've got some incredibly tough stretches in January and February that could knock us out. Sorry to knee-jerk, but you just can't lose to one of the worst teams in the NBA on 3 days rest at home. No true contender would allow that to happen.
It's stuff like what you just pointed out as to why Robert Horry says Rudy T was a better coach than Phil or Pops. Really must be a rare thing to consider which absolutely makes no sense not listening to players...and if it's the opposite then we truly have a problem that's troubling
Rockets play hard...They just have no plan when they do. They seem to adjust the gameplan on the fly depending on what the opp is doing. Playing harder is just leading to wasted energy as they "playing harder" doing things that dont work
