Here's some slick passes from Harden to Howard that were from free form flow and chemistry. Nov 27th Game Transition high PnR with Alley-oop (miss) -- Harden often waits for Howard. This is usually the way the Alley-oops happend throughout the season. We forget because he missed. http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID...ameEventID=24# Early seal by Dwight with an awesome bounce pass by Harden http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID...meEventID=276# Nov 29th Game 2nd Play of Q, Howard early seal, nice bounce pass by Harden (miss) -- again a miss, so we forget about it http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID=0021500252&GameEventID=284# Early Shot Clock, Howard Decoy, Harden nice Pocket Pass to Capela (miss) -- Harden makes the same pass depending upon who the defense sticks to. http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID=0021500252&GameEventID=294# Beautiful Alley Oop Harden to Howard http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID=0021500252&GameEventID=321# Harden Drives for noice pass to Capela in traffic, Howard keeping defense at bay on other side http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID=0021500252&GameEventID=328# Early Clock, Harden PnR with Howard, defense gives Harden room he keeps it this time http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID=0021500252&GameEventID=358# Early Clock to trailing Howard (miss) http://stats.nba.com/cvp.html?GameID=0021500252&GameEventID=402#
Let's not act like we've somehow all of a sudden "made it". Like it's time to start patting ourselves on our backs. This team is one game above 0.500 and just beat the Jeremy Lin-led Charlotte Hornets by 7 at home. I don't care if they're a good team this year. The Rockets were not supposed to just be good this year. No accolades until you show you can beat the Spurs, Warriors, Thunder, or Cavs. That's where we should be. That's where we were last year.
And Al Jefferson didn't play either. That was not a very pretty game. Dwight and Capela got in foul trouble, so our rotations got screwed up. Not as many Harden/Dwight plays as we've seen in some games since JBB (as posted above), but a couple. Basically Harden/TJones had good to great games. I'm still focusing more on the defense and transition, as well. It's showing the most fockass recently.
I agree that it is bad that they are only now starting to work on their pnr chemistry. But how can you blame Harden for this? 1. First and foremost this should be on the coaching staff. They should implement the offense and they can tell players what plays they should run. JB seems to be doing it now, so why couldn't the coaching staff do this after signing Dwight? Sure after the coaching staff you might look at the players for blame but 2. How do we know that Harden didn't try? We all know that Howard when he signed here (multiple reports from his days in ORL and LAL) didn't like playing the pnr. The first year the Rockets tried to post him up more - only last year things seemed to change in that there were less post ups for Dwight, with Dwight doing more of the dirty work and rolling to the basket a bit more often and harder. Harden seems to be playing the pnr pretty well with pretty much any other big on this team. Now I'm not saying that Howard should be blamed, because obviously I don't know what's going on with the team in practice and off the court, just putting it out there as a real possibility.
I'm with you. This is a 40-45 win team without personnel changes. But the foundation core of Harden/Howard is showing some change here. And it feels right. That's my only point. Because Harden IS the leader. With McHale, Harden was definitely the leader. Great players work on their chemistry because they want to be great. They don't have to be prompted by the coaching staff. We're talking about the pick-and-roll here, a very fundamental play that we learn in grade school. It's the fundamental play of our offense. Harden should've been working on the nuances of it with Howard starting in the summer/fall of 2013. They could have. But before they came to training camp in 2013., Harden and Howard should've been together working on the PnR I know Harden didn't try hard enough because Harden is too good a player and he runs the PnR masterfully, I mean masterfully, with everybody else but Howard. If Howard is the one that wouldn't cooperate on PnR it was Harden's responsibility to get him to cooperate. Harden is the leader. No. I'm talking about this season. And really game 2 of 2014 playoffs was an anomaly. I'm talking about 2 1/4 seasons of watching sporadic two-man play between Harden and Howard when it should have been the base of our offense. Gotta look beyond one game to 2 1/4 seasons worth of games. The consistent chemistry on the PnR hasn't been there. Look at combos like CP3 and DeAndre. They've had chemistry on the PnR from day 1 they played together. And DeAndre sure doesn't have any variance in his offensive game. He can't shoot. He can't dribble. He can't do nothing but catch and throw down. But him and Paul were cranking out sick oop dunks from their very first game together.
No use mentioning single games. There are many times they've show camaraderie over 2 1/4 years and two playoffs. But people who want to make a soap opera out of it will take each example and call them anomalies. We are up to at least 5 anomalies now.
I guess. But we aren't putting away teams as we should be. Anyways, we will see if we are much cohesive and play better ball against the Magic.
And because of that, it is one of the most crucial plays for contenders to learn to defend, as well. It should be noted that DeAndre Jordan only has 5.6 FGA / gm, and he's running PnRs with the best PnR PG in the entire league. The reason for that is the post Illegal Defense era, defenses have become much more sophisticated at clogging the Paul/Jordan pick n roll, same as Howard. They are getting better at clogging the roller while still trapping/showing to the ball-handler. No more illegal defense and lack of an outside shot by the picker contribute to that. We are responding with more sophisticated ways to accomplish a PnR. That is what JBB is implementing which Watkins might be hearing about. It's not just some timing thing. It requires more sophistication. See my comments above about the two new wrinkles we are seeing on our PnR setup and secondary options.
So the "sad state of the GARM" actually helps the Rockets. Great! I knew we were doing something positive when we speculated all the bad things about every player. :grin:
The complete tweet of Watkins, posted in the "What's changed thread." thought it should go here to for completeness. Bev mentions JBBs affect on the defense.
Mark Berman @MarkBermanFox26 7h7 hours ago Ty Lawson back from suspension: "More than anything I just want to be in the mix with the team." #Rockets
