JB Bickerstaff's strong words after the Pelicans game

On one hand...

Is this the Marcus Thornton who is on his 6th team in 7th years? :grin:

On the other hand, I wouldn't want my minutes yo-yo'd either. He should be pissed at John Blair.

Going back the past month...

8:38 minutes
20:37
21:44
11:28
5:58
4:58
26:01
19:50
16:29
20:46
6:12
DNP
19:26
13:47
18:11
DNP
10:54

One game I'm in 8 minutes, the next 20, back to 10, down further to 5, all the way up to 25, back down to 5, now I'm not playing, next game it's 20, oops, back to not playing a few games later.

Am I in the rotation or not?

 

New Orleans Pelicans 110, Houston Rockets 108: Schrödinger’s team
by FORREST WALKER | DECEMBER 26, 2015 at 09:13 PM
Are the Houston Rockets any good? If you lock them in a box with another NBA team and let them play basketball, you should get an answer. Much like Schrödinger’s cat, the team’s waveform should collapse upon observation, informing us of whether they’re good or bad. Unfortunately, this team can beat the San Antonio Spurs impressively one day and then fritter away a win against the discombobulated New Orleans Pelicans literally the very next day. The Rockets are the thought experiment that Schrödinger designed to prove how ludicrous quantum physics are, and their continued superposition of life and death is just as confusing.
That’s the secret, by the way. Schrödinger’s cat was the product of a series of letters to Albert Einstein about the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, and it was meant to show that obviously a particle can’t be in two states simultaneously. (The jury’s still out on that.) Well, ol’ Schrödinger’s rolling in his grave today, because an entire basketball team is existing both as a terrible lottery team and as a first round favorite. The Rockets are 32 games into the NBA season and it’s impossible to tell what they are.
The Rockets can step into their gym and play the kind of defense that props up championship hopes. We’ve seen them do it as recently as yesterday. Their offense looks unstoppable at times. When they’re engaged and well leveraged their copious amounts of talent shine through and this team looks like the contender everyone thought they were. Then just a few hours later they forget to call a timeout with seven seconds left and just sort of run around like they forgot what basketball is.
The Rockets took lead after lead against the Pelicans, and they also gave up lead after lead. Double-digit-to-nothing runs permeated the evening on both sides, and the Rockets might have ripped off a run of their own if the game was 50 minutes long. Unfortunately for Houston, the NBA version of basketball is 48 minutes long, and the end fit snugly into one of the periods when the whole team was terrible. James Harden and head coach J.B. Bickerstaff worked as hard as they could to fall back down to .500 yet again, which is a perfectly reasonable place for a team that’s both good and bad at the same time.
How else to explain Patrick Beverley temporarily turning into Steph Curry for a few minutes and nailing three after three? Beverley did the patented (but by whom?) cooking dance and then promptly missed a pile of three pointers and helped torpedo the team. The Rockets continually forgot what defense was, especially in transition. Unless they were locking down the Pelicans, which they did for a couple minutes at a time because when you can be frustrating and inconsistent you just have to go for it.
James Harden took turns shooting the Rockets into the game and back out of it. He also got in early foul trouble, which J.B. Bickerstaff handled by smartly letting him play in the first quarter then foolishly pulling him out in the third. Why be a bad coach or a good coach when you can be both? Let’s go ahead and forget to call for a timeout when the team rebounds the ball down 2 with 7 seconds on the clock! Then when the Rockets had a mere 1.7 seconds to inbound the ball, still down 2, they basically ran in circles and unsurprisingly couldn’t inbound the ball. But, hey, at least Harden kept missing threes in isolation plays down the stretch.
Losing to a division rival is bad. No matter what your expectations for the season, you need those wins, and the Rockets’ huge hopes are crashing down to earth without wins to buoy them. They’re winning too many games and they’re too talented and too formidable when engaged to be a bad team. But they also throw away ever lead they get and spend half their season generating confusing, frustrating losses to inferior teams, which is a sign of a bad team.
So will they come out on Tuesday and drop a stinker against the Atlanta Hawks? Probably. Will the they wake up and blow out a decent team? Probably. Will it be both? Sure, why not? Maybe the team can shoot 24% from the field and win by 30 or something equally impossible. There’s no telling if this team is good or bad, because they’re both, at the same time, in the same place. Schrödinger’s team is tough to watch.

 

jeez..you sure explained Thornton's dilemma clear as day... like a yo-yo

 

You may not like those stats but they do show what is actually happening or not happening. Posters here act like Harden always has the ball in his hands and those stats disprove that without question.

Go ahead and keep a total over some period. If you had to put on a number on it right now how frequently do you feel like this happens? It will be interesting to compare your perception with what you actually document.

I won't post the actual numbers till you post your observations. That way the stats won't influence your totals.

 

lol is that so? 20 minutes per game? Very convenient number to include back up chucking undersized combo guards.
Because if we put at least 20 games with at least 30 minutes per game to show only starters and only guards we have
no.12 in total touches. No. 14 in sec per touch. And no. 21 in dribbles per touch. and no. 13 in time of possesions.

Now of all the 12 starting guards with more total touches these are only the following players who consume more time in the clock than Harden every time they touch the ball:
Rondo, Wall ,Lillard, Walker, Paul and Westbrook.
Noone else in the league wastes more time with the ball.
So all in all Harden is no.7 in hogging the ball.

 

Corey Brewer kinda reminds me of the Rahim Moore on the Texans. Billy O had to bench Moore in spite of his big contract and turned the Texans season around. Brewer got the 8 million dollar versus Thornton's 1 million contract. If it was the other way around I bet Brew would be in street cloths with Thornton getting his minutes right now

 

I'm loving this and if only JB was a brilliant coach, it would be even better. This is clearly a shot to several guys going back to McHale's firing. Harden must be part of it.

Thornton has every right to be frustrated and good he went public!!!

 

Harden really can't win.

If he get aggressive people will say he's a chucker and selfish and if he's passive people will say he's being lazy or went to a party. There is no winning for him here. Even as he came in and dropped buckets against the Spurs the night before people will instead go to pin the loss on him. Those games he'd put up 40, come out the next night and his team would lose and here comes the brigade talking about how it was all his fault.

Any ways, I don't think this was about Harden. I don't think it's about one player. It usually never is.

Things aren't so simple as that. Remember the Rockets had control of this game, Harden got his 3rd foul and had to sit and the team collapsed.

Any one that wants to tell Harden to stop taking those shots don't really know how it feels to be a player that thinks they can make every shot. I put that more on the coach, because Harden has the confidence that he was going to drain those shots and win his team the game. Why not? He's done it so many times before, why should he think differently tonight?

As it is said, great players make bad shots. You don't teach any kid growing up to run up to the 3 point line and chuck a Curry 3, you don't teach kids to take step back contested jumpers like Harden, or fade aways like Dirk. You just don't.

I blame the team as a whole for letting him do that. What he did was what you want your superstar player to do. Try to take over the game. Didn't work tonight, but I guarantee you it'll work another night.

 

noooooo!!!

 

It is unbelievable that Dwight only gets 4 shots a game last night. For someone who is almost 60% in FG shooting. I don't blame him leaving because some team will know how to use him correctly. Do you wonder why Hakeem hasn't been seen lately maybe because Harden plays too many ISO ball for him to help a under utilized Dwight.

 

He is a superstar and has to find the right balance between passive and chucking. It is his responsibility as the star player of this team to make the right choices at the right time, each night will be different and he should react accordingly to the different situations and circumstances.

Tonight he did kill the game for us in the last 3 minutes. I'm happy when he's aggressive but he should at least attempt smart shots. When we are down by 2 it is not smart to stall the ball for 20 seconds just to do a step back taking a highly predictable contested 3 like 5 times in a row. Very poor quality shot, wasted the shot clock when we where down.

Just truly awful decision making by Harden tonight .

 

Maybe Hakeem realizes he is wasting his time on Dwight. Been working with him for a solid 2yrs now with zero improvement in Dwight's post game. Do u really think the team would fail to get Dwight the ball in the post if they were confident he wld do something positive with it once he got it?

 

I'm telling you guys, for a guy like Harden his mindset is that he's going to drain those shots and win the game. It's really not any different it's just that he missed those shots. Shots he made the night before. People ask why Kobe is such a chucker it's because he has that confidence of a superstar player to do that.

If you let Harden be Harden then this is what will happen. If JBB had called a play though my guess is that Harden would have had no problem working a play to get someone else a shot.

As is though, he sees himself as the closer and rightfully so. He's done it so many times. It looks bad because he missed those shots but knowing Harden he could have made those shots and this entire thread wouldn't even exist.

For Harden those are smart shots. If you take away those step back jumpers then teams wouldn't even fear him any more. If he was just all about draining open shots then he wouldn't even be Harden. The reason he's doubled is because one man can't guard him because all he has to do is step back and hit a jumper all over the court. Yes they are bad shots. If Ariza or Bev were doing it, it would drive people nuts.

 

Did you watch the game? The Rockets didn't score a single point the last 2 minutes. When something doesn't work and it's clear the defense is locked in, you have to try something different. When Harden dribbles for 16-17 seconds for no good reason before even attempting to create a shot, it is very easy for the other team to defend. There is no reason to wait so long. It's dumb basketball.

And it's on Harden. It's just plain stupidity to fail at the same thing 4 straight possessions when the game is on the line.

It's not 100% Harden but he's definitely the main problem. When his head is screwed on right, the rest of the team will be fine.

 

I hate that "Did you watch the game?" mess.

I did, Harden didn't actually do the same thing 4 times in a row. So yes I did.

One time he tried his usual little 3, didn't hit. Another time it was a broken pick play with Lawson who just passed Harden the ball because he figured it would be better if Harden took it and he missed it.

Another time Dwight kicked it out to Harden after grabbing the rebound (probably had a dunk) and Harden missed that one too.

Another time he drove and was fouled.

So yeah. He didn't bring the ball up the court 4 times in a row, kill 16 seconds, and jack up a 3. That didn't happen.

 

Calling out stat stuffers

 

It looks like the only corner the rockets turned was back down the street of mediocrity

 

Nice post and stats. Way too many handpicked stats from the Harden followers.

 

what about him disrespecting the game by benching thornton and playing a struggling brewer? telling the team to stick to team ball when they were up big instead of losing the game with a heavy iso ball offense? not emphasizing dwight geting more touches and playing dmo less and less?

this whole team is a mess. why beat the good teams if you're gonna lose to the bad ones?

 

Lmao, schrodingers team... That's a perfect way to describe this team.