Do you watch basketball? Howard didn't come out on picks. He cheated on screens. He didn't come over to help like previous seasons... Going into free agency and had to protect those rebound statistics. He did none of the little efforts things he did in the past and physically couldn't be out of position and make a play like before. Individual defense is strongly related to team defense and that holds true for Howard and Harden.
I watched every second of Howard jacking around out there. And he did jack around. But not enough. He should've protested even stronger and brought the issue to full boil in December. He should've just stayed on the defensive end and watched the offense go 3 or 4 on 5 and then when they came the other way he should've ran to the offensive end and let them play defense 4 on 5 to pound the point home while he stood under the Rockets basket with his hands up waiting for the outlet pass.
Howard was our 2nd to 3rd most efficient offensive option. If he was terrible then 12 other guys were even worse than terrible.
haha you gotta be kidding me. he was efficient in the same sense that Deandre Jordan was efficient. Dwight can't create his own offense anymore, everything has to be directly spoonfed through lobs or pinpoint passes under the rim. That's why his number of FG attempts declined drastically this season, because he was so inefficient outside of occasional alley-oops. Dwight's post-up efficiency is below league average and commits more turnovers per possession than Harden. Oh, did I mention he's a terrible free throw shooter? Yeah.
Ariza is almost always trailing now, reaching out his long arm to close the distance. It's over. He had an ok run as a slightly above average player.
He is playing a lot of minutes and have to jack up shots at the last min because harden is holding the ball too long
Nope, had a down year but I'm pretty certain he can have a better year next season. I think he is still capable of defending at a high level. He is on a great contract and ideally he comes off the bench next season behind KD
There should be a team out there needing what Ariza has left in the tank. We could probably apply that 8 million dollars in cap space to an upgrade.
Looks slower than he used to be. Age trajectory, shooting inconsistency and can't stay with people as well defensively = big trade candidate
I'm ok in trading Ariza, but we should not forget that he also played way too much these past two seasons, always guarding the best player...no surprise if he was just gassed at the end.
I saw a half dozen Rockets games live last year, in Portland, Oakland, LA and Houston, and usually had pretty good seats. Anyone who has sat near the court knows that you see things that you won't see in a telecast, and the one thing that stood out to me game after game was Trevor's on-court frustration with his teammates, particularly on offense. Lots of hand gestures, eye-rolling, and an occasional "Well, if you're not going to pay attention to me, I'll just freakin' stand here and do nothing." It's hard to say if that's a veteran frustrated at a team not playing according to the system like they're supposed to, or maybe something else entirely. At this point, I'm not sure he really likes playing for this particular team.
his salary does not hinder us. Brewer, Jones, Terry, and Dwight's salary hinder us. You would want to keep a core of Harden, Capela, beverly, and ariza. Ariza simply was just 2 tired at the end of the season.
