What adjustment will Mike, Dan and Tony make to their Game 3 adjustments in Game 4?

Harden, and to a lesser extent Gordon, are the only 2 players that have any ability to finish a contested layup at the rim. That's where Lou and Anderson being colder than Greenland destroys our flow. Lou HAS to hit that mid-range jumper, and Ryan HAS to shoot at least 33% from downtown for this offense to click against a team that packs the paint, and trawls the perimeter.

 

This is crazy considering we have Lou AND Gordon, but then it also makes sense. They are not really facilitators, they are shot makers.

Anyways, Rockets have to play better defense. It's hard to push the pace when you are not defending, I say that realizing that our problem yesterday wasn't defense. Spurs missed shots, we just didn't push the pace. Something else needs to happen, play more Dekker, play Ryno at the 5, let EGO and Lou handle the ball more than Pat in the 2nd unit.

Most of all, hit your shots.

 

Run more PnR with Harden and Capela like they did in the first game. Capela has been having an amazing series so far. More easy alley oops between him and Harden will definitely keep his intensity up and also force the Spurs bigs to respect ours. Put heavy emphasis on grabbing boards to avoid second chance putbacks for the Spurs bigs and run them down the floor. The Spurs are older and slower. This is where the Rockets took it to the Spurs by never giving them a chance to settle and slow down the pace in game 1. They need to keep raining 3s and know that eventually that drought will end and those shots will start to fall.

In game 1 the talk of the series was how poor Aldridge played. They kept going on and on about his knee being swollen. They need to tire Aldridge out. When Capela needs a breather, give Nene some post up opportunities against LMA and also run the PnR through him. If his knee is swollen, his lateral defense is going to suffer and the Rockets can punish that. If they do it enough it'll force Pop to sub him out and they'll no longer be able to run 2 bigs to clog the paint.

This should open easier drives having to only go against David Lee or Simmons or Pau instead of 2 bigs clogging the paint and should make it easier to make kickout passes along the perimeter for more open look 3s which will eventually fall like they did in game 1.

 

Sorry but you can't game plan for refs not calling blatant fouls and not hitting threes when your entire offense is predicated on those two things happening. That being said we will more than likely get the calls in game 4 unless the NBA has decided games 6 and 7 don't mean anything. I bet we get calls in the next game and the calls will go whichever way it takes to get this to game 6 and 7. In game 7 the winner will be decided by the refs , probably the Spurs, unless we are hitting on all cylinders.

 

I don't buy all this nonsense about the NBA rigging games. Yes, calls are missed. Officials make mistakes. But the NBA isn't favoring one team over the other. You hear this nonsense from every fan base. The Rockets just need to play better. No excuses.

 

Seems like the Rockets only shoot well 1 in every 4 games.

 

Blasphemy!

 

Right now their game plan is to brick wide open 3's. I think he will instruct his players to not brick wide open 3's. This should give them the advantage.

 

Unfortunately we don't have 5 shooters on the entire team. So looks like off season maybe we can pick some up.

 

Knowing Mike , he's not going to play any additional players ... Which is a shame . Both Dekker and Harrell have attributes that could come in handy from time to time . I think Williams is too new to our system to warrant a chance though.

Watching these last two games have been super frustrating because , it feels like we could have a combination that plays well enough to win ... But we are just getting out maneuvered .

Mike thought he was so smart going with a different small lineup to start the 4th , the Spurs used their skilled bigs and ran the offense through them ... Meanwhile our offense sputtered because we couldn't get a stop.

The whole key to this series / the playoffs is on defense and execution . The Spurs out game-planned us and executed down the stretch ... It was hopeless .