ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Thunder 3/6/2018

It much be frustrating for Melo. To experience the struggle the Thunder’s season has been and then see the success of the Rockets’.

Really has no one to blame but himself, though. He’s the one that caved and opened his no-trade exception list which opened a trade to the Thunder instead of holding out till he got to the Rockets. I felt that if the Melo saga lasted till preseason, the Knicks would have caved and accepted whatever the Rockets offered, straight up (no third team).

This is why Morey is a great GM. He knew the price he was willing to pay for Melo and held firm, even if it meant losing out on him. Most other GMs would have caved and made the move for the sake of making the move. I bet Presti has some regrets pulling the trigger on the Melo deal.

 

The crazy thing about this win streak with many winning opponents is that the Rockets are the team along with the Warriors were the other teams in the league circle and are always hyped up for. You definitely are seeing the best effort from all these teams and it just doesn't matter.

It's amazing .

 

Can somebody post the vid from ESPN First Take where Steven A Smith saying the Thunder will beat the Rockets.

Bwhahaha

 

Just one of his many nicknames

 

They clearly did, and it was f**king infuriating.

The Thunder, whose offense is trash, were suddenly getting easy shots at the rim literally every possession, they were basically half court fast breaks. The HackaPela didn't hurt us, the fact that we stopped trying on defense did. At one point they scored on 8 straight possessions, including a few where we initially got a stop but gave up multiple offensive boards.

Maddest I've been all year watching that.

 

In 177 possessions over 17 games where the Rockets play a small lineup with Harden and CP on the floor and Tucker at center, our average PPP was 1.25.

http://nbawowy.com/#/rtu3poc57c

 

That's impressive, but still a smaller sample size than Harden+Paul+Clint (who are also 35-1, if you haven't heard). Not to mention, that's still about on par with what we would have gotten with hack-a-Clint based on what I said above. Would be interesting to see how those lineups compare by PPP defensively, though...

Once again, the numbers don't like. Hack-a-****: It. Just. Doesn't. Work.

EDIT: I also failed to mention the other possibility of potentially getting some Thunder players into foul trouble in case the game does go down to the wire or into OT.

 

i actually think it was a good call. not because capela is a bad ft shooter but because the thunder needed possessions. we seemed to have lost interest in defense and were just trying to run out the clock except the thunder were getting a layup in 5 seconds and then fouling us in 1 second when all we needed to do was basically dribble for 24 seconds and throw up a shot and hope 1 or 2 went in and we would win the game. we were gonna trade 1 or 2 for 2 or 3 for like 20 possessions instead of 10 possessions.

now if we had been playing actual defense then maybe i could see keeping him in.

 

Anyone else notice that Gordon was a little off tonight? Hit some shots but he could barely walk without stumbling, let alone dribble and drive to the rim.

 

We are really good this is fun.

DD

 

Damn Anthony Davis drops crazy stats again.

 

The 4th quarter highlights were entirely OKC's. It was as if they won the game. Not good at all.

 

After subbing out Capela, EG was fouled while shooting 3. Wow!

 

Well he did say the rockets are going nowhere and the biggest loser this season was CP3 because we lost out on Melo. LMFAO

 

The lack of focus is more to the fact that this was not a competitive game. Kinda hard to keep it up when it becomes boring.

 

Video?

Just saw the highlights, funny how Brewer of course looked good hahaha Again it seemed like a total team win, both CP3 and Harden had decent games and the role players as well. We're just clicking like crazy!!

 

Brewer did not save them.

Spoiler

 

you just adapt to whatever the other teams defence gives you. Tomorrow the Bucks will give you something different and Harden will drop 30 or 40