ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Cavaliers 11/24/2018

you've gotta be ****in kidding me lol wth

 

We don’t have another b2b until January I believe so that’s good. Should have played Paul tonight in hindsight instead of last night

There were some good things.. EG mainly. Morey needs to make a move but we will be okay. Hate to give away these games though

 

This team has ZERO depth. Wow.

 

Losing to a team and getting whipped by a Kardashian’s baby daddy
Is Dwight Howard embarrassing

 

Rockets aren’t that good. Good teams win this game.

 

How the hell do you shoot 50% from the field and 39% from 3 and lose to the Cavs!?

 

I like it... i love the fact that nba is competitive and anyone can beat anyone on any given night

 

Nook is right, Morey needs to just go out a make the deals necessary to get this team over the hump. 3rd star is this guys kryptonite it’s insane.

 

Yes, it's enough. We're a CP3 injury away from the lottery, a James Harden away from the lottery....And maybe even a PJ Tucker injury away from the lottery.

14 seed if Paul misses 30 games.....maybe 6th seed if everybody is iron men.

We really didn't have a choice with CP3 after Lebron left us dangling. What should we have done, let him walk? No. We had to sign him. And Paul is still great. The problem is depth around him. Without a third playmaker in the rotation and Paul dinged we are indeed right back to 2016.

It is scary when Capela and EGo are considered part of your top 5 players.

That's already been deducted. Without major changes it'll take a miracle to get there.

Interesting. Maybe Dwight wasn't all the problem.... 3 seasons and another crisis later...with a different coach....somebody finally realizes 2016 might not have been all Dwight doings. How long will it take before MDA becomes the target??? (He does have some responsibility here.) One thing that will be difficult to do this time around is find the Dwight on this team to blame. Harden loves CP3 so you can't blame him. And Melo barely played before we dumped him and he wasn't taking up any salary cap space. And we used no assets to acquire him. So it'll be very far-fetched to blame him.

If things don't improve here....this one will go on Morey. (And He does share in the responsibility for this team.)

Very bad, yes. But it's the 5, 6, 7 turnovers when Harden has Paul in there that are the foreboding sign for this team.

 

that's the spirit

 

It's all Melo's fault am I doing this right?

 

Because you're turning it over and giving it up worse on the defensive end.

Our defensive rebounding rate goes through the floor when Paul ain't out there. That was perhaps the worst team in the league that just murdered us on the defensive glass.





Look guys. This game should speak volumes to you. Our last two wins were fool's gold. We were already showing our weaknesses. But our problems should be on full display for you now.

Harden-has to have AT LEAST one other playmaker on the floor with him to not be a turnover disaster.

Paul-dude can't play every game. You gotta bank on the fact the he NEEDS to sit for about 25-30 games a season.....by having a third playmaker in the top 7 of your rotation, which we ain't got.

EGo-has been told we'll likely have to trade him (as a courtesy to him). And he's playing like it. Not the same player as last year. And won't be again. He knows he's leaving and it's affecting his play. Bad way to start a season. It's best for all parties to move major rotation pieces in the off season. We didn't get it done.

Tucker-he is what he is. Glue guy, great defender, decent enough shooter, and great locker room guy. Elite role player playing to his max. Doesn't have anything else to give us but for us to have a chance to win a title we need this piece or one like him on the same sort of budget contract.

Capela-he is what he is. Just a role player. Playing to his max. But a role player. Last night's game was very clear. Offensively, without a couple all-time greats feeding him the ball and making it happen for him when he's tangling with a good defensive big, he has nothing to contribute. Defensively, without multiple stud defenders around him he becomes just another player. He's not a defensive difference-maker. He's simply a player that can help a team if they already have a couple great players and 2-3 very good players. But if he's your third highest salary then he should be your third best player and if he's your third best player then your team isn't very good. Because he's limited, he can't shoot, and he's a mediocre defender and rebounder. This game should have proven to you that it's the perimeter players who are of utmost importance to this team, not the guy rolling to the basket.

Ennis-is a bench player who should be playing spot minutes only. He's not a difference-making player on either end. Just simply not good enough. OK to have on the roster at the very minimum. Not good enough to be in the primary rotation.

Clark-should be at the edge of the rotation at best. Love having him on the roster. Sign him to a 3-year deal. But if he's in the primary rotation and we get to the playoffs then we aren't deep enough.

We need a third guy that can push Tucker to the fourth guy. At the very least we need a fourth guy that can push Capela to the fifth guy. And we need a 6th guy (EGo last season) that can especially play more minutes than Capela to help limit Capela's defensive exposure.

And to have any shot at a championship, Capela needs to be no better than the sixth best player on the roster.

 

Simpler than you thought, they had 6 or so guys scoring double digit numbers.

 

I think if the Rockets don't get a 3rd Star, I think it's time to trade off everyone on the Roster.
I was at least hoping for Paul George to have interest in the Rockets. I honestly do not know how else can the Rockets improve the Roster being so capped out in FA money. Trading off 1st Rd picks the last 4 seasons, Karma does come back, it sets the team back, like when the Astros were so bad, they had to tank for those High Picks, because there were No Great Young Players on the Astros. Bregman, Correa, Lance McCullers, Springer, Keuchel, Signed as a Free Agent as a 15 yr old Altuve. It starts from the Draft.
The Draft is the Bloodline to Assembling Great Teams.

 

i didn't see where @Nook posted this, but in any case we all know morey is stubborn as a mule and could plausibly holdout till the final trade deadline day for the very best fully marked down bargains like he usually does. which will probably be too late for this team. can't believe he still hasn't gotten a backup for cp3 when the whole world knows that guy is guaranteed to miss a ton of games. morey has zero concept of a depth chart

 

lol doom and gloom forces in full effect..its just a meaningless regular season game in november

 

Mike will run his 6 guys into the ground while Daryl sits on his ass and Tristan Thompson just grabbed another rebound. #runitback #runasone #happytimes

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sp...keaways-from-the-Rockets-loss-to-13419295.php

1. As extended as the playing time for the Rockets regulars has been, numbers don't entirely reflect the load they have had to carry and the dangers in asking so much.

The minutes Harden, Capela and P.J. Tucker have been playing not only have been heavy, with Harden tied for second in the NBA in minutes played per game and Capela and Tucker playing considerably more than they ever have in their careers, they have been hard minutes. They have been under the pressure of having to build leads or climb out of deficits every night because they cannot share that burden with their backups.

Those minutes are always tougher than when things are going easily. Other than a few of the nights in the winning streak, things are rarely smooth sailing, with the past two games spent trying to climb out of deficits with engines always having to redline to have a chance.

In the two losses, Harden played 41 and 43 ½ minutes. Tucker played 44 and 42. Capela played 43 ½ and 40. Some of that was because of the overtime in Detroit. Some of Harden's load in Cleveland came with Chris Paul held out the second half of the back-to-back. But other than Eric Gordon, the Rockets don't have anyone on the bench that Mike D'Antoni entirely trusts for long minutes. He has to ride his starters.

Harden had 40 points on Saturday, his fourth consecutive game scoring at least 30, and added 13 assists. Gordon, filling in for Paul in the starting lineup, had a season-high 28. No one else scored more than 10.

The Rockets' starpower is significant enough to win games with such lopsided scoring. Though James Ennis III had three double-digit scoring games in the winning streak and Gerald Green had one, the Rockets have had to count on Harden, Paul and Capela to carry so much of a load, there will be ups and downs.

If they slip at all, the Rockets don't often have the margin for error to make up for it. They cannot slack off defensively, on the boards or in taking care of the ball. They have in stretches of the past two games, but especially with Paul out for one of those games, that might have been inevitable.

2. The Rockets on consecutive nights faced the top two offensive rebounders in the NBA. The Pistons' Andre Drummond leads the league, averaging 6.3. The Cavaliers' Tristan Thompson is second, averaging 5.2. (Capela, whose 12 offensive boards on Friday were the most in a game in the NBA this season, is fourth.)

The Rockets' issues on the defensive glass, however, are nothing new. They rank last in defensive rebounding percentage, an issue even more glaring considering they were fourth-best in the league last season.

Some of that comes from their defensive style. They switch on screens so Capela is often out on guards and far from the rim. Even when they drive on him and he can challenge shots enough to get misses, he is then out of position to get the boards.

Still, all that was true last season. It does not have to be such an issue this season.

Considering how up for grabs rebounds of missed shots have been, the Rockets have not been too badly hurt by second-chance points, giving up 13.3 per game (ranking 15th.) But in the past two games, they allowed an average of 20.5, with the Cavs getting 23, matching the most the Rockets have allowed in a game this season.

That was too much to overcome given the other issues. The Rockets won't have to face Drummond or Thompson often. They have just one game left against either, though there are three remaining against Steven Adams. But when they get their defense right again, they will also have to finish those possessions with rebounds, a shortcoming that was not new in the first two games of the road trip, but burned them badly.

3. The Rockets' issues defensively to start games had been clear before it cost them so badly in losses to the Pistons and Cavaliers. Had they not noticed when they were winning, perhaps they could learn from the losses and make corrections. But they already knew.

The question is what they can do to fix it.

"That's a good question," Harden said. "We've been asking ourselves that, also."

The Rockets are ranked third defensively in the second half of games this season, but after Saturday, fell to 27th in the first half. They allowed 61 points in the first half in Detroit, 63 in Cleveland. In both games, players they would have to stop down the stretch had been rolling for too long to be denied in the end.

The improvement of the Rockets' defense from its poor start has been significant. The ability to make corrections and improvements at halftime is valuable. But the Rockets knew they had to defend in the first half, too. Now, they have proof.​

 

I don't want the guys to kill themselves racking up regular season wins, but what I see when I watch the team are a bunch of guys who aren't coming out with focus. Was it five straight turnovers to start the game last night? Mostly on unforced, lazy mistakes by the Rockets. Guys who are supposed to be reliable FT shooters are missing more often. Blowing defensive assignments. Missing point blank, easy layups. Not looking before passing or trying to make really foolish passes in heavy traffic. This is all mental stuff. Yeah, more bench scoring options would be great, but at a certain point the team needs to quit acting entitled to wins and actually play to win games.

 

All i know is some idiots lost big money trying to make money betting on a rockets win without a spread. They deserve it.

I dont know why, but the 3 win cavs put in a lot more effort to get that win then you would think. Greg poppovich and steve kerr have all but leaked how to beat the rockets without chris paul. You just keep attacking harden on offense and pressuring him full court on defense the start. Attack him on the perimeter, post and make him fight for rebounds. They did everything i see playoff teams do to james when paul doesnt play.

They were definitely watching game 7 last year and saw how the warriors handled harden without paul.