I mentioned this in the game thread along with @heypartner So Kenny Smith’s brilliant idea the other night was to double harden. Malone decided to employ this strategy during the first half tonight (trying to trap harden with a double when he came off a pick up high.) The Rockets role players were forced to hit good looks, while harden was relatively quiet scoring in the first half. What were the results? Tucker hit a career high in threes. Capela scores a career high. Green has a fantastic game. Once again the national pundits have no idea what they are talking about. I wish someone would send this game tape to nba on tnt.
Pick your poison. Either way they were dead. The way they were doubling was waiting for harden to pick apart. They just don’t have a long arm guy that can drape over harden. He wasn’t rattled at all today by those joke double team.
knock kneed Kenny’s analysis always boils down to “u gotta trap and double him and let somebody else beat u”...the way he talks you’d swear coaching is so easy and simple...then again, that’s probably why his ass is on TNT hating and he’s not a head coach
Not something you can do when Cp3 is in the lineup but while he's injured it's probably their best shot.
It will be interesting the Bucks double, they have a ton of long arm players that can make things difficult for Harden.
while good they exploited what denver was doing, a better defensive team will probably give the rockets problems. denver doesnt have the personnel to full execute what they were doing
on one hand double teaming left the role players open for easy looks. on the other hand if capela and tucker didn't have career night's it would've been a closer game. hard to say if their performance can be repeated on a nightly basis or if a better defensive team would leave them as open after the double occurs. we probably score at about the same rate, but late in a close game james will be gassed from going at a full court press and out of rhythm from giving up the ball so much. they won't be able to do that once ego and cp3 come back anyway. either way great win tonight
Oh well, most of the buckets Clint were getting was so wide open along under basket either by himself or a little dude like Jamal Murray he couldn’t even feel. That pick and roll him and Harden is going to cause nightmare either way. I wouldn’t be surprised CC would get this type of numbers if they decide to leave him open. 7 threes by Tucket was a bit of luck. But those were wide open ones from the corner. If he can’t make those, you put James Ennis or Green there. Not hard. The ability of Harden can pass out of the double team is the key. If that is not stopped, we win every night when that happens. That’s why no team in their mind would double Harden all game long. That’s why Kenny was idiotiatic saying “ well you get the ball out of Harden’s hands make others beat us.”
Man Denver fans are taking a lot of smack saying they can handle us but it seems like they didn’t realize that CP3 and EGo were out and they still got smoked
honestly, I have never see CC so mismatched down low, I would take that on every possession over Harden having to iso. It's like he's playing against Elementary school kids at the rim. Also you never want to give someone like Green and Tucker wide open 3's like that, they are steaky shooters, that's how you get them hot.
"His game is only good for this era...if they had handchecking he wouldn't be anywhere near as good...." -TNT crew
Denver does not know how to defend our PnR with Capela, they are late on everything last time we played them. I think they are now just thinking about gimicky ways to solve the puzzle, but it kinda backfire tonight too with double teaming
It may be true that Denver is just poor at defending our PnR. The overall takeaway though, should be that Harden can easily handle traps. There seems to be this idea floating around that the Rockets offense cannot function when the ball is taken out of Harden's hands. Tonight proved the contrary.
To be fair, with the absolute ridiculous level of play that Harden has playing for the past month and a half (even by his MVP standards).... Do you have any better ideas?
