ClutchFans Game Thread: Thunder @ Rockets 2/9/2019

Lucky PJ Tucker can defend because her has been really poor on offence lately. Shooting 30 percent in his last 10 games

 

Harden has always been Harden, made a jump this year.

Paul George went from a 23 ppg to a legit 29-30 ppg guy.

 

Calm down. If the captain 'MDA' gets fired it would mark the ends of an ERA. Aftermath: Jimmy might request a trade and what's left? Think it through alright!?

 

So did EGO

 

So much for „great minimum pickups” in Rivers and Faried instead of trading for capable NBA players. Faried is all hustle he cant read any plays and Rivers shooting form is so cringe that he has to be on the bad side of streaky

 

Ummm no.

 

OKC is also an ISO team.

Those former OKC brehs just luv to Iso - Durant, WB and JH.

 

The Rockets are starting to find their form.

Anything without Capela is gravy right now.

 

The sad thing... us Rockets fans knew too...

 

threes fall and clank(especially contested ones), everybody except ourt team knows that

 

Great easy win. I turned the tv off at halftime with a 30 point lead.

 

Hopefully they can learn something from this, like not to take your foot off the gas.

 

this loss was big and after seeing some replays of it as well 3rd q effort wise we went from 110% to 50%. Besides the 3rd quarter we played a better game and it sucks to say that our effort was bad. We could have closed the gap to 2 games now its 4 btw us and okc. I feel us and OKC in a series would be a close to call and tbh would not be confident w/o hc.

 

I have to defend CP3 here and say when you look at the whole picture he contributed more overall than anyone

Half the team lacked any effort in getting rebounds. Paul had 10, but James, Rivers, Green and Gordon had 3 total rebounds combined. That's just complete lack of hustle from half the team.

James put up 42 points but played way too much ISO in the second half. It became the ISO or nothing gold bust. At least Paul had 9 assists, but James, Rivers, Green, and Gordon had 4 total. No teamwork and no chemistry.

What about the lack of the lack of offense coming from half the team? Some of that stems from simply not getting the ball enough, but part of it comes from not doing anything with it when it gets in their hands. I mean at least Paul had 18 points, but Tucker, Nene, Shumpert, and Green had 10 points combined.

I blame everyone on this loss. They all had their contributions.

 

I still cant believe we gave up 26 point lead. Positive outlook is once we are clicking we are impossible to stop but when things go stray we fold up faster then a cheap suitcase.

 

This starts at the top, MDA and Harden. Unbelievable they still don’t realise how to get back momentum, don’t call plays, no timeouts, just threes and letting up on D.

 

Tough loss.

A couple of things I'll comment on that are a concern.

1. Our defense really gets our offense started. Good defense=good offense. Bad defense=bad offense. But, it's hard for the Rockets to sustain intense defense for 48 minutes. We have seen it time and time again. We get a comfortable lead, and then the defense lags and the other team gets right back into the game.

Getting Capela back and finding a quality backup for Tucker(Morris?) should help us to keep that defensive intensity going the entire game. It's really hard for our top defenders to play 36 plus minutes per game and perform at a consistently high level.

2. I really don't like what happens to our offense in the final minutes of the game. Harden is a great great player. But, he can't be the only guy taking shots in the final five minutes of the game. Watch the first five minutes of any Rockets game, and then watch the last five minutes of any Rockets game. Two entirely different offenses.

I'm not saying we can't have any iso plays for Harden. He's really good at those iso plays. But, I want the final minutes of the game to look more like the first few minutes of the game. I want to see Harden getting the entire team involved in the offense. And just to be clear, I realize that most NBA teams tend to have their star player dominate the ball late in games. It's just that I think we've become more iso heavy than we need to be. Chris Paul is a damn good point guard, I see nothing wrong with allowing him to carry more of the load in the final minutes of the game.

 

While losing big leads, even at home, happens to even the best teams (last night BOS also blew a big lead at home), losing leads happens too often with the Rockets. And this was against a team you'd think we would be even more motivated to beat.

 

If they haven't learned by now they won't. Up 3-2 on warriors in WCF should eat at their hearts strong enough still to not be doing BS like this OKC game but these guys are millionaires so whatever. Either they will step up and mature or they will fail depending on how bad they really want it.

 

This is why everyone needs to calm down. A lot of their baskets were on second and even third chance offensive rebounds. Once Capela is back and Faried is the backup, we no longer have to play NeNe who was completely overmatched by Adams tonight. He couldn’t even box out the free throws.