ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Clippers 4/3/2019

i think it's likely DEN beats POR and we end up w/ #3. looking at OKC's schedule i wouldn't be surprised if they end up w/ #6 too, assuming MIL rests their players the last game

 

cp3 looks playoff ready. He was dissecting the clippers and taking some of the easiest open midrange shots.

 

Means the Rox making it look EASY with Harden drawing all of the attention
and then setting up everyone else. He's just jealous that we have our full and
healthy team back. Hard to take a public beatdown

 

fwiw: Adam McCay is a film director. He did Vice and The Big Short. He's just talking like a fan.

 

They probably think you can win ships by just playing beautifully.

Style improved with Melo, MCW and Ennis gone.

 

LOL.. I passed out in garbage time

 

Faried and Capela finishing them alley oops makes this year so much more athletic. Faried should really be the first big man off the bench. Dude is like the human energized bunny.

 

If Rockets win last 3 games against Knicks, Sun's, and OKC, they will be finish either 1, 2, or 3 seed. Portland and Denver play each other twice. So go Rockets.

 

Seeing that I was pumped to go to the game live, everything I wished would happen pretty much did:
-blew them out BIG
-all of our stars showed up and humiliated them (big plus that cp finally had a big game against them)
-no injuries
-theatrics (cp nutmegging green, hitting a 60fter, a classic harden 4pt play, etc).

 

We're not finishing 1st in the West. Golden State would have to have a monumental collapse for that to happen.

 

Yes, it's great we control our own destiny on Top 3 seed.

and for those who say, "But, Portland owns the tiebreaker over us, so if they go undefeated, too" ... well, that means Denver drops to #3 or #4, with us #2 or #3.

see this

 

I clicked like for the vick post without thinking too much about the number 1 spot. That's what a huge Rockets win does for me. Two is possible, three would be fine with me too.

 

I mean, it's mathematically possible. But the Warriors' remaining schedule is:

@LAL
CLE
LAC
@NOP
@MEM

Is it possible the Warriors lose 4 out of those 5 while the Rockets win out? Sure. But the moment the Rockets lost at home to Golden State a few weeks ago, the 1st seed was for all intents and purposes out of reach.

 

Couple of takeaways (not that seeing it live changes my perspective on everything but still):

-HARDEN. As much as I feared the clips before, they really have no one to defend this guy. At all. Everything he did looked extremely extremely easy. And all this "heavy shade right, take away the stepback" stuff only let him get into the lane with ease, just like he did the Bucks. The only difference is that the bucks had a big that forced him to make the pass for the open corner 3, which we bricked that night). But last night, Harden didn't have to exert himself much at all. He knived through all their double teams out front, crossing into the middle for lobs and layups and open 3s to teammates. He threw 3-4 forced lobs to Capela because I think he legit didn't feel the need to get his pts anymore. It was that sure of a scoring night for him.

-CP3. I'm convinced that all these 3/12, 4/10 shooting nights where he ends up with like 7-11 pts (and 7-11 assists to his credit) really are just him being extremely disciplined not to over-exert himself in regular season games. To not even take a chance. That may sound very basic, but I've been legit worried he had lost a step from last year and that he simply couldnt do for us what he did last year. I hoped he was just preserving himself even harder this year than last and that we'd see the cp3 we'd come to know/expect in the playoffs. So last night, seeing how much more aggressive, fast, all over the court making plays, etc., kinda won me over. Everything he dominated with last year came out ... Looking for that midrange, shooting the 3s off picks with confidence, making his usual laser passes. It was beautiful to watch live. Gave me a lot of confidence and trust that he knows what he's doing ... lol.

-Faried/Rivers. The clips really don't have enough firepower ... and with the additions of faried and rivers guarding their super subs of Harrell and Lou, the rest of our team is free to play to their strengths with little resistance. Shout out to Rivers' excellent defense all night. I haven't seen Lou struggle this much in a while, shooing fadeaways with hands in his face, being only able to score from the line (and 4 of those fts being very debatable ... but of course no replays shown in a home game). And Harrell appeared flustered not being able to dominate the glass and get whatever he wanted. I think us playing 2 bigs during his stint really messed up his groove. There was one play where he was literally dragged by Nene for contesting a rebound that wasn't his and it led to 5 on 4 wide open 3pter for House. And even when he did get a score on Faried, he had to really work for it.

-I've really believed we've been unfortunate losing to the clips so much in the last two years due to one of our stars not playing almost every single time, or the beginning of the season when we had the worst rotation i've seen in hartenstein, melo, ennis, and mcw playing minutes on top of that. And then having to bear ex-rockets trash talking us. It was nice to see that at full strength, we dominate them in every way on both ends. I know they missed Beverly, but ... I don't see them beating us more than once (maybe twice if we're not on our game at all) in a 7-game series.

 

A great post. I loved your comments about Chris Paul. Beverely may have made things a bit tighter, but I think Chris and Harden would have overwhelmed him.

 

Yeah, I was sad Beverly wasn't playing cuz he's been shooting his mouth a little bit about us trading him. But I was also glad he wasn't playing cuz I didn't want him to injure anyone hahaha. But ya, basketball-wise, though I do agree Beverly woulda tried more on cp, especially in that first portion of the 2nd quarter, I do think cp3's strength of mainly being a pick n roll guy more so than a fast iso pg would mitigate some of beverly's ball hawking. And on top of that, beverly has no shot against harden.

 

Maybe I should just stop watching games. Haven't been able to catch the last two and they won by 30+.

What an insanely good performance. Clippers have been one of the hottest teams in the league and we just PUNKED them at home on a 2nd game of a back-to-back.

Talk about getting hot at the right time! Warriors would be lucky to avoid us in the 2nd round.

 

I listened to the Locked On Clippers pre-game podcast (from yesterday) this morning. It was really enjoyable and I highly recommend you all listen to it. I'm now greatly looking forward to listening to their post game podcast. I think I'm going to start listening to the other team's Locked On podcast for all of our games (unless we lose). It's great.

 

If they split . . . .. . then we might end up at #2

Rocket River

 

Thanks for the recommendation