Clutchfans Game Thread: Rockets @ Blazers 8/4/2020

I thought Harden had a fantastic game. He defended well (again) and made the correct read out of the trap 95% of the time. Our "others" and Westbrook didn't hit enough shots to win. We are going to see more of this going forward. Harden will be trapped after passing half court. Whether we win or lose will depend on our role players hitting shots and Westbrook making the correct reads. That didn't happen enough tonight.

 

Ummm you forgot 2014?

 

An angel loses its wings every time Westbrook does a fade away off a post up in the midrange.

 

The haters are back. They seem to forget Harden was getting double-teamed all night. He's bound to go cold if he doesn't shoot the 3pt after a while. We need to take advantage of that double-teaming much more efficiently. That's on MDA.

Harden played well tonight.... just couldn't hit those wide open 3pt shots at the end. But of course, the loss will be Harden like it always is.

Westbrook played poorly tonight. Made a few dumb decisions. And he also missed a lot of free throws. He needs to stick to attacking the rim instead of shooting the ball. His shooting game is far too inconsistent.

Covington needs to head to the gym and start to practice his 3pt shooting. His shooting in the bubble has been complete trash.

 

Totally agree... if there's one we SHOULD win, its this one, but you can count on Rockets to lose to sub-.500 teams left and right.

 

Well, again, you don't even have to be here or watch the games

 

Tonight I could swear I saw Ben McLemore box out on consecutive defensive possessions, earning us a rebound each time. Then I thought I saw him block a shot. I’m going to go to sleep now, and when I wake up, I want these things to have actually happened.

 

We are not terrible when james gets doubled. We are night and day from earlier in the year as evidenced by the point totals of house and green tonight. Russ missed too many fts and Covington 2-11 hurt, but we still had our chances. People act like we have to be perfect to win games and we don't.

 

Rivers should have played more than BMac.

But Rockets lost because they lost TOV, FT and 3P.

Got to win at least 2 of the 3.

And even then, Rockets still had chance at the end.

 

Healthy (Nurk and Collins) Blazers are Top 3 team in the West. Imagine if they had Ariza and Hood too. Possibly Top seed. Not a bad loss for Rockets. They'll bounce back.

 

that was one series, harden has dominated this team for the most part since. i think matt bullard said something like harden has like 8 40 point games againist them since 2016

 

Nah, sorry, I saw Harden being defended 1-on-1 by Gary Trent Jr. and others, they just went on his left and that really did bother him.

To be fair, he did get doubled/trapped a lot, but I saw him also being defended 1-on-1, he just had no answer for the dudes guarding his left.

EDIT: Not to say he didn't have a great game, he still did. By most people's standards.

 

Thanks Commissioner!

 

It was a dookie offensive game to watch down the stretch, but strictly from a playoff seeding perspective this was an even better possible outcome than a win tonight. If you had to rank the western conference teams by fear (who people wouldn’t want to face in the playoffs) it would go:

1. Clippers
1B. Lakers
3. Rockets
4. Mavs
5. Blazers
6. Nuggets
7. Thunder
8. Jazz

so we are making the Lakers’ road more difficult by increasing the chances that Portland takes that 8 seed to run up against them. No one really fears the nougatty middle of the western conference. Denver Utah OKC are regular season overachievers with little upside potential to knock out a favorite when everyone is trying their hardest. While we’re in that mix our goal is not to get too bad, not too good. Hell, even the clippers are considering tanking to get to 3 instead of facing Dallas round 1.

 

Yes. Same guy on a team supposedly 1 of best backcourt who are fighting for a play in spot.

Portland may not even make the postseason.

Put your penis envy away, its scaring the kids.

 

You don't have to pay attention. You're just ignorant, that's the point.

 

They were literally doubling him every possesion down the court. The only time he had a one on one was with Lilard down the Stretch and Harden should have cooked them. If guarding his left was enough dudes would never need to send doubles in the first place.

 

My take aways:
House, Green & Rivers are ready to play a major role in our championship.
The NBA officiating sucked for both teams tonight and maybe we / I take it to personal when they seem to miss OR make up calls.
They looked good in their uniforms

 

The opposing team's defensive strategy seems pretty straight forward (and smart IMHO). They are trapping Harden for certain periods of the game (but not always) to force the ball out of his hands and banking that the role players don't hit enough shots to win. For Russ, I see teams making an effort to form a wall anytime he has the ball on the perimeter and dare him to shoot. For the most part Westbrook didn't take the bait tonight.....but he bit a few time unfortunately. Getting a healthy Gordon back would be huge. I wish we could give Luc/Chandler some spot minutes when Westbrook sits (if for no other reason than to save Tucker/RoCo's legs) but I don't see that happening. I'm not sure how many timeouts MDA called this game but those can help get guys a rest. I just feel like heavy legs are going to become more of a factor for our role guys. 8-27 from our 3 Forwards (Tucker, RoCo and House) tonight from 3. That's not going to be enough to get it done.

 

Harden was our leading scorer, even though he was double teamed and had to give up the ball.

Other than end of game, Harden did well offensively. Rest of team not named Jeff Green did not.

Taking away Jeff Green's and 1 is what inmost pissed about.

Also the refs trying to foul out Harden for 3rd straight game.