The reason for a lot of the starters issues finally cracked

I do think the team plays harder and moves more when KD is off the court. I've noticed this all season. What's not clear to me is exactly why this is, or if KD is "to blame". I think a lot of the problem stems from having KD on the ball, initiating the action. He isn't good at it, and it's not good for the team, and it slows everything down and pulls everyone out of their rhythm. Maybe he's the one pushing to play this way, maybe not. But it needs to stop.

In any case, KD is such a great scorer that it's not surprising we play better on offense when he's on the court. That's going to be a mixture of him on and off the ball, to be clear. I think the secondary effects are pretty bad though, because other players end up less engaged in defense and rebounding and so on.

The ideal solution would be a strong HC who insists that KD play off the ball as much as possible, but designs plays to allow him to finish things off. That's not Ime, who doesn't give two f**ks about offense.

 

aren’t we undefeated without KD?

 

There are 4 issues with KD:

The ball sticks to him because he's our best option by far;
The ball sticks to him because we don't have a PG to run the offense;
The ball sticks to him because Ime doesn't have any plays besides handing the ball to either KD or Sengun; and
KD can't consistently give max effort on defense throughout a game because of his age/minutes/load.

The good news is that you can fix most of those things by bringing back Fred, hiring an OC for Ime, and bringing in another shot creator at the wing.

Regardless, we'd be in the lottery right now without this guy. He is the least of our problems. This team has underachieved due to injuries, a lack of guards, a sh!tty bench, and a coach who still thinks it's 1993.

 

He’s played the whole season, i think he’s only missed 3 games hasn’t he? And one was against the pacers who aren’t an nba level team

 

We beat the warriors on the road without him and they had curry. Reed went for 30 on national tv. Yes it’s a small sample size but to dismiss the pacers win even though without Sengun we have lost to some of the worst teams.

 

Holiday was +41
Reed was -10 (our only guy in the neg)....

what should we read into this?


lol

 

Ya i remember that one, that was a fun one

 

You take what you can and roll with it. That’s what the haters do so it’s all good.

 

He’s a great player and great players should play ISO but the Rockets rely on him too much. And I think he tries to do too much because our team lacks playmakers.

But I agree to much deferring especially Amen and the wings. Reminds me of the old days with Ariza, Tucker, Mboute deferring to Harden with no independent decision making. That’s problematic.

 

Big difference is harden is one of the greatest passers the league has seen and could break double team at will and KD just becomes a turnover machine.

 

Well he’s a pg. quicker and crafty. Great vision and passing touch but the Rockets over reliance on him and inability to make plays without him is one reason we lost besides the 27 missed 3’s

Our wings remind me of Ariza and Tucker. They’re a little better in terms of driving and handling but still not great and have issues. Ariza, Tucker, Mboute, all couldn’t drive or create offensively. It was baffling and frustrating at the same time to see a team built like that. This current roster of wings is a new version of that lol

 

He's playing smarter not chucking everything on sight.

 

If you can't tell the difference then you're part of the problem.

 

Amen is already legitimately good ballhandler IMO, especially if you consider him a wing rather than a point guard. People talk like he isn't, but he's dribbled through traffic successfully quite a bit this season, and his turnover rate isn't bad, especially for being the first year he's spent a lot of time on the ball. The thing stopping him from being more effective isn't that, it's the lack of a jump shot making him predictable and allowing defenses to pack the paint.

 

Slim Reaper as in get off my dickerson on one of his tweets.

 

Right I was just saying it could work with Harden because he was a 1 man offense in all aspects.

We could generate plenty of offense when he sat the problem was CP3 was injured and the warriors stacked the deck to make the greatest team ever.

 

I hope Ime start Okogie for the Playoffs. Reed is going to get us killed. Every team is going to target Reed and if he's in a slump, its going to be harder on the other players.

He needs to come off the bench. If he's hot, he plays more mins, if not he sits.

 

I noticed a lot of deferral to KD early in the season - I blame Udoka. He's the guy that runs this shiitshow. If he weren't calling for this to happen, it wouldn't be happening.
There was an interview of KD where he basically stated he doesn't care to be the hub of the offense. Just get to his spots and make shots rather than what we've seen.

Ujoka is trying to make an ancient KD into prime Harden.

No, it was worse before - at least in the past few weeks we've seen Reed run the show, before that it was force the ball to KD out top and go stand in the corner. Often trying to get the ball to a double teamed KD ....

 

what about defense? Seriously curious.