I tought Mchale was supposed to bring "Hard nosed, old school" defense? Laughable, we were actually a better defensive team with a 6'6" center. While Chuck didn't block shots our rotations were much better and this was with Scola and Martin playing big minutes. I was open minded with McHale but just watching his rudimentary offense, weak defense and bad player managment has convinced me we won't get anywhere with him as a coach.
lot of reasons..new coach..new system..lockout..loss of key defensive players..everything attributes to how the defense is doing..
i think the question is what's with our offense? i swear mchale just tells the players "just do whatever." there is absolutely no direction.
Hayes/Dally- Could go either way here Hayes provides slightly stronger 1 on 1 defense while Dally is a much better team defender, edge to Dally Scola/Scola - I know Scola was never a +defender but he's taken an even further step back in that regard. Looks tired a lot more (on both sides of the court.) Bud(Battier)/Parsons- We all agree Parson is a really nice defender, and a big step up from what Bud gave us last year after the Battier trade. Martin/Martin- looks the same as always, non-existent although he has had a few steals that surprised me here and there. Lowry/Lowry- This is one that will surprise some people, but Lowry looks to have regressed some on the defensive end, it's not his effort, just that he has to put so much into the other side of the ball since he has the ball in his hands a lot more this year.(Adelman's offense really made it easy on the PG.) He's never had staggering lateral quickness, but he's gotten beat by guys for lay-ups a few more times than we're used to with him.(again, he's still very much a +defender, just not what we're used to seeing from him.) Another thing to note, is the bench play for our big guys. We have no backup C and that leads to a lot up easy buckets around the rim when Dally isn't in.
That was the goal, but I think the impact of losing Chuck Hayes (and Battier) very much offsets the gains. Dalembert is a fine 7 footer, and actually very good when he's "on," but he's really inconsistent and can't do certain of the things that Chuck did (using his quickness and strength to play post D against some of the best post-up bigs).
I really went into this season thinking we'd be much worse than last year. We lost coach(not saying it was the wrong decision) we lost Chuck, say what you will, but he was good in the offense and a plus defender, not to mention a hell of a leader. McHale totally unproven as a HC, Martin, enough said, thinking Bud was going to start, Scola at the 4, three bad defenders. Gaining a 7 ft. center doesn't automatically mean we'd be better defensively. So many questions at the start of the season, I just had this feeling the Rockets would be awful. I was pleasantly surprised, at least for a while. Serious question, what made you think the team would be better?
Nope. Useless signing. I called it a 'meh' signing. It would have been best to pull a Gary Kubiak and " We're going with what we got." Rockets just staying afloat. Band aid moves. I mean, people thought he would change the Rockets fortune?! Stop it.
Blame the moronic coach that we hired. He was hired for his defense and despite having a better defensive line up than Rick, we concede close to 120 points to the likes of Cavs and Raps. Fire McHale NOW!
Dalembert/Parsons have made a huge improvement in the defense, starters are 99 drtg over 107 last year.
But efficiency of the league as a whole has dropped from 107.3 to 103.8 according to basketball-reference.com. So we're not that improved on defense.
After putting some thought in it I really believe our defensive woes are in a large part due to the last draft. The person we should have had ended up in San Antonio and we ended up with a D league PF trying to learn how to play SF. Not having a SF that can stay in the jock strap of the other teams hot PG/SG/SF is really hurting us.
If only we'd pulled the trigger on the Yao-for-Odom swap that Stevie and Cat were begging for many eons ago...
You're probably right that Kawhi Leonard would have been a better pick. But Parsons was also taken in the draft last year, and he's been our best perimeter defender.
