ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Grizzlies 11/9/2012

I'm not surprised at all. his body language on the court told me all i needed to know.

 

Team tanking to get McHale fired ala Lakers?
Morey better get on the phone quick and get D'Antoni before the Lakers snatch him from us.

 

It's actually a damn good battle right now. Dragic vs. Waiters

 

i dont understand why they couldn't even get guys that can shoot to the team

 

Lin had a good game, not great but good, he kept us in it. Harden again had a terrible game.

 

Waiters is impressive. But to be fair, neither team plays defense.

 

General game observations...

Offense was MUCH improved over last game. Alot more ball flow. Still alot of issues.

-Serious lack of screens and picks. You aren't going to be able to take advantage of good PnR players like Harden and Lin without solid picks and single/double screens. No idea wtf happened with PPat not dropping the pick when Lin called him over... forced him to shoot a contested 3 with 4s left on the clock. I expect McHale to seriously chew him out.

-Lin had 4 TO's, 1 was a travel, 2 were steals, 1 was Asik's pan hands. One TO you could see he lost focus and lost the dribble into Bayless. The other was just a straight out steal. It happens. Still, he shot 50%, put up 15 points, 5 rebounds, 3 steals. 4 TO's for 37 mins really isn't bad at all. If he could have played 30ish mins, would be 3 TO's which is a decent number.

-Harden couldn't hit a shot to save his life tonight. It wasn't all double teaming... he just couldn't make baskets. 3 pointers, 2 pointers. Didn't matter... he was cold. He also had 5 TO's... at least 3 lazy/bad passes. It wasn't all ball pressure. Still, he played 40 mins, so it wasn't terrible there either.

-We need a backup PG badly. Lin and Harden played close to 40 minutes each. You're going to have dropoffs in play when you play such extended segments of minutes, especially toward the last portion of those minutes.

-BOTH teams played good defense overall. Seriously, the Rockets outshot Memphis in FG%, the Rockets had 17 assists to Memphis' 16 assists, we also out rebounded them 41-40. We shot a higher FT%... 14/15 vs 17/23, but got very FEW FT's in the 2nd half.

-Our help defense rotations on the PnR still need work. Improving, but need work. For those who think Lin should be single handedly stopping Conley (31 mins) AND Bayless (18 mins) when he's playing 40 minutes AND be screened off plays, PnR Defense is TEAM DEFENSE. It is NOT the sole responsibility of the PG, ESPECIALLY when they are repeatedly brushed off with blind Picks. Lin stayed with the opposing PG's for MOST of the game when he wasn't being brushed. The real question is where is the Help D? There should NEVER be an open lane behind the PG.

-Asik's offense was MUCH improved. More dunking is good. Stripped too often and too many bad passes (5 TO's).

-Parsons found his shot. Very nice. Patterson not so much.

-We lost the game in TO's, poor scoring by Harden and fastbreak points (20-2 in fastbreak points). The Rockets had 20 TO's. The Grizzlies had 9. Mostly it was sloppy passing and dropped passes.

Memphis is a seriously good defensive team. They're a playoff team, with lots of vets, multiple bigs, and not that much dropoff between the starters and the bench. Seriously... this team has played 5 games and it was within 2 in the last 3 minutes. WTH DO YOU GUYS EXPECT?

I saw alot of positives this game, and stuff to work on. Night and day vs last game. Can't ask for alot more than that.

Lin, Parsons and Asik all shot well. Delfino was a bit worse than usual but 33.33% isn't awful.

Too many sloppy passes, but I'll attribute part of that to misreads. Hard to account for passes to empty space as anything else.

It looked good considering the competition. I didn't expect a win from Memphis but close is acceptable with our 5th game.

These guys still need more time together, but you can see it's improving. For 5 games, I like what I'm seeing. McHale still needs to keep balancing the roles of Harden and Lin which should help considerably. Sorting out picks and more elaborate screens and sets to break Harden and Lin open should also help alot.

Getting a back up PG up to speed should help as well. And if the rest of the team find their shooting rhythm, that should help alot in terms of spacing.

A decent game and it should continue improving. :grin:

 

Lin and Harden are the two most overpaid players in the league right now.

 

I don't understand why 5 games in the rooks still haven't seen an NBA minute. Damn, wtf is wrong with this coach?

 

Part of the blame obviously has to go to Morey. He has put this squad together. The pieces just do not fit. God knows what is going to happen as the season progresses.

 

yeah we depend on the three to much. This would work if we have Novak type of player but we don't. Delfino is too streaky. You can't turn Lin into a Novak.

Jeremy looks very uncomfortable out there.

We need a coach who can figure out a game plan that plays to their star's strength - this would require Jeremy to be the primary ball hander/playmaker, setting up easy shots for Harden who is a much better three point shooter than Lin.

Having Harden out there would free up more space in the lane, for Jeremy to drive in and either score or dish out. McHale is running it the opposite way.

 

Delfino too.

 

because he was afraid he would shoot another airball and embarrasse himself again. dude can't shoot or dribble.

 

I think teams are figuring out that if they stop harden, then they can stop the rockets.

That's why we need to get Jeremy more involved in scoring and taking shots. We are not developing him at all.

 

another thing is, they never screen for lin, if u watch the memphis, they screen everytime.

 

a legit big who can shoot from outside will solve our offensive problem, it obvious that our opponents were packing the paint and take out Harden and Lin drive ,we need that big to draw defender out of the paint

 

I think this is the product of McHale's coaching. He makes him camp out in the three point line instead of getting more involved on scoring. This is leading to poor effort in the other aspcet of the game.

 

People saying that Lin with 3 assists can't run an NBA offense are crazy. He was setting his teammates up with good looks but people can't convert.

 

Ma Jian(known as a Lin hater in China), the former bb player from China National team, said:"Lin had to help out on Post defense cuz it seems no one can rebound the ball in the paint even Mark Gasol miss that shot."

Note : we were playing small line-up in the 4th Q. I know it hurts but why don't we criticize it with another angel? Maybe Harden didn't rotate quick enough?

 

that is a little premature. as you said, lets see how the season progresses