People are confusing the pick & roll with iso hero ball. -For instance, the play they ran last night against Portland was for Morris to come up to set the pick, have Harden draw a double team only to kick the ball over to Morris for an open 3. Morris was open because Harden commanded a double team, and Morris' man had to help. Its a simple play, but its still a play that works if you have a player who can consistently command double teams. I liken hero ball to what Kobe Bryant has been notorious for doing for most of his career. Give him the ball on the corner, everyone get out of the way, and let Kobe take 1 or 2 defenders one on one to get separation for a jump shot. The difference with Harden is he's a player that has no problem letting even a 2nd year player like Morris take the last second shot. -Now, there are things I've seen that they can work on. I think Harden should start the play around 8 seconds rather than 6 seconds left on the shot clock. Also I would try to bring the pick in closer to the 3 point line. The pick seems to be getting further and further out to the half court line. So as long as Harden is still commanding a double team, you keep running that play. He's the best decision maker, and passer on the team. If they play him one on one, he's skilled enough to have a good chance at scoring on his man, if the double him, then that means someone is open and needs to hit the open shot. As I said before, the Rockets offense has started to look better and better the past 2 or 3 games. Alot of that has to do with the improved outside shooting from Morris, Parsons, Douglas, etc. You know how they are getting open in the first place?... Harden making a pass out of the double team. They should make some minor tweeks here and there, but overall the offense looks pretty good, and is going to get even better. Their defense isn't bad either, but they could really use a Tony Allen type of defender off the bench who can really come in and shut down someone like Batum, or Lillard when they start going into video game god mode like they have been. Sooner or later, teams are going to miss some shots, and the Rockets will start winning more of those types of close games they have been in. -As for Lin... keep doing what he's doing to quarterback the team, and pushing the ball up the court in transition at every chance. Especially when Harden's off the court. He seems like he's pressing a little on offense. That's not a bad thing. It means he's trying and he cares. Sooner or later, he's going to get it going offensively and have some huge games. No need for him to keep pressing. Just let the game come to you.
"I beg to differ" ~ James Harden "Me too!" ~ Omer Asik "Me three!" ~ Toney Douglas "We four!" ~ Cook, Aldrich, Jones, Machado "#stophiding!" ~ Royce White
Who writes **** like this. Lin cant drive left. Cant shoot. Period. You think if Lin was the next Kobe he'd be left on the bench?
Tinman is effing funnier than hell sometimes!! I tried to avoid Lin's related threads as much as possible, but i will chime in on this one. Lets look at Lin's stats. Among PG's, he is 4th in RPG, 3rd in SPG and BPG, 17th in APG, 29th in PPG. Now you take into consideration that Lin only started 34 games in his career. That's 1/2 starts as Parsons and really an amazing achievement for an undraftee. You can say Lin is really overachieving at this point of his career. Any expectation other than better shooting % is really 'unhealthy' for his development. Take a step back and let Lin plays out his first real season in his career!
The biggest problem I see our offense is in our initial screen from bigs. Asik is ok at it still has lots of room for improvement. PPat is a terrible screener. Varejao and TChandler are two off my head that are great at setting screens. Without a proper initial screen, Lin or Harden will waste about 8-10 seconds off the clock. Without proper screens will usually lead to iso by Harden or a contested shot by others. Our bigs need to learn to set and re-set the screen until the ball-handler gains a step on the defender. If one screener isn't enough, use two. Harden is still very raw at reading the trap defense. Many times he tries to dribble out instead of pass it out at the first sign of trap. His timing wasn't exactly there either. Sometime he started his dribble prematurely and caused illigal screen. Harden, as a ball handler, is still work in progress.
I do not think Asian fans as a whole overrate Lin. I have spoken to many Asians who do not think he is particularly good. Some even point to his lack of athleticism (in the face of all of the tests that prove otherwise). I do not agree with their assessments.
Why not? It's not like this team is contender quality right now anyway. If you're going to invest millions in a young player, you should be giving him more freedom than his performance warrants. Remember how awful Carmelo Anthony shot when he first got drafted by Denver? They let him keep shooting anyway and look at how he turned out Remember Darko who got drafted before Melo? He had a miserable rookie year in Detroit and never got the free reign to develop or a coach who knew how to treat foreign players, years later and he never realized the potentials he had.
I don't understand this logic. What does somebody's FG% have to do with there ability to run an offense? Last year Rubio shot 36% from the field until he got injured but he still ran the offense. And why invest 25 million in a PG that is at his best with the ball in his hands & then proceed to turn him into the asian derrick fisher. After the previous game it appears that things have changed & Lin will be able to make plays more. We all saw how successful he was at that. Hopefully that pattern continues.
Thank you. This is exactly what I was saying yesterday and people interpreted it as hating on Lin. Totally bizarre.
The title is everything I have issue with "Lin fans" is that they are bigger "Lin fans" than Rockets fans.
Absolutely. I think Harden is getting a big green light because in a large way, the Rockets office wants to appease him. He is after all their franchise player. The problem is you can't cater entirely to the whims of your star. Harden is a good player, but can he run an organisation? Can he manage a roster? Does he know how to coach? etc. I know everyone's being a bit impatient (myself included) but what about Terrence Jones? He showed big time promise in the pre-season and yet he's not even being developed. Kawhi Leonard, Iman Shumpert, Kenneth Faried, Damien Lillard. There are countless others but these are some guys who have been entrusted with roles right from the beginning and succeeded exceptionally at it and become invaluable assets to their respective organisations. And Lin, they've invested $25M in a young PG that fits the mould of Dragic and Lowry and now coaching staff are going to marginalise his role, play to his weaknesses, turn him into a carrier pigeon and spot-up shooter? Meanwhile role-players like Delfino get an inexplicable amount of opportunity to handle the ball, Cole Aldrich gets to post-up and Douglas, a player who looked like he was going to be cut and out of the league gets burn for the entire OT period?
FG% is important. If you've got a poor outside shot than defenders can slack off on you and it will make your ability to run plays for others that much harder. That being said a lot of this is is arguably attributable to Lin being played out of position to his weaknesses and his confidence looks shot as well. I hope things change because it's disappointing to see such gross player mismanagement and a terrible, terrible offensive scheme. Why not let Lin run the offense like Dragic and Lowry got to do last year? What kind of stupid offense lets role-player specialist shooters handle the ball and swing it side-to-side in a stagnant manner? Why turn your star SG into an isolation machine at the point when he's not very good at it? Seems like they're trying to make squares fit into circle holes when the much better and obvious alternative is right there in front of them.
I'll have you know that little blemish came 2 days ago during which I was standing up for a certain poster on this board, whom decided to start a thread to put people like you in their place. Unfortunately I was bit vulgar/graphic when I proceeded to tell him what he should eat, but that's neither here or there, & especially none of your business. I know walls that are less dense. I'm done with you.
^ this. sad but true . I liked Lin, I follow NBA again because of Lin, but if he is below 40% shooting, how can we expect the coaching staff to hand in the reins? Unfortunately, the alternative of iso-Harden also does not look good . So, Houston, we have a problem.
To Jeremy Lin: ***** Off and Play your game. Go HAM and don't care what Sampson asked you to do. If you show your Linsanity streak, they will use you well. Sacrifice one game of being a motherfu*ck*ng "my-stat-matter" player to get respect from your coach. Too much timidity will be your downfall. I am starting to get p*ssed at you.
