oh so these are the kind of FACTS Rockets fans go by huh? they "felt" this, the "felt" that. Sampson "felt" Douglas is a better matchup........
Dear Zen master, Your conceited approach is not being accepted well over here. You are, obviously, a person who has never experienced passion. For that, I pity you. Also, your assumption that you know what's motivating DMorey is ridiculous, just as much as the fact that you allow yourself to expose it here with such worthless confidence. I hope this is a cold-enough, unemotional-enough, lifeless enough answer for you to be able to interface with. And the REAL answer is: When you are a basketball team in the NBA, your business is winning every game you can. As a person who has played in various teams over my 13 year career, I have NEVER seen nor heard anything BUT "How do we win this game?!". The NBA is no different. As for your "If you think they give one second of thought to a crying fan base, you are wrong." - well, you're right! The rockets don't care about their fan base. It is a well known fact that an unhappy fan base buys more game tickets, more jerseys, watches more games on TV (i.e. gets better TV deals to the franchise), and so on. Morey knows that, so of course, he is trying to get his fan base as disgruntled as possible! He is also trying to get as little fans as possible in China and Taiwan, and keep the ones that are there as unhappy as possible. I think I'm done.
Man, have you EVER PLAYED BASKETBALL?? Have you EVER FELT WHAT IT IS TO LOSE GAMES IN OT?? The GREATEST team builder is WINNING GAMES. PERIOD. NOTHING BEATS WINNING GAMES. Sometimes the answer is really simple: Sampson kept Lin benched instead of letting him play in OT, and preferred Toney (nothingness) Douglas. That was a stupid stupid mistake. Period.
guess u identify yourself as a chokefan , otherwise u wouldn't be riled up about this statement. lol this is clutchfans forum, i want to see more clutch.
lol i went along with you LOH when you said Dragic and Lowrey is better. Yes these 2 PGs did great and I respect that. Lin has to prove himself. But to put TD over Lin. That is just pure LOH . It's illogical.
Here it is - some truth, finally... Quoting J. Feigen from yesterday: "In his absence, McHale and Sampson have talked about the team, but McHale has positioned himself to be more of a sounding board and confidante. He immediately sought to empower Sampson to follow his own instincts, from playing rookie Terrence Jones in his first game as acting coach to sitting Jeremy Lin through overtime on Friday." Enough guessing: Sampson Benched Lin Because HE DECIDED to Bench Lin. That's IT! No "deeper intentions", no "Morey strategies to test Douglas", NOTHING. Following Occam's Razor principle (i.e. a principle stating that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected), SAMPSON DECIDED SITTING LIN AND PLAYING DOUGLAS WOULD INCREASE THE CHANCES TO WIN THE GAME. This PROVES the following: Sampson is either incompetent, unprofessional, impossibly-untalented, or blind or stupid or has some ulterior motive, has no confidence in Lin, or some combination of those... In any case, MOREY and ALEXANDER CANNOT AGREE to the OUTCOME of Sampson's decision, and MUST TAKE AWAY HIS ABILITY TO CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE TEAM.
Please ignore the "Occam's Razor" comment... It meant to say that all the speculation was unnecessary, and that the truth was the SIMPLE solution, which was: It was no more than a game time decision made by the coach... Below is the corrected post.
He should have shown more guts, and taken out Harden, Asik, and Parsons, and put in Delfino, Jones, and Cook! That would have REALLY shown he is doing "whatever it takes to win a game"....
There's no reality distortion field or bias... Lillard did score 11 points in the final 4:05. It was a simple and honest mistake to not see the 1:01 long swap in the log of Douglas-for-Lin, which was an odd substitution pattern since he had just swapped them a minute before. That made it 8 with Lin in the game instead of 11 with Lin in the game, and I corrected it. My fault. This was not an attack on Lin -- it was me saying the fans are livid, but this is why Sampson likely went the OT without playing Lin. This was before Sampson commented, and when he did comment, he confirmed as much. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>"I just thought it was a little bit better defensive matchup." - Kelvin Sampson on playing Toney Douglas over Lin in OT.</p>— ClutchFans.net (@clutchfans) <a href="https://twitter.com/clutchfans/status/269686586961182720" data-datetime="2012-11-17T06:21:07+00:00">November 17, 2012</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> The responses to this have been absolutely disgusting and embarrassing. Um, no. Very inaccurate. This has been posted multiple times, so it obviously was a talking point posted somewhere and it keeps getting repeated. If there was a simple mistake in here I'd understand it, but I can't figure out where this came about.
Originally Posted by torocan Sorry, Lillard was NOT torching Lin in the 4th quarter. Try going back and watching the 4th Quarter with a NOTEPAD. Your memory is incorrect. Here is what happened in the 4th quarter... 4Q - Jeremy Lin starts, Lillard does NOT Start 7:03 - Damian Lillard enters the Game 4:05 - Marcus Morris FOULS Damian Lillard (2/2) 3:16 - Toney Douglas ENTERS, Jeremy Lin SITS 3:02 - Damian Lillard makes 27 foot, 3 point shot (3 points) 2:25 - Damian Lillard MISSES 26 foot jumper 2:15 - Toney Douglas SITS, Jeremy Lin ENTERS 1:37 - James Harden TURNS OVER the BALL 1:37 - Jeremy Lin SCRAMBLES to get Harden's TURNOVER 1:37 - Lillard GETS the Ball, Jeremy Lin FOULS Lillard to stop Fast Break 1:37 - Lillard shoots FT's (2/2) 0:40 - Damian Lillard makes Driving Layup past Chandler Parsons 0:17 - Damian Lillard makes contested, Fallaway Jumper over Jeremy Lin after being cut off while attempting to Drive. 0:10 - Jeremy Lin SITS, Toney Douglas ENTERS So, Lillard scored 2 points against Lin's defense shooting a contested fadeaway jumper after Lin cut off his drive to the baseline, and 2 points because Jeremy Lin had to clean up Harden's dribble Turnover by Fouling Lillard. This sort of stuff is why EXACTLY you can't trust your eyes or memory...
Maybe it's just me, but a lot of yall are blowing this way out of proportion. It has nothing to do with Lin's heritage and everything to do with a coach making, in my opinion, the wrong call in a specific situation. I will be the first to tell you I hated that Sampson was signed as an assistant coach when McHale took over. But, I spend a lot of my time in the college basketball world and I didn't like his coaching style when he was at Indiana. That being said, some of his decisions have been spot on, while others, like this one not so much. Regardless of why he chose to keep TD in (whilest I cried in chat for Lin to be in the game during parts of the 4th quarter and the OT) defensively it wasn't TD's fault that we lost, because the Rockets chose to switch defensively on the screen anyway. The reason I wanted Lin in in OT was for offense. With TD in, Harden was chosen to start the offense every time down the court. If Lin had been in the game, we could, if electing to, started the offense with the ball in different hands. Or he could have maybe gotten one of the steals as he was during the rest of the game to lead to an easy bucket. Everyone has a right to an opinion and to debate, but the vitriol with which yall go after people on this forum, I'm glad I don't live with any of in real life.
Lin left out of OT after Lilliard drains 2 shots If Lin was on the bench because of TD's "superior" defense of Lilliard then after Lilliard drained 2 shots in OT and the Houston offense was stagnant why was Lin not put back in?? There was plenty of time left.
The thing is if Sampson's reason to bench Lin is for TD's defense and the ball will be in Harden's hands anyway, does it mean that in the following games Lin will be benched every time when the game is on the line? And TD + Harden will be our backcourt to close out the game??? We've already seen that Sampson would go with iso Harden in the crunch time no matter what, and he thought TD is a better defender than Lin. What is Jeremy Lin now? A fake starter? TD will be trusted as a better defender to close out every game?? Sampson is a genius!
