Spurs' offense tactic made our defense rotation, which isn't that good in the first place, looked terrible. Spurs is a team that can play fast balls in regular season with almost any guys from their roster, and play steady half court offense in the playoff, that's a good team.
While the officiating was poor both ways, I think what stuck out in people's minds was that Houston was getting some favorable phantom calls while the Spurs were actively flopping to get their favorable calls. I understand that bad officiating happens from time to time and really don't have too much of a problem with it, but I hate it when teams flop to get the calls and the refs play right into their hands.
Exactly: my point proven. The long clankers because they were poorly shot and banged off the back of the rim. I hope we would get O boards off long rebounds.
We missed 21 3s and got 6 boards off them. I don't think we disagree on anything here, so yeah, we missed some shots. If it was lost in this, the point I'm trying to make is that we had to alter our entire game plan as a result of the officiating. And the officials made sure the Spurs did not have to alter theirs by doing things such as switching the calls on the Spurs' star players. It was hard to watch.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VJtVEStfxSg?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Posted in the game thread, but Steve Francis tellin' it like it is.
It was a good team up to that point when both teams had 15 turnovers and the Rockets turned it over three times in a row. The Spurs had two or three more turnovers, and we ended with 22. That's the difference. It was an otherwise close game.
I can agree with your point. Just disagree about the outcome of the game. Agree to disagree (well, kinda).
Rockets really couldnt close the game. Looks like rockets got tired. Harden looked tired getting hack like usual in the 4th
Flopping Irrespective of who won the game; there is a league policy against flopping, and players who flop should be disciplined harshly enough to discourage future flopping.
You can't control the officiating. What you can control is Cole "Layup/Dunk Drill" Alrich playing 17 minutes. Aldrich by himself is bad enough, the Aldrich-Uglas combo is what kills babies.
Oh god if only Harden got calls like DWade used to. The Spurs are a real dishonest/dirty team, and I would rather be a biased Rockets fan than a biased Spurs fan. But they did outplay us, no doubt about it.
The good thing is even with the crappy officiating, it was still close most of the way. Shows a great deal of potential for this team.
I dont know if anyone already mentioned this, but did anyone notice the 3pt shooting tonite? Lin 1/5, Morris 1/7. Those were two that stuck out to me...if they only made a couple more... Officiating might have been questionable but they went both ways, and a young Rockets team in their first year scoring 116 against the Spurs in their home court is pretty damn good still.
Same with Cook, he only took 2 shots one he made and the other was a missed 3 (So Cook really shouldn't be blamed either). I think it was to add a bit more umph to his post? But I do agree with his post in regards to the other players - Lin, Douglas and Morris were 6-22 from the 3 with the majority of the shots being open looks.
If Rockets players have scored the same percentage as Spurs at FT, Rockets would have won. Just inexperience that done us in. But Rockets can compete with the bests. Well ahead of schedule.
The officiating will get better when we get Kevin Love. It already has to a certain extent with Harden's Aura Rule at the end of games. But when we get Kevin Love our officiating will truly be championship quality.
