To be frankly, some of us maybe spoiled with the sublime performances during the 5 game winning streak, of course i am 1 of them. We enjoyed a lot watching the team gelled, playing extraordinary good offensively. Harden and Lin meshing like they are having years of co-ordination and the results were against 1st, 4th and 9th defense by that time in the league, namely Grizzlies, Bulls and Knicks. Of course even better is the grind out win in Minny, it's the best occasion you can grow your young players mentally. Paid credits where it's due, by that time, I honestly think McHale and his co were doing great and earning lots of respect even though the league didn't give the credits where they deserved. 1st in pace, 1st in offensive, 6th in rebounding rate and 9th assisting rate by that time(7th right now, even better), 29th in defense, I guess it's the normal rank with the youngest team in the NBA. It's good that we nearly forgot what happened in the early season, lots of ISO, lack of ball movement,no set plays in crunch time, just letting the best man DIY on the court. Maybe that's we called growing pain. And then these two games, we are expected to lose anyway. But it's the process itself that raise me a question. When the talents played to their strength, Lin being play maker and floor general, Harden being the finisher, Parsons and Asik played to their strength, they are that good indeed, you don't need any in match tuning or coaching that much. Thats why I appreciate McHale did in Minny, played the bench in 3Q to see what happens cause our back court was heavily guarded in 1st, 2nd Q, thats nice on court tuning. But the question is, what if somebody likes Pop, Sloan, Dantoni did? Will they sacrifice 20 matches to know it's best to play PG as PG, SG as SG, better make substitutions consistently which encouraged the young guys development. We see nearly zero minutes for the 1st 15 games or so for DMO or TJones. And at this point, 16 wins 14 losses in WC is pretty good achievement but can it be even better? I think so. While it's still early to judge, McHale may be on its way to get his Coach of the year in his 1st 82 game season which we all would like to see, I hope we are not losing more games with some weird on court coaching or rotation and somehow end up with the 14th pick which obviously, some of the internet coaches on ESPN may think we are better enough to chase a 4/5th seed at the end.
Well at least McHale seems to have support from his players (i.e. have control over the locker room), unlike Avery Johnson, who appears to be alienating wherever he goes. Plus, he does seem to have a knack at developing players. Remember those who thrive under his watch - Lowry, Dragic, Parsons ... etc.
I honestly don't blame TD, he is being asked to do things far outside his capability It's not like Douglas was ignoring the gameplan. There seems to be no real structure to the offense other than rudimentary PnR.
we ran Memphis and Chicago out of the gym and those are top tier teams perhaps SA and OKC are just awful matchups for what we do, hopefully we can avoid them in 1st round of the playoffs interested to see how we do against LAL/LAC/GSW going forward
The Memphis game was impressive by HOU but MEM was on the second night of a back to back though & Rockets weren't have to keep that in consideration We would get eaten alive by LAC dreading that game & GSW likes to play fast as well kind of curious how we stand against them. GSW is playing great basketball. LAL depends, they are old so I think we would kill them with our pace & there D isn't particularly good. Neither is our D. So it would literally be a game of who is scoring more.
Rockets playing SA and OKC is like looking at a mirror and seeing an idealized form of themselves. They have the same strengths as the Rockets, but better at those strengths. While they lack Rockets weaknesses at the same time. OKC is worse than SA because they can even match up with the Rockets athleticism.
D-Mo looked lost out there, standing on the perimeter and setting poor PnR screens why not put him in the low post and let him go to work?
Memphis and Chicago are offensively challenged and lead-footed, especially Chicago. Spurs, OKC, LAC are all exceptionally talented and a nightmare match-up for us. They can play a fast-pace, have great shooters and in the case of OKC and LAC great defensive team identities and freakish athleticism while the Spurs have Duncan in the middle contesting perimeter shots and Kawhi Leonard who is quite good at harassing on the perimeter.
letting them play is the only way to let the develop. thats why I said mchale doesnt like lin because he just like to bench him in favor of TD.
I'm not sure where I've read this but from what I recall McHale noted that he didn't believe our team had the pieces for a half-court offense so he wanted to run. According to Morey Les has always wanted a run & gun team and believes it's the future, and Morey felt that we had the appropriate team for it right now, but would not be hesitant in getting a low-post scorer and slowing down our pace a bit while still being opportunistically fast. So there seems to have been some consensus in trying to change our offense to just have guys running, but I agree, there still isn't any structure. Aldrich shouldn't be out there, and there needs to be more Harden/ Lin - Greg Smith PnR and more screens being set for shooters and our guards. I'm disgusted by how much confidence is placed in Aldrich by McHale, prior to these last two abomination outings by him, I remember he had a couple of post-ups drawn for him. POST-UPS for ALDRICH. And Toney running the point. SMFH.
This is silly. Based on your logic we should play Machado ahead of Lin to make sure Machado develops.
well, do you think lin learn from sitting from the bench or playing on the floor? but i meant playing dmo as in give them them garbage time, i didnt mean start dmo in favor of ppat or morris.
yeah, you do learn sitting on the bench, but actually playing is better because they need to knwo what works for them.
Only problem with that is, you're not going to be able to score everyone of your points from a fast-break. So, there should be some half-court sets when you can't score from JUST out running the defender to the basket, and something other than ISO/Hero ball.
"Remember, it's just a pick and roll fat boy..." <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/98V8w0w4WtY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Couldn't have said it better. SAS has been ball movement but OKC has been playing the pace game for longer than the Spurs. The Rockets are relatively new to this style of play so it's understandable that we're visibly worse-looking. Additionally, the personnel on this team doesn't exactly scream contender. Unfortunately this makes playoffs aspirations past the first round essentially unthinkable. With the Spurs and OKC probably locked on to two of the top three spots and the Clippers, a high-flying team that punishes poor team defenses, in the last spot, the Rockets would have to hit the #5 seed to match up against GSW/Memphis, two teams the Rockets can beat.
Stupid thread Sorry to say this but our H-town always has some fans who make stupid thread after the lost that go for both the Rockets and the Texan.
