It is kind of funny that the coaching staff is trying to give Douglas room to grow. Rockets have invested about 100 million into two PNR guards & the Knicks paid for us to take Tony Douglas away from them. Seems a bit odd having Douglas initiate PNR plays.
Douglas isn't a PNR guard though. More often than not he doesn't make the right decision. He either travels or turns it over. Last night he turned it over.
I agree with your general assessment but i don't think making Tony Douglas the primary ball handler/playmaker with Lin on the court and Harden on the bench is a good option. They can run it once or twice, fine.. but to run it almost the entire time is baffling to me.
Hope someone can upload videos/highlights of our past few games during the start of 2nd quarters when they have Lin + Douglas as our backcourt while Harden is getting his rest and right away run plays through Tony Douglas being the primary ball handler and see Jeremy go to his corner.
I believe it has a lot to do with the Rockets offensive philosophy. http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterockets/2012/12/running-to-wins-was-rockets’-plan-all-along/ What I take from these comments is that Rockets believe early offense> set plays. They prefer that whoever is bringing up the ball after a rebound initiate the offense immediately rather than giving it back to either Lin or Harden.
Thats perfectly normal, Deron in Utah does that a lot. Kidd does that when he was with the Nets. I think reasons of doing this is spacing as well as prevent trapping. After the handoff on top of the arc, Lin would move to the corner then quickly move towards the ball handler following the 3pt line where theres an probably 45 degree angle towards the basket, I believe that's where both Lin and Harden feel comfortable attacking from either side of the floor --- especially Lin, he gets to attack the paint driving right from the left side of the court --- Smith on Smith crime was a result of that.
They like to run a little pin-down for Jeremy Lin to get him going from outside the arc, so maybe that's why. Another explanation might be that Jeremy expends a lot of energy being the playmaker, so Toney Douglas is able to initiate the offense and run the pick and roll to give the guy a rest.
Td has started to grow on me tbh. I dont have as big a problem with him being the initializer as i thought i would. I actually think hes improved quite a bit. Besides the pnr that we run isnt designed to create direct baskets a la dantoni suns or sloans jazz. Its basic function in mchales offense seems to ge the defense moving and therefore having an open shot after an extra pass or two. In that regard, td is somewhat adequate.
Question: After the handoff at the top of the arc is the big man supposed to come & set the pick for Douglas? Or is the big man supposed to wait until Lin moves back towards the ball handler after following the 3 point line & then set the pick for Lin?
Either way, I believe that TD does get a few Picks set for him but if that sets Lin up for an open shot, Im all for it. The point of this is to get Lin the ball at that spot where its difficult to trap because there will be 2 guys, 1 at the corner 1 at the top of the arc, who are 1 pass away from Lin. The defense can not hard trap, the hesitation opens up opportunities for Lin to either attack 1 on 1 or PnR then pass to the open man.
Ok but this goes back to my initial point that more often than not Tony doesn't make the right decision after that initial pick has been set.
Lack of basketball IQ in this thread hurts the brain. Half the reason that TD is the primary ball handler on these plays is because he simply is the outlet man on the rebound. Watch for that sometime -- one thing he does very well is position himself around the slot when a rebound goes up and breaks to get open. Jeremy, on the other hand, does a good job of cracking back to get defensive boards or to help the bigs on the glass, but he doesn't leave himself as the primary outlet a lot of the time. The coaches have said repeatedly that they don't care who brings it up out of their 1, 2 or 3 so whoever gets the ball to the front court can initiate the offense. The sad thing is that if Jeremy would've taken and made the 3 wide open shots he passed up last night while he was playing off the ball, there would be no complaints from the LOF crowd. Lin just needs to get more confidence in his shot. I know the coaching staff is trying to get him to shoot more because when he comes over to the bench, you can see them telling him to shoot the ball. And what is this crap about how TD usually makes a turnover when running the offense? He had 1 turnover last night, and according to you all, he ran a million PnR's. So which one is it?
Easy with the comments now. Before you start accusing people of not having any basketball sense or a lack thereof, i suggest you try and comprehend what we're discussing here first, coach.. We're not just talking about TD being the primary ball handler/outlet man off of rebounds.. heck, that's not even the issue here. It's the half-court offensive sets where they run PNR's through him and let him be the playmaker almost the majority of the minutes while Harden's getting his rest on the bench is what's making us, or at least me, scratch my head. Like i said, it's okay to run that play with TD maybe once or twice but never as much as we've been seeing it run so far these past several games. Its this simple, you initiate/run the PNR with either of the 2 players who are both one of the top PNR players in the league. The point of staggering Harden and Lin's minutes is to maximize/divide their playmaking abilities/duties on the court each and every game. So for the 10 minutes or less (could just be 5mins really) that Harden is on the bench and Lin is on the court as clearly the primary option on offense, Lin should be the playmaker..period.
Well if you read what you quoted, I think it explained that the half court sets are usually initiated by the ball handler, which is usually Toney as the guy catching the outlet pass. That person is the one who decides what play to run. The coaching staff is rarely telling the players to run certain plays except off of stoppages. So, are you referring to out-of-bounds plays? I've seen both Jeremy and TD get the inbound pass while on the floor together, so I don't know if there are some sets that they prefer TD to handle or vice versa, but it isn't exclusive to one or the other. Makes me think they work it out themselves on the court, like professional athletes.
About 2-3 times a game when Harden/Asik are off the floor, after a made basket by the opposing team, everyone runs down court w/ no one to inbound the ball to our guards. Everyone is used to Asik inbounding to Lin/Harden while Smith and PPatt don't really know what they're doing. Just an example of the chaos that exemplifies our young team. I'm not surprised TD gets playmaking responsibility even if 70% of time it ends with a TD ISO or TO (or god forbid a pass to Lin beyond the arc w/ 5 seconds left after a broken play).
The last four NBA champion point guards have been: 2012: Mario Chalmers 9.8 ppg. 3.5 apg. 38.8% 3-pt. 2011: Jason Kidd 7.9 ppg. 8.2 apg. 34% 3-pt. 2010: Derek Fisher 7.5 ppg. 2.5 apg. 34.8% 3-pt. 2009: Derek Fisher 9.9 ppg. 3.2 apg. 39.7 % 3-pt. Those guys were all starters playing starter minutes. I consider Toney Douglas (42% 3-pt) a higher scoring version of Mario Chalmers and Derek Fisher at the PG position and I think he could be a valuable member of an NBA championship team alongside a high scoring, play-making SG which James Harden is. As some point during the playoffs, the Rockets are going to need a PG who can make jump shots, specifically 3-point shots, which Lin hasn't proven he can do consistently (just 27% from 3-point range).
Did you even bother to read the OP? The phrase of the day is "reading comprehension." And the OP is a 2008er, so I don't know what people are blaming LOF's for the discussion. Perhaps people, other than the LOH's, actually want the team to be better? For example, NBALopez23, the Rockets are at the bottom of defensive teams. Going by your logic, should we not care and respond with your "Did they not win 9 of the last 12 games WHO CARES, HELLOL YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME"(sic.) Or should Rockets fans want to discuss ways to improve the defense? Just as the OP is trying to find ways to improve the offense (there's always room for improvement, even on the number 1 team). Or, you can fail reading comprehension and then try to use obnoxious ALLCAPS to pretend you actually have a point.
