Lin needs to shoot 15 times a game. Harden needs to shoot 20-25. I think with D-Mo starting we should be good on getting more boards. This was his first start but he is already showing he is a better rebounder than Ppat. Might be too early to say but I like what I saw this game other than the loss.
You can not start Lin, Parsons and D-Mo together. All three are either average or bad at defense. We need to have a shot blocking role player at the 3 or 4 positions or need to bench Lin.
Your criticisms aren't constructive though. You said Lin was the reason we lost to the Wizards. That's just not true. He was sick and made mistakes but so did all the other players. No one was able to hold off Okafur or Beal. Our Defense was consistently bad. You also give Harden a pass on D because of his offense. Yes, he's a superior, elite player but he has to put effort on D. There's no way around it. His D was bad tonight; other veteran posters even commented on this.
I think if you carefully analyze the true reasons why Houston lost this games, I see two components: 1. charity points (Bucks missed 5, Rockets missed 9) 2. no shot blocker (Lin had the lone BS for Rockets, Bucks had 6) #2 is huge...the rest of the stats are pretty even for both teams.
Those of you attributing lin's lack of shots/points to his timidness and being scared... c'mon guys, let's use a little common sense here. this is what we know about lin - if he were as timid and easily scared as you say, there's no way he would've made it this far in his career. no freakin' way. if he didn't believe in his own abilities, no way he would've stuck with this career and gone through two seasons of d-league. he wouldn't have believed (and still believe) that one day he will be an all-star, and say that to anyone that asks. so, let's just put to bed the argument that he is scared, and lacks confidence in his abilities. this just doesn't mesh with what we've seen from him. and it doesn't make any sense at all for him to go from shooting 19 shots in one game to shooting 10 times in another. why would he do that if he isn't scared, doesn't lack confidence, and knows he can put up the points when he wants to? why would he cut down on his own shots, unless he's being asked to? that's the only logical explanation i can think of. not that the coaches are telling him "don't shoot or we'll bench you!" but that they're asking him to play a facilitating role and be the last offensive option. this is the only logical, non knee-jerk explanation i can think of. now, is this jeremy the one that the rocket needs going forward? or is the 29pt jeremy the one that we need? i'm mentioning the 29 pt game because... this was mchale's quote a day after his 29 pt game "sometime he would rather score 29 point and have 9 turnovers, and i tell him...jeremy, we're trying win". if you were lin, after seeing that quote, how would you play your next game? you'd work hard on facilitating, work hard on limiting risky passes and only make the easy ones and eliminate turnovers as much as possible. oh and play good defense. after seeing this quote, scoring would be the last thing on my mind. and that's what we saw in this game. his scoring was so off that he missed plenty of easy 5-6 footers. anyway, my question remains - which jeremy is the one that the rockets need?
Yeah Utah has been dropping pretty hard as of late. But last year we did not have a superstar player. I seriously believe that had Harden not bruised his knee he would have closed this game without much problem. That one Sanders block would not have happened. Harden barely got off the ground, forced to jump off a gimpy knee and Sanders had a easy block. So I don't see this as last year. Lowry and Dragic were not stars. Harden is going to get us into the playoffs, as long as he's healthy that is.
I only saw the first half and I hate seeing Parsons handle the ball. The negatives far outweigh the positives. As for Harden his turnover always seems to lead to fast break easy buckets for the opponents.
Sad but true. Anything under 20 TOs is good for this Rockets team. The long 3 by Dunleavy when Harden was behind a screen and the three point play by Ilyasova when Harden was late on the switch killed us. The next to last play where we failed to grab the board on three separate shot attempts was the last straw. Overall, this was a team loss and the coaching staff should be blamed for some questionable substitutions.
Problem was when the ball got passed to Harden, it never leaves his hand. He tries to take over during the last 5 minutes but just didn't have it tonight and that cost the team the W compounded by the fact that his D was limited because of his injury.
Anyone notice Trob tucking his Jersey sleeves in like PPat always did? And how about Garcia being more excited off the bench than the Red Rowdies.
I can accept let harden play ISO, he is the top scorer and the one that could easily penetrate the defense. But this does not mean run ISO at "no matter what" Forcing harden to play ISO lead to high TO. We have already seen so many times this season. Especially, he was already double guarded
when have you seen mchale telling him to be aggressive? and if he really did, why would he then contradict himself and tell lin to not be a homerun hitter but bat for singles and just get on base? those two things are totally contradicting. i highly doubt mchale wants him to be aggressive. i believe he just wants lin to take what the defense if giving him and make the easy, safe play. that's more consistent with what mchale has been saying, and i believe this is the root of lin's passivity. it's not a confidence issue. but rather indecisiveness about your role.
McHale said it after the Knicks game that he always wanted Lin to be more aggressive. It's not a contradiction because leadoff hitters are extremely aggressive without needing to hit home runs!
Silver lining: Our Vanilla Towers played great! Especially Asik -- was our best player tonight according to GameScores and my personal opinion. D-Mo needs to work on stamina or at least controlling his energy levels, but really great first start. Pretty much my most realistic expectations have been met. Sometimes losses teach you more than wins. Hopefully our young players don't forget these feelings so that they'll close games out better in the future.
We did try to win at the end of the game, going back to setting screens. The last 7 possessions we screened for the ball carrier 6 times, 3 each for Lin and Harden, the one non-screen was Lin penetration in semi-transition, which led to a wide open 3 by Parsons (which he missed). 5 of the 6 screens led to point-blank shots, and we made 3. The offense was decent. The problem was the Bucks grabbed every single one of their missed shots and put it back for scores in the same stretch because we had Delfino trying to stop Sanders from getting putbacks in the paint. Of course, it can also be argued that if we have stuck with our working offense instead of mixing in 2 quarters of Finch r****dé offense, we would have been up 25 by then and it wouldn't have mattered a lick what we do down the stretch.
People who think Lin is a passive basketball player are misguided. He has no problem putting up shots when given the green light. This guy had no problem waiving of Carmelo freaking Anthony on the Knicks. He has always been aggressive but is asked not to do that on this team. He is asked to facilitate and play safe and while I think its poor use of his abilities it is what the coaching staff wants. Eventually the situation will work itself out.
Lately, it feels like the Rockets as a team put in more effort to win against tougher opponents (ie. OKC, Nets) but less effort against lower ranking teams (ie. Bucks). Like today, after a huge first quarter lead, the Rockets got complacent, then lost.
@Jonathan_Feigen On all tweets I'm getting about small lineup, remember, until final 90 seconds Rockets were plus-13 in 2nd half with small lineups. Was the small lineup that bad ?
