Youth. Also, tonight was just a bad game over all. GSW did a good job closing out on us and the ones that were open, we missed. Just really a bad game imo.
because inconsistent sounds like the word Linconsistent. Its a curse to have a name with so many puns!
This is what happens when your 3 pt shots aint falling and you need to switch to post games, especially while matching up against a team good at run&gun as you are.
We check practically all the boxes for inconsistency. A team giving a lot of minutes to inexperienced players? Check. A team that shoots a lot of threes? Check. A team that struggles defending in a grind-it-out affair? Check. A team without a varied playbook? Check. Not to say that it's not horribly frustrating, but it should be expected.
I wonder if anybody worries about the fact that the second units really didn't contribute much in the last few games. They really hustled on the D, but their offense just does not seem to flow. The coaches need to do something about it quickly!!!
Because everyone on this team is inconsistent at this point aside from maybe Harden and to a degree Asik. Parsons is wildly inconsistent, as is Delfino, and we all know about Lin's inconsistency. The rest are guys like D-Mo or T-Rob who have little to no experience so of course they're going to be inconsistent. That's why I wish coaching would really emphasize defense more, at least that's something you can bring consistently every night.
All of that, plus not only are they inexperienced, all our starters are playing more minutes this year than any year prior. I don't think they are conditioned to be playing these type of minutes on the fastest pace team in the league. Harden's defense has noticeably declined since OKC, which I'm guessing has to do with conditioning. Lin statistically is crap in back to back games, like really crap, which has to do with conditioning. Our record all in all in back to backs is garbage. Anytime we had to play a lot of games in a few days, we just completely collapse. Biggest evidence of this would be our 7 game losing streak when we played 7 games in 12 days or whatever it was.
Actually, historical data analysis has shown that mid-range jumper is the most volatile shot. 3pt% generally doesn't sway that much from year to year. Neither does shots around the basket. But 15 footers vary drastically for majority of the players.
As for the answer to the OP, we are a roughly 55% winning team. Forget all other factors, simply randomness will mean we shouldn't be consistent. If we were, we'd be the Spurs.
No good post up player. A solid team needs to have at least one per position: 1. good jump shooter (Rockets have plenty) 2. good penetrator (Lin/Harden) 3. good post up player (none) In the first quarter of this game, options #3 would have been really nice to have.
When the coach can't hold his super star player responsible in defense, Rockets' defense can not improve. It doesn't help that Harden likes to be the main ball handler way too often.
