Asik always has trouble against the bigs that can shoot midrange. I'm not sure if its him or the game plan because he's usually stuck between two hard decisions, close on the shooter, or stay in the paint. Maybe someone with more knowledge can shed light on this.
This Rockets team is really funny. It's already the last game of the regular season and they still don't have a consistent rotation. I guess the mid-season trade hurt that but still it was like that before the trade as well. The coaching staff does too much of the hot hand approach which you mostly see with bad coaches on bad teams. For example Scola made a few contested jump shots over Asik, and then BAM he's benched for the whole game. Of course the Suns started getting layups and offensive rebounds because now there's Delfino playing center. Eventually you'll have 5 players on the floor who never played together much and it shows.
All it takes is a Rockets win against the old, injured Lakers to get those people to say we can take OKC in the first round. We will win 1-2 games MAX.
that smith delfino front court after we took the lead in the 2nd quarter was the dumbest thing ever really.
Rockets played like garbage from the very beginning; giving up nearly 40pts in the 1st quarter and almost 70 by the half. While all the other playoff teams are racking up their intensity, the Rockets are playing their usual matador defense that won't win them anything in the playoffs.
Yup... and "We went through this late season disappointment for the last 5 years, sick and tired of it."
Bingo my ass. When it gets down to two games left playing the worst team in the conference to secure a first round match up that isn't OKC, don't go ****in apologetic about how we exceeded expectations. That was a game that should be won Our star player didn't bring it, but wouldn't recognize this and let others take a bigger role. And our head coach didn't know what had happened until down 8 with 4 min left. So take that apologetic **** somewhere else. On a game that needs to be and should've been won against the worst western conference team missing its second best player, with what was at stake, don't bring that apologetic crap back in here
No a loser mentality is ****ting the bed when you lose a single game. If you are so confident then you should have no issue playing OKC or SA.
To me, the only people who showed a great sense of urgency were Carlos trying to regroup everyone, TJones scrapping for everything, and Jeremy trying to take the game over, I think Harden was there but he was really limited by his knee after that bump since he was being really aggressive to start off. Asik hasn't been playing great at all, despite the numbers, he hasn't been the same Asik the past 4 games. I also don't mind the small ball at the end. I saw one comment on here. "Horrible coaching fail, expecting our small forwards to out rebound centers." I gotta ask. Who? The Suns aren't the biggest team. Hell, they start Scola as their center. SCOLA AS THEIR STARTING CENTER. He was out for the end of the 4th too and he was the main one eating up the boards. The rest was us getting out hustled by lack of effort more so than our inability to rebound. Tough game but I think we will come out wheels blazing on Wednesday.
I like your optimism but it's not happening. That would take an inspired EFFORT from this team(not been happening) and a subpar game by the Lakers...and IF all that happened, a evenly called game by the officials....and THAT is not happening...PERIOD.
The resident Lin apologist calling the kettle black? Priceless! You take your pessimistic crap somewhere else.
I'm fine with the big picture. Really. I'm never fine with bad coaching substitutions. McHale might do wonders in terms of his relationships with the players, him and his staff have even have put together a good offensive system. It doesn't change the reality that McHale in my view has made substitution errors in far too many games. Overplaying Harden and Parsons even when injured or playing poorly, sitting Asik and Lin way too often, changing line ups even when our line up has the advantage, pushing his luck with the bench on games that are must wins... those sort of errors will kill you way too often. It kills me to see Harden get banged up game after game, limping and slow to move and McHale doesn't even pull him for 3 or 4 minutes to rest or make sure he's okay. Instead he grinds him out for 35-40 minutes. He's an $80M player that we have on contract for 5 more years. Yet McHale is grinding him into the ground. Asik is our best rebounder but game after critical game he doesn't even make it on the floor in the 4th quarter when we need his rebounding. Hot or cold Lin seems to end up on the bench at the oddest times. And then there's McHale running with the 2nd unit even when they're playing horrible offensively or getting destroyed by an opposing team's starters. This doesn't mean McHale is a bad coach, but he's not a good one either. And in the end, as the team improves in their fundamental chemistry and play McHale's value as a coach is going to decline in value. In other words, the positives he brings will be inevitably outweighed by his cons. There are worse coaches we could have than McHale, but I certainly think that there are better coaches out there too.
