It's pretty easy to call out the mistakes of a vastly inferior opponent. It's like an NBA player going up against some high school kid. The NBA player will dominate the high school kid, and point out which aspects of the game he could improve upon, but that does not mean the high school kid will start winning against the NBA player. We can start moving the ball more, sharing the ball more, or hitting more open shots. That is not all of a sudden going to mean we will beat them. The only time we beat then was when Harden went off and Lin was making all his shots. We didn't beat them then because of ball movement.
I noticed they were switching everything also. At one point Ibaka was guarding lin and Westbrook was on Smith. The Rockets just don't take advantage of those high % situations because nobody plays well in the post, and our guards don't know how to take advantage of these mismatches.
What we should have done instead of playing harden 40mins during the season is play him 30mins and when hes off try to develop a 2nd goto guy which the coach did not try once now we are stuck with 1 goto guy and role players who now know there role is to pass to Harden when there in a slump. Harden is beast but he needs to let somebody take over the ball next season so they can actually be the 2nd Take over guy
So, Ibaka is saying the same thing that McHale is saying. McHale knows what our problems are, and he knows how to correct those problems. The difficult part for the coach is to get a bunch of young guys playing against a very good team to actually do what he's telling them. It's just really tough to get a very young team to understand and implement changes without a lot of practice. I think that many Clutchfans believe that all McHale has to do is to tell the players to do something and then they will do it, but it's just not that easy. Many of the players currently on our roster haven't been through a training camp together or a preseason together. This team has been pieced together as the season has progressed. Harden, Beverley, Anderson, Garcia, Brooks and Robinson all joined the team after training camp and the preseason. I believe this makes coaching the team much more difficult than coaching a team that has been together since the beginning of training camp, or a team where their key players have been playing together for several years. In addition, the Rockets have so many rookies and young players that I can see where the Rockets coaches probably have to spend a lot of time teaching very basic information that veteran players already know. McHale can't just tell the players to do something and then it happens. McHale and the coaches have to spend time actually teaching players how to do something and then hope that they can execute properly during a real game. Practice between games I think is probably different than practice during training camp and preseason when players really learn a system. I'm already looking forward to next year when our players will have had a summer camp, a training camp, and a preseason together.
I think it's more about youth and poor decision making than being selfish. They all want to be the guy who gets them back in the game, but they need to rely on each other more. I get the feeling it's (Ibaka's comments) mostly about Harden who doesn't seem to have much confidence in the other players these days.
Thunder do the samething it just looks better because they have better players at the skilled positions .
Ibaka was likely saying something his coaches told the team, which certainly was a result of scouting reports on the Rockets tendencies. It was unwise of him to say it out loud in the media. Why do you want to tell the opponent what they do wrong, even though it's a pretty obvious thing? And why do you want to use the negative word "selfish" to provoke the opposing players? He should have just throw out some generic answers like, "By switching on pnr, we were able to force them to bog down on their offensive movement blah blah blah."
Oh i read McHale's comments. Same thing he's been saying since day one of the season. Took the entire season for the team to figure it out with the coaching staff, and now their trying to to pull it out against the length of the players on OKC in playoffs. I'm just pointing out that a lot of people are quick to call out someone as an LOF when questioning what McHale has tried to do to curb going ISO when players are having trouble with the PnR or fail at any other plays their trying to do, if there are any plays. Didn't get my point, eh?
After 5 pages, finally something that gets it. Easy, do you know why he said publicly? Because they absolutely have no fear of us. None. I am pretty sure he will keep his mouth shut if and when they face better competition like the Clippers or the Heat. One can always find fault in your opponent's game. If I was a Rocket player, I would use Ibaka's comments as an extra motivational tool. At the end of the we are not winning this, but you damn make sure you go down swinging.
One selfish team beats another selfish team. http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2012/12/okc-thunder-players-call-kendrick-perkins-to-complain/ Get Kendrick Perkins!
