What must this Rockets team answer to be a contender?

He could bring a couple of injuries. Maybe a bad back and shoulder.

 

Have good chemistry, Dwight Howard needs to mature and stay 150% healthy.

 

Oh, and bring back the Chuck! :grin:

 

Lin shot almost 40% from 3 point land after the ASG break. The first half of the season he was coming back from knee surgery and had no strength in his left leg.

 

I want to clear all this "lin shot 40% on threes"....

Lin after the allstar game shot .375 3%
Beverly after the allstar game shot .388 3%

So actually beverly was still the better shooter from deep post ASG and no I'm not a LOH, I actually beleive lin deserves to be this teams starter but I also believe that stats don't lie..

Lawyed?

 

this doesn't answer my question of PB's expectation for 3 pt% if he becomes the starter. sure salary skews everything but purely from the perspective of playing and winning games, they both play pg. if PB becomes the starting pg and is relegated to spot up 3's since harden will mostly handle the ball, shouldn't he be expected to shoot about 40% also like people are expecting of lin now? it doesn't make any sense to say that from a basketball perspective, expectations are linear to your salary. for example, if PB makes 3 million next year, then it's ok to expect 38%? then if he made 4 million after that, we should expect 39%? doesn't work like that. expectations should match your position and if you're a starter.

not sure why people are expecting lin to shoot 40% from behind the 3 pt line or he's out. Omri Casspi, who's forte is usually the 3 pointer (plays like Garcia) said in his radio interview yesterday that he's just trying to shoot 40% from behind the 3. Garcia's career 3 pt% is 36%.

 

Shooting 33% 3pt is like shooting 50% 2pt. Even Ray Allen had many years where he didn't reach 40% on 3s in many years. 36% would be great.

Lin does need to get his FT% above 80% though.

 

experience.

 

One big question that the Rockets will have to answer is what kind of mentality will they have. How will they respond individually and as a unit when faced with adversity and pressure? How Howard and Harden responded to challenges in the past will provide some clues as to how they will handle adversity and challenges in the coming season. Rudy T's statement about the heart of champions will be tested this coming season.

 

Veterans!

 

this is very interesting insight. i appreciate the explanation. i understand the whole concept of getting the ball past half court with only 24 second possessions so the offense gets more time to set up...etc. but is it proven that PB actually brings it past half court faster than lin? there usually isn't much suffocating half court press coming from opposing teams throughout the whole game. usually just in closing minutes of close games. in general there are more defensive schemes around lin since he's been around the NBA longer and moreso on the scouting report than PB. i'm sure PB will be scouted more next year and press from opposing defense just as hard so i'm not totally convinced with #3. it'll be interesting to see how PB handles double teams if they do that to him.

 

Beverley isn't that good a defender once the offense is set though, very weak man defender (lol reggie jackson), so what if he's better at on ball pressure before that? The answer to that for the opponents is very simple for the good teams, you have someone else bring the ball up and the setup the offense from there, that's how San Antonio does it, that's how Miami does it, etc etc. The only team I can see it being overly effective against is the Clippers, since they have terrible handles outside of CP3.

Beverley's strength is extended pressure, 50-90 foot, but the offset of that is it's incredibly taxing, and that he fouls at an accelerated rate. How many times did his defense put us in the penalty early?

 

I believe this idea here is a flawed concept and here's why. If you've watched the days when Harden and Lin both came off the bench with only around 5-15 min of play time, you'd notice that they are also both very vicious is defence. In fact Lin was called to be a "defence specialist" back in his GSW days. And we saw how Harden destroyed even Kobe with his defence.

They problem with what you envision and are suggesting is that you believe that PB can actually maintain the same defence throughout the entire game as he has been doing now. There's a reason why many starters don't play defence the same way PB plays defence. It's not just because it's extremely exhausting, but because the % to foul somebody is alarmingly high EVEN if you are experienced at it.

The kind of defence PB is playing is a ball pressuring defence. In theory it sounds good and that everyone should be forcing and hacking the ball as much as possible to get it off the guard right? Well to simply break down the basics of this kind of defence, it's to keep your hand as close to the ball as possible at all time and hawking it when the opportunity strikes, almost like a pest/mosquito to your opponent. As a result, it forces the opposing guard to take more time to secure the ball. But the problem here is that the closer your hand is to the ball, the higher % your hand will commit a touch accidentally. If the opponent has really good handles (CP3), then he can continuously fake you out and make you commit a reach-in foul.

As a result, if PB were to start, and he plays the same kind of defence you envision/suggest, he'd be fouled out so fast. He was lucky with Reggie Jackson because Reggie Jackson isn't very experienced yet. But even then once the defence is set, Reggie Jackson still blew by him like it was nothing because of his hawking defence that tips him off balance. And even then, PB's foul rate was still very high.

So while what you say about #2 is true for all team, there's a lot more to it then just simply "PB can do this defence, therefore he has an edge" because in reality, he won't be able to maintain this defence if he were to start for the team.

 

For me this is absolutely on point. We need to be thinking championship in 2 years, not this year. Give Morey time to continue to work his magic and we will get there. But if we let expectations get too high, we will rash and burn before it starts.

 

Reggie Jackson was lighting him up in the playoffs.