In the first 3 quarters, Kevin Martin is a top 10 offensive player in the NBA. If only he showed up in the 4th quarter.
We aren't talking about Rondo, here. You can't let NBA shooters have wide open 20 footers. And don't give us stats about long twos. You are suggesting a wide open two.
I think it's more the culture. After JVG left, Alston said something on the lines that even with Adelman as coach, the players would still lapse back into JVG's defensive sets because they just got used to it. I think the Rockrts best defense was Adelmans first season, and as players left the culture for defense suffered too.
Maybe the rockets best defense was the first year of adelman but that would be based on better players. JVG and Thibadeau defensive system was clearly better though. Some of that is based on adelmans offense requires more running whereas JVGs offense is also designed to put the players in the best situation to transition back to lock down defense JVG is a big advocate of low turnovers and stopping fastbreaks. Placing high value on those variables somewhat defines your offensive system choices
1. Adelman's offense needs time to gel. 2. Don't give me the "including the TMac/Yao years" argument. I debated with Carl Herrera and SamFisher a few years ago and showed that Adelman almost NEVER had BOTH Yao and TMac healthy. He took injury ravaged teams with the likes of Brooks, Battier, Hayes, Scola, Landry, and Bundinger to overachieve on offense year in year out. Sure, McHale's team last year did pretty well offensively. He deserves credit for recognizing the weaknesses and strength of the team and use simple fast pace offense to overachieve too. But everyone could see how terrible our half-court offense was. Once the other team was able to stop our running, we could not do anything but give the ball to Harden's ISO.
