If the Asik/Howard combo can work on offense, then this team is as good as any in the west

It seems like they're going to give up having as good an offense as last year or just real good offense in general with the starting lineup in favor of defense. Will be interesting. Pop changed the Spurs' identity from defense to offense as players grew old. We're doing the reverse. I like old school JVG ball tho, AND exciting passing. Let's see if Lin could be freed to do that.

 

I'm not even worried about stretch 4's honestly. I think Dwight is fast enough to defend them. Biggest concern for me is transition defense.

 

Last season we were able to have a pretty good offense with Asik. He was paired with guys like Patterson, Dmo, and Greg Smith, and the offense was still effective. Now we've replaced those guys with Howard.

 

I am dubious about it working all year, will believe it when I see it.

DD

 

Team


Matchups


Winning


Guys, it's all about this team winning by getting the best of matchups. Can you dig through the league and find a lineup combination on some opponents that Dwight and Asik don't match up well against??? Why sure. That's why there's 12 guys on the team. Can you dig through the league and find a lineup combination on some opponents that Lebron, Dwayne, and Bosh don't match up well against?? Why sure?? Probably not many though. Probably a few more matchups that go against Dwight/Asik/Harden then go against Lebron/Wade/Bosh. Wondering how the match up are going to work when Asik is going against this guy or that guy is stupid microanalysis. We got other players.

But.....what is different than last year is now we have the luxury of matching up against teams that have 2 quality bigs running up and down the court.

There's a key word that Morey brought up last year....VARIANCE. This team has the ability to throw greater variance on the court. How??? Well, when we face power teams that go big and strong at both power spots we can go bigger, stronger, more physical, and our D is better than their O. In other words Dwight/Asik defensively is better than Timmy/Splitter offensively, better than Hibbert/West offensively, better than Blake/Deandre offensively, better than Perk/Ibaka/Adams offensively, better than Marc/Zach offensively, better than LaMarcus/Robin offensively, better than Steimsma/Davis, Bogut/Lee, etc. Our Twin Towers are better defensively than almost any (I'll say almost for now) combination of power bigs offensively that you can think of.

When you think about power big offensive combinations that have burnt us up in the past you can start with Memphis, then go to Indy, then go to last years Lakers with Dwight/Pau. The last one doesn't exist anymore. And the first 2 we dominate with our 2 bigs defensively. Memphis is in trouble against us this season. As are the Clippers who have a far inferior set of bigs in Blake/Deandre that they run out there to start games.


On the other side of VARIANCE is small-ball. Our small ball, spread the floor offense is going to be superior to practically every small ball defense. I'll leave a margin of error for Miami since they are so athletic and not really undersized. After all, they are the reigning champions. But when you take away Miami it's very difficult to find a team that can possibly match up defensively to our small-ball lineup. Possibly SA and OKC. And that's about it.

So the idea that Dwight isn't going to work is horse poo. There's too many power big combinations starting and playing substantial minutes in this league for our Twin Towers not to work. It's obvious it's going to work.

VARIANCE

 

I didn't want to make a new thread so I will ask in this thread. If the Asik/ Howard combo works and the team works good as planned then which team or teams would be our Achilles heel in the west? I feel we would be a match up nightmare for the Heat. Considering they had fits with Indiana and San Antonio last year.

 

Golden State, they are as 3pt heavy as us with stretch 4's

 

I think I would agree with this. And add San Antonio and OKC.

GS's small-ball lineup
West or Bogut in the middle
Curry
Thompson
Iggy
Barnes

against us

Dwight
Bev
James
Garcia
Parsons

or

Dwight
Bev
Lin
James
Parsons



Those are going to be fun games to watch.


Spurs:

Timmy
Parker
Green
Manu
Kawhi

That'll be a fun match up to watch as well.


OKC
Ibaka
Westbrook (when he gets healthy)
Williams
Thabo
Durant

Another interesting small-ball matchup

 

Even without Asik/Howard 'working', we are probably still going to contend for the west. The difference though is 30MPG of Asik vs. 20MPG. Or a marginal role vs. real minutes. It is arguable who was the more irreplaceable piece last year between Harden and Asik. When you can maximize the minutes for a player of that caliber, I think the difference will be contender of the west vs. favorite to win the west.

I've said before that if we could trade Asik for Millsap + a backup center, we would be favorites to win it all. The ability to play Asik for 30+ minutes accomplishes the same task, since they are similar caliber players. The issue was never about whether Asik is good enough, it was whether we could get enough minutes for him with Howard in the equation.

Has nothing to do with choosing offense vs. defense or defense vs. offense. We are going with Asik because it puts the most talent on the floor. One of the best things about the Rockets coaching staff is that, while they do have a core philosophy or 'system', they are not bind by it. The drastic change in styles the past two years was a reflection of the personnel of the team, and the coaches' ability to adjust to the talent at hand. Something certain coaches fail to do. see: D'Antoni.

 

It's not a matter of "If", but a matter of "How".
I still don't see how the twin tower offense works with the skill set those 2 have.

 

Will this combo closed out games? In blowouts, obviously not. In close games, are we really going to put TWO 50%+ FT shooters out there at the same time? Opponents can alternate the fouls to break the rhythm that many experts claim why Hack-A-XXX doesn't work because the player develops that rhythm.

I don't see Asik closing out much games, unless Howard fouled out. How happy will Asik be? If there is no future here for Asik, why spend all this time to develop the TT.

I think the TT concept can work for periods of time at the start and in the middle, but not at the end because of FTs.

 

Beverly putting on-ball pressure on teams, Harden playing the passing lanes, Parsons playing help on the wing, and Howard and Asik clogging the middle makes for a pretty scary defensive lineup.

 

it will work if Asik can finish a layup.

 

First off I kind of wish they wouldn't call this "Twin Towers" as neither Howard or Asik have the abilities of Olajuwon or Sampson. What made that possible was that Sampson had passing and ball handling abilities to play further from the basket allowing for Olajuwon to play the traditional center role. Sampson was more like a prototype of big 4's like Duncan and Garnett.

 

I'm really not sure why people think Barnes is gonna be playing a ton of PF. he played 1% of the teams total minutes at PF last season, and they have much more depth among their bigs this year. He played PF out of necessity during the playoffs when Lee went down, but it wasn't something they went to unless they had no other options. Besides if they do put Barnes on the floor, that takes one of Lee/Bogut off the floor. Lee is a real hassle to handle on the boards, and is a great low-post option for them, although he is a sieve on the defensive end (which is probably why they will keep him on the floor, they can just stick him on Asik). Bogut is their defensive anchor, so if they want to take him off the court to move Lee to the C and Barnes to the PF, then I consider that a success. With Lee anchoring their defense, we will be having lay-up drills on the offensive end.

 

1st) Making 3's are around 30-40% off. If they miss that we get the rebound and it's already proven we are going to get most of the rebound defensively and offensively by having two of the best rebounders in the nba.
2nd) The best 3 pointers are 40%, PF's won't go near that. If they are stretch 4's can you also they can match up with our guys in the post when we attacking?
3rd) A point is still a point, even if it's 1/2. Another chance of rebound and easier for the guards to go to the free throw. only bad thing is its going to prolong the game.

 

Was Twin Towers from there? Not a lot of people have been watching that long. Don't be conceited and think everyone is copying the past. For me personally, Twin Towers because there both tall and they dominate. Just like what the Twin Towers in U.S. used to mean.