I really enjoyed watching our team last year. The offense was mostly free and fast. Obviously hero ball was too frequent at times but the strategy seemed to fit the players perfectly. I don't see that right now and I am wondering if the lack of structure is hurting many of our players. It seems like Harden and Howard should play off of each other. Meaning Howard creates Harden catch and shoot threes via post up. Also that Harden creates for D12 on the pick and roll and the spacing he naturally provides. I am not seeing enough intent on the offensive end. We just seem to meander through our offensive possessions. We have the talent to do this but I am wondering if we need more structure. Set out to start in the post and play inside out or start with a H and H pick and roll and go from there. We are lacking something on the offensive end right now.
MCHALE won 45 games last year with a MVP Harden, playmaking Lin, effort of asik, great team player parsons, a hardworking bev, mature Garcia, a flawed but play hard big in g. smith etc. with growth, more chemistry & mchales run & gun system with more situational plays, I think it's safe to say they could have won 50 this year with same players. As they had more time to gel know where players like the ball and how to play together. This only teams we could not beat was pacers & heat. We had some good flashes against top teams in west spurs, okc, clippers... & ran past power houses in east BULLS NETS KNICKS was thinking maybe we need to cut him some slack, Morey went and got Howard and Mchale changed his whole system in attempt to make Howard happy and get him involved in the offense. He went away from his run & gun offense to a half court offense with Howard. (completely different scheme) It may work may not but he had to give it a try. If he is fired it will just look like Howard ran him out if u ask me. When he did what the organization wanted him to do, incorporate the new STAR player in a offense, while dream was brought in to help Howard with his post moves etc. He did his job. Now TT may be his fault but Morey could be wanting him to start him for trade value but no one knows the truth. Yes Mchale needs to work on his timeouts, playcalling but he did a good job in motivating these young players last year to get to the playoffs after which was basically their first year together. Let's see how things playout but understand he was put in a tricky coaching situation hisself. Doc & pop had same teams for year same offense, even doc is using the same plays he ran with Boston with clippers. Mchale was forced to change it all after one year with harden, parsons, Lin, asik what do you guys think ?????
I think you are spot on. Howard is not even good enough to warrant changing an extremely successful system. But because he is a 'star' and a diva, mchale had to try to please him. Its not working at the moment.
Never ever going to happen with McHale. We have one of the most incompetent X' and O's coaches in the league. McHale has no tactical acumen to run plays on offense just ISo and P n R
Thanks man some say I'm a bad poster but I try to be honest and some times the truth does not work, I like Mchale and the offense we ran last year, yes harden use to Iso but that could have improved but harden did get us a lot of Ws doing that. With time we would have just got better, I'm sure the mchale offense rockets team from last year would have ran that lakers team out the Toyota center Thursday
I am certain the coaches are aware of what the team needs to do. It's a matter of getting them to execute.
They had no other choice but to run and gun. Remember they didnt have a full training camp with Harden coming in. McHale theory was to try and out score his opponents. Even if Howard wouldnt have come here I believe they would have changed their approach to the offense. But hey good post nonetheless Play07.. And BTW you always post pretty good comments.
The thing about run and gun is that even mediocre teams can win lots of games like that during the regular season. But it's much harder to play like that in the playoffs. So even if the Rockets picked the pace up this year and started running like last year, sure, they will win a lot of games, but they will be making a quick exit once the playoffs roll around. It's smarter to work more from your half-court sets, even if you struggle, so that you can work on having a truly capable team and not a gimmicky team.
Run and gun works with certain lineups, but i think the Rockets benefit with a slower pace with Howard and Asik out there. Im not a big fan of coaches who rely too much on xs and os too much, it takes the spontaneity out the offense and defense. But at the same time, i think a team needs structure and cant just run and gun all the time. It often seems simple minded, and there needs to be a sense of pace the players got to feel comfortable with now that they have defensive pieces.
Agreed. That's why I kind of like Lin coming off the bench. He can still do that run n' gun style offense with the bench mob to bring the team out of holes created from inexperience with half-court, slow-down sets.
I understand that but we were without a PF in playoffs, had delfino doing most the work. That was the weak spot lack of true PF with size. with the half court x&os u take a risk with a younger team because that's not their strength, a spurs grizzlies team can benefit from that. Some take a risk running half court when u have to face a running warriors, okc, clippers in playoffs
Yep .. Agree .. rockets needs to run some set plays, specially during crunch time . With game on the line and when HardensISO does not work , it looks quite ugly as the rest of the plays seems to be just running here and there without any coordination.
Rockets should look to run as the first option, if not settle in the HC with some designated plays. We should definitely post up Harden a lot more than usual, he seems crafty down there. And strangely enough, a Lin & Harden pick & roll would be nice much like the Ellis & Jackson P&R in GSW. It forces the PG to guard Harden, if switched, if not, it makes the defensive collapse on Lin as he's driving. For Dwight, I'd say stick to the principles of him rotating from low block to low block, and pairing up with Asik to set double screens on shooters at the wing like Parsons and Garcia.
Apart from Talent, you also need experience, team chemistry and everyone buying into there roles to win championships. If we stuck to the same core last year, upgraded Asik with Howard and worked on our weaknesses such as the half court sets....wouldnt you think that would be smarter than scrapping the team chemistry and team dynamics that was created last year? Going Asik and Howard is such a drastic change, and im afraid there is just not enough games in a year for it to work and develop the chemistry that is needed to win it this year. Also by going TT, the coaching staff is gambling that he can turn Howard into a low post offensive threat like Hakeem. Sorry but that will not happen in a year!
The TT experiment is not working but mchale still pushes with it. We have the deepest bench, but in actuality we play the last number of players with 8. If we needes to run set plays should it have been to design i t around howard? Last year it was okay for us to win 45, they overachieved even. But this year with higher expectations, we cant afford to win just 50. I just dont see mchale be a great coach.
