They make "church league" turnovers. Just awful, boneheaded, horrible turnovers. Do they have passing drills in practice? Harden and Lin are the main offenders, but at times everyone gets involved. If they could cut down on turnovers, they would have a good chance of winning most games.
TOs are now the worse issues with this team because the defense has been playing a little better of late. The team needs a real ball handling pg so Harden doesn't feel like he has to play make all the time, thats why Harden is so TO prone himself.
TO can't be helped by the style of our play which is high reward with high risk. FTs wins you games. If we hit FTs better we would have won a few more games. 3 pointers, we need to score them at higher %. Defensive rebounding, sometimes the other team have like 3 to 4 opportunities to score. Inbounding, it seems like we find it extremely difficult inbounding the ball. Last night's game for example. Dragic gets loose at will but we were forced to inbound to DMo to avoid a 5 seconds violation? The difference? The Suns has setplays which was run very well. Someone here mentioned that they set 3 picks for Dragic?
Turnovers, some turnovers make me wanna just throw up. Throwing it across court right inside the hands of another player on the other teams just kills me. Defense, we always pick it up when we NEED it. However, we need do it all game long. Thus we lose our 10 point leads Free throws, for some reason we keep missing them. I'm not even talking about Dwight. It goes for the whole team missing their free throws. Lack of players with passion for the game, when I say this. Players like Patrick Beverley who always playing hard no matter what. If each one of our players played like that. Man... What a team.
I'd say our biggest issue is lack of focus, which in and of itself leads to a lot of other things, like turnovers, not boxing out and finishing a defensive possession, and losing leads. All things we have huge issues with. It's a maturity issue.
I would say consistent spark off the bench is our flaw everything else like defensive rebounding and FTs can be fixed with effort.
all the above.. one thing i see over and over often is no box out on rebound. and bad defense. all around.
To ask for low turnovers is to change rockets offense style. But at this time of the season I think they should slow down the pace. No more long pass or half court pass. Play every games like playoff games.
COACHING!!!!! So obvious, why wasn't that on the list? We have one of the most talented teams in the league yet one of the worst coaching staff.
Defensive Rebounding and Switching on EVERY pick. I swear, every time we switch on defense I can see the other team salivate like an offensive coordinator looking at Wade Phillips' man coverage. There's such a thing called fighting through picks and showing and going to slow down the man with the ball. DMo might be the only one I see doing this. Really frustrating. Definitely a coaching philosophy.
Defense is actually good. The turnovers lead to easy baskets and that is how we let teams get back into the game. As we saw against the Suns last night, we turned the ball over like 3 times in a row and they got on a roll. Limit the TO's and the team will cruise through wins most nights.
Defense is good, defensive rebounding is pathetic. 1. Defensive rebounding 2. Turnovers (lack of PG play) 3. 3 point shooting. Honestly, if we were able to magically fix (1), then we're a lock to at least make the WCF.
Good post. Coaching would help many issues mentioned. Anything involving "mental lapses", whether it's for a complete game or stretches within a game. Rebounding schemes improve. How much credit does McHale and Co deserve for Dwight's improvement?
The team is focused on shooting three pointers when over all they are not great at it. Hence they build big leads and even blow teams out when they are hot from three and lose leads or struggle against even mediocre teams when the threes are not falling. I am not sure whether this is because they are not that good or because other teams know they will not take midrange shots they can defend the three easily.
I would like to say 3 pt and FT percentage, but I am not really sure how you improve that, short of changing personnel. But, if they could find a way to improve either of those numbers then the team would be operating just as great as we all fantasized about when Howard was signed.
