Just got back from the game. Here are some observations from watching the game live: * Team seems to play with some communication/chemistry problem. Players lose them man on switches and passes aren't crisp. Perhaps this is due to Lin coming into a starting role from bench. * Parson is NOT a natural playmaker, however the system seems to try and force him into that role. He is a good cutter/slasher and wing player but putting him into the playmaker role takes away from his and Lin's strength. * Harden is a good scorer but really seem to slack off defensively. His body build seems to limit his ability to guard more agile players. * Lin seems to be able to mostly stop the guy he is guarding. Pretty good defensive play and effort all around * Lin missed a few off balanced but make-able shots so he should spend some time working on his finishing touch. * Canaan looks really undersized out there. If his shot is not falling, his ability to help the team diminishes as he was not able to guard biger players like DWill * DMo got called for the most trivial contacts, hence limiting his contribution tonight. The ref gave him no love * Joe Johnson was hot and definitely out played JH on both sides of the floor.
We got 8 minutes from our PFs, and 1-8 from our backup point guard, and Bev and Jones make no difference? If you are referring to Harden's defense on Joe Johnson, he allowed 16 of Johnson's 32 points. He did give up some more points to other players, but it isn't accurate to attribute all of Johnson's points to Harden. There's room to criticize Harden's poor defense without embellishing it.
3 starters out....never thought we were gonna win this one. Most likely we lost at Toronto too. We're a year away...assuming Morey can do his magic this summer of course. I hope they prove me wrong and do a playoff run to the finals. I'm just trying to temper my expectations to avoid huge disappointment.
Don't blame our back-up PG. He's just an underdone rookie. Blame our starting PG, what did he do apart from getting benched early in the 3rd... and straight after he got benched the Clippers went on a run which we never recovered from. As for Harden... I wasn't blaming him entirely for our team's defensive effort. The couple of times in the first half when I shouted at the TV because of Harden's poor defense really got it out of my system, after that I gave up caring. I thought Harden may have been just coached badly, but now I'm really starting to think its effort... and that's even worse... especially for our team leader.
I'm actually amazed we only lost by 9 points. Hamilton, Casspi, and Canaan alone missed 20 shots so we were a slightly better bench away from stealing this.
The Nets had more players out than the Rockets. McFail just gave the scrub brigade a green light to jack up a bunch of 3s. The only reason the Rockets were able to keep it respectable was because of Harden's parade to the ft line, and a lot of those calls were questionable. Also, a complete lack of effort defensively.
This game loss is on coach. No ball movement, did not run fast pace which was hard for Nets to handle. Rockets played the slow pace which was comfortable for Nets. No screens for Pg, no pick and roll. Bad timing players rotation.
As many mentioned before, the defensive assignments felt out of place. Personally, I feel that it would be better for Lin to play-make when Harden is out. Parsons is better with off-ball movements; him handling the ball slowed the game down IMO.
We have everyone lined up at the 3 pt line but nobody can make a shot. Not only that but harden defensively was terrible. His effort was sickening tonight and I hope Michael said something to him after the game.
This. It's really hard to win when 3 players shoot 26 times out of 84 team shots, and only make 6. Casspi, Hamilton and Canaan had *plenty* of open looks. They just couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Just for a point of reference... Lin - 16 points on 6/14 shots Casspi/Hamilton/Canaan - 16 points on 6/26 shots While Lin wasn't exactly lighting it up, he still put up over 1.0 pps due to his ability to draw fouls. And Harden's scoring was one of the only things that kept us in the game. Saying Harden or Lin was responsible for this loss is idiocy. Harden and Lin tried to make the right passes, the rest of the team *must* be able to make a decent percentage of those shots or you just can't expect to beat a real NBA team.
i was at the game and wanted to throttle someone. i know we had three starters out but we lost because we played like crapl. the refs didn't help, jj got the better of harden, parson didn't step up enough, and lin sucks but... we lost for the same reason we always do, we played poorly as a team. i think have rage issues , i went with a friend who had never watched a game with me and he was in shock at my intesity. he texted my wife during the game: "wow, gary takes basketball very seriously."
The first 2 quarters where terrible. Cassipi was terrible in that stretch he shot like 4 threes and made 1. Our bench is non existent but I really lost hope when we only had 1 big guy on the court, no defense.
