ClutchFans Game Thread: Blazers @ Rockets 4/23/2014 (Playoffs Round 1, Game 2)

The Rockets will go as far as Harden and Howard take them. If they play well, the team plays well, but stop acting like they're gonna think their the only 2 dudes on the team. It's not gonna be like that, but they are the keys to the Rockets winning in the playoffs. Simple as that. Surely you know that.

 

Howard needs to seal his defender earlier in the clock.

He also desperately needs to add a turnaround jumper from 10 feet....that would make his post up game deadly. He's not Shaq...he can't just bully guys in the paint. He also not Yao...he can't shoot over everyone. He's got to add some finesse. Hopefully Hakeem will continue to work with him to develop a good post game.

 

No more excuses. We no longer have a game to give, this needs to be a win.

 

What I don't understand is, why do we go away from PnR? It's the most efficient and effective play that we have and we go away from it when time and time again it has proven to give us key buckets and is virtually unguardable.

I don't understand why we don't try to preach it as much as we can. Run it and force the opposing defenses to adjust, then we can do our other stuff. I mean we have the two guys who can run it to perfection since they're the top players in their position. Also, can we take away McHale's clipboard? It's not like he does anything with it.

 

i thought howard did alright. Kind of a lopsided game, didnt do much the first half played better in the second. The problem is he is who it is. He has gotten better offensively in the post but shaq he is not. The rockets dont need him to score like shaq, they need him to gobble up every rebound. I dont expect harden to miss 20 shots, including 11 3pointers again.

 

I think we need to go hard at Lillard. He's a defensive sieve. Either put Lin in early and have him drive against Lillard, or force a switch to Harden on Lillard. Not attacking him on the offense is like cutting his minutes by 30-40%.

Lillard is very much a jump shooter. We'll see how good that jump shot looks when you run him through a zillion picks and force him to chase our players around the court.

And while Lillard might get a drive here and there, I would much rather have him get off an extra drive here and there and be forced to defend than give him a free pass when the Rockets go up the floor.

Stotts had a good plan for Harden. I'd like to see how Lillard does when placed in a similar situation.

 

I'm thinking the Blazers want Howard to get the ball more. They are probably way more concerned with Harden going off. Picking their poison.

 

If Howard truly believes he needs to demand the ball more then Houston, we have a serious, humungous, enourmous freaking problem!!!

 

IMO Stotts could've had an even better plan for Harden if instead of Matthew posting up, he had Harden running through screens the entire game.

 

I think that may have resulted in Harden just choosing not to run through some of those screens and conserving more energy. Harden actually puts a lot more effort into defending though when he is being posted up, so I think the blazers strategy was pretty effective in terms of tiring him out.

 

I see a Rockets beatdown of the Blazers coming. Losing Game 1 sucks, but you must always be prepared to win at least one road game, possibly 2, to win a series. Portland had a perfect storm of Aldridge going off, crappy ref calls and Harden poor shooting to pull off a close win. That storm wont happen again.

 

He was good in the 4th quarter aside from the stretch where he bricked 4 straight free throws. That started the collapse. But he was awful in the first half with the foul trouble and missed point blank layups. If he's gonna demand the ball, he better finish. If not, let Harden and Parsons(and Lin off the bench) initiate the offense.

 

Ugh 1 more day. Hope our guys BRING IT!!!!

 

The Rox need Harden to play solid defense for 48 mins as well. The problem is what the Rockets need Dwight to do, and what Dwight thinks he needs to do, are often two different things.

I don't know why Dwight thinks the best strategy is to initiate our offense through the post. We were shredding the Portland defense late last game with the Harden Lin pnr. If this game the defense decides to not give Lin the open lane, then that means open shots for Harden to get him going or a few oops for Dwight.

 

The Rockets need to send a statement like the Clips did to the Warriors...And that statement needs to be in the form of a thorough a$$ whopping...

 

I like this idea. In addition to tiring Lillard out, this approach has the advantage of encouraging Lillard to drive to the basket over shooting jumpers.

Lillard's FG% on drives was 40.4% in the regular season. (Batum's by contrast is 62.2%) It's true he had 9 drives last night and had a 100% FG%, but I think that was in part because he was fouled so often on his drives.

JLin's FG% on drives last night was 75% (he was 48.8% in the regular season). He had 8 drives and the Rockets scored 13 points on those drives; the same number of Portland team points scored on Lilllard's 9 drives.

Harden's FG% on drives was 48.2% in the regular season.. He had 9 drives last night, had a FG% of 33% on those drives, and the team scored 18 points on those drives.

http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingDrives.html?pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=25&SeasonType=Regular Season

 

if Harden doesn't run through the screens then Matthews, a very good 3 pt shooter will be getting open looks.

Do you remember the game against LAC and Reddick.

Doubt Stotts with complain about that.

 

The definition of a MUST-WIN game. If we're going to re-establish dominance in this series, it has to start here. Lose this game, and the series is over.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Rockets practice just wrapped. Jeremy Lin (flu-like symptoms) did not participate.</p>&mdash; Jason Friedman (@JasonCFriedman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonCFriedman/statuses/458674912128159744">April 22, 2014</a></blockquote>
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