What I can't understand is that many on this site trash Jones and then turn around and say he and a pick can be the package to get an All-Star point guard. If he's good enough to be theoretically traded for a Dragic, then he' good enough to play power forward. A giant upgrade at that position that can shoot and play good defense isn't walking through the door. This team needs depth and growth in their young players. The West is a war of attrition, not about who has the most stars on their team. Add to the depth behind Jones to have options to mitigate the growing pains of project power forwards, don't get rid of them.
Yup... We can't have superstars at every position. Again, we could have easily played Dwight and Asik on Lamarcus the entire game, without going twin towers, hence destroying our entire offensive identity. Hell, we could have tried Motiejunas on him. You have to give him different looks, but you don't throw the offense in the ****ter after leaving our talented 21 year old on an island.
The thing about Portland is that they have 3 three point shooters and Lopez standing under the rim. If you double too early on Aldridge when he isn't near basket, you lose. Rockets out scored Portland once Asik started.
What about DH12? With all his missed free throws? I think we lost 2 in OT. If he only made 1 more of his FTs in regular time. I'd dig out the stats but am too tired.
We shouldn't have settled for barely beating them with the twin towers, because so much luck goes into winning close games. With two offensively challenged centers on the floor you are guaranteed to have a close game at best, especially with McHale's dribble drive offense. We should have been pounding that team by 15-20 a night. To do that you have to play to your own strengths, your own identity. We threw an entire season in the trash when we went back to the failed experiment of Asik and Dwight together for long stretches. Basically, we needed to worry more about what WE DO WELL, and less about what they are doing. And Jesus, just because they are shooters does NOT mean that you can't throw unique looks at Lamarcus Aldridge. I would gladly let Lopez, Matthews and Batum can beat me. As a coach I would be grinning ear to ear If those were the guys Portland relied on. You GOT to stick to your guns that got you there. We contributed in icing out our best player. We saw how much Harden struggled with the bigs clogging the paint early last year. You can't do it. It hurt Lin and Parsons too...
Because teams value different things depending on what they want to do. Phoenix is looking to build towards the future. Rockets are looking to win now. Jones is a player with lots of potential for the future but mediocre for now. Dragic is a player with little future potential(his next contract will become a burden in 3-4 years when he's declining), but lots of present day value. In 3 years, Jones can very easily become better than Dragic. But the Rockets aren't looking 3 years down the road. They want to win next year. On the flip side, Phoenix IS looking 3 years down the road. If they wanted to win now, they'd have kept Channing Frye who was an integral part of their team last year.
Howard shot 62.5% (40/64 total) on free throws that series against Portland, you really can't expect much more from him and that is a significant increase from his regular season numbers. He definitely played well enough for us to win, and if Harden and Lin didn't play so poorly for a majority of the series (or McHale actually knew how to coach an NBA team), we would have advanced. Another thing that is often overlooked on Clutchfans is that Beverley was deathly ill with a 103+ degree fever for a large portion of the series. If he was 100% I say he would have held Lillard to much lower numbers and we would have advanced.
Just saying DH12 shouldnt get a free ride. Info here. http://www.nba.com/playoffs/2014/westseries4/ http://www.nba.com/games/20140420/PORHOU/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20140423/PORHOU/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20140425/HOUPOR/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20140427/HOUPOR/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20140430/PORHOU/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20140502/HOUPOR/gameinfo.html DH12 FTs 120 - 122 Game-1 9-17 105 - 112 L Game-2 6-7 121 - 116 W Game-3 4-6 120 - 123 L Game-4 11-17 108 - 98 W Game-5 4-6 98 - 99 L Game-6 6-11 It's games 1, 3 and 5 where we could have done with some nice FTs shooting. The 2 Ws we had, he shot 4 out of 6. Did we win cos he shot well, or did he shoot well cos we won? Anyway, and CP25 was no big contributor as well. Note that I actually thought DH12 played the best of the lot. Who was the 2nd best player? Hard to say, which is the problem. Definitely not Harden. Maybe Asik, in his limited minutes. TJ didnt help, but he was not the worst culprit out there.
I still say that the Portland series was almost the perfect storm of bad luck for the Rockets. The best team did not win that series. Harden had one of the worst playoff series a star has had in recent memory, Aldridge was in god mode for much of the series, Parsons was inconsistent and gave Portland fantastic bulletin board material, Lin was Lin, McHale choked and Beverly had everything go wrong physically short of being stabbed 17 times on his way to game 2. Howard beasted, everything else went wrong and it still took a fantastic shot and some horrible defense by the Rockets for Portland to win. Was Jones inconsistent? Yes and that is expected from a 22 year old in his first playoff series going against a guy who was in the zone from opening tipoff. Will he be better this season? I think he will but the coaching staff needs to either earn their checks or be replaced. I feel like this organization is the worst in the league for developing young talent.
If Harden plays like the Superstar he is, Hou wins the Portland series. Portlands 2 Stars outplayed Houstons, thats all it came down to.
Not only outplayed, Damian and Aldridge had legendary performances. Was a hella fun series regardless. So many big shots made on both ends.
If Lin never made that dumb, moronic turn over in Game 4. The Rockets would have won that game and tied the series 2-2 and Rockets win in game 7. I'm still bitter of that game. I'm so glad Lin is gone.
Hmm if you are trying to blame Howard for not advancing then everything you say shouldn't ever be taken seriously. I would say Howard is at the bottom of the list when it comes blame for us not advancing.
You miss my point here. Am just saying DH12 is not blameless. He might be the least to blame but even he is not blameless. Repeating myself, in games 1 (OT lost by 2), 4 (OT lost by 3) and 6 (lost by 1), he missed 8 (9-17), 6 (11-17) which is not so bad, I guess, and 5 (6-11). Was in response to an earlier poster. But it's a non-discussion really. The rest of the team could have "played harder" Always easier in hindsight, and am ok with performance with _all_ on the team in the end but not McHale. A stubborn man if there ever was one.
This guy was only 21/22 years old last year... he's getting better: <iframe src="//instagram.com/p/pIOJzCG3vl/embed/" width="612" height="710" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
For the entire playoff series, the Blazers outscored the Rockets by 1 point while Jones was on the court. (and this is with Jones being a -16 in game 6) Ok, so he didn't defend beautifully, but he sure helps our offence run well. If he improves by just 5-10% defensively this season, it will be a wonderful thing. ALSO: worth noting that in games 1 and 2, the Rockets were worse with Asik on the court than with Jones. [I KNOW +/- is not a wonderful measure. But over the course of the series it is a tiny bit more measurable]
Great post, especially the last sentence. Look, I understand that McHale wants to get as many wins as possible in a very tough western conference. Still, where was guys like Daniels during the regular season? Kudos to the kid, but throwing him out there in a pressure cooker playoff game after playing a total of about 70 minutes duriing the regular season reeks of desperation. As you said, they better do a better job developing young talent.
