ClutchFans Game Thread: Warriors @ Rockets 1/17/2015

Yea he been off tonight.. It happens

 

Harden went playoff mode on us tonight I guess. I hope he gets it out during the season this year and gets hot in the playoffs. Everytime he plays good I think about that.

 

Kostas has no quit in him

 

We're playing the biggest game of the season and we dont show up. AT HOME. why why why

 

Pap showing that Scola spirit of not giving up. I hope Scola does come back next season as serviceable backup PF.

 

This. Our so called "fans" are so sometime-y it's embarrassing.

Some will excuse it as "it's because I care so much".

 

Our game plan is too predictable. It was against Portland and it shows up against every solid team that we play against.

If I were to dissect our offense, it's really simple.

1) We rely on penetration from Harden to make the defense react and play off of defensive rotations on Harden. When Harden has an off night, we lose. This happens more often when you have a physical defender (Klay Thompson, Wesley Matthews) and refs who aren't calling fouls for Harden. Harden offsets this with 3's and his deadly stepback, but anytime Harden stops driving, game over.

2) We rely on postups to Dmo and Howard. Once the defense can no longer stop either one on one, they move the ball and we use the 3 ball on rotations again. Golden State has Draymond who takes Dmo outside and ultimately negates this advantage. Dwight had it going but in his current state thats not enough with the turnovers and no calls inside that the NBA currently officiates with.

3) Our bench offense is random chaos. Josh Smith initiates offense 30% of the time which is like flipping a coin every play. Brewer/Ariza sometimes initiate which doesn't make sense.

We win on talent, and defensive coaching.

The problem is, our offense is too sporadic for our defense to really get in a rhythm. Turnovers on offense lead to fastbreaks that we can't defend, and no rhythm on offense leads to tired legs on defense.

Our entire offense begins and ends with James Harden. I don't know if you can lean on one guy as much as we do and ask for sustained success. To his credit, he has been amazing this season. But every offensive possession doesn't need to start with James at a standstill with the ball.

Off the ball motion and actually executed plays are nonexistent with our team. If you watch our offense, 80% of the time, you have one guy with the ball making a move and everyone else standing in their assigned positions waiting for the kickout. Then once in a while you have a pick and roll, and other players are once again in their assigned positions in the corners waiting for a kickout. Or you have the postup guy with players waiting outside.

You watch the warriors and you are not sure what's going to happen. Offense happens from every position and off the ball movement is everywhere. It's impossible to key in on Steph and Klay because no one knows where the ball is going to end up with all the movement they get from taking advantage of our slower bigs on pick and rolls.

This brings me to the biggest weakness that our team has and is not able to exploit. In the old NBA, when you put a small guy at the 4/5 they would get abused and subbed out. Now, Draymond and Lee are able to hang by hacking at players inside and just rebounding enough to get by. We aren't able to punish teams enough with a semi-hobbled Dwight and Dmo running around screens on defense.

It's so frustrating to watch our talented team have no real in game offense to counteract other teams when they take away our 1st options. What we need more than anything are more plays that produce easier offense when we are sputtering on our 3 and layups strategy centered on Harden/Howard. We need to learn from Teams that run off ball screens to free up a couple of midrange looks just to find a rhythm when the other team has us boxed in.

There are too many times where our offense just goes to hell in a handbasket and we can't pull out of our tailspin, and we simply keep throwing the ball to a Harden Iso or Dwight postup and keep on asking them to bail us out. We need an actual offense when the offense stalls so that we can at least get a good look when good looks are hard to come by.

 

Harden took himself from the game the guy can't even make FTs or wide open 3s today. If harden was hitting his percentage today this game would be even by now.

 

he has been sucking GS pipe all nite long without pause

 

Biggest games of the season are any playoff elimination games.

 

Its defense

 

Exactly. We should all be disappointed but we shouldn't start burning the banners. Calm down.

 

The Spurs have played bad because they've been wrecked by injuries. Props to McHale and the team for going 8-3 during the time Dwight and others were out, but not every team can pull that off. The Spurs even last season when they easily racked up a league best 62 wins were bad when Kawhi was out. Now that he's back, don't be surprised if they start to make a run.

And one other thing. If I were a Spurs fan, I wouldn't be freaking out over their recent "bad" play because I'd know in the back of my mind that they can always turn it on come playoff time since they have a great coach, veteran players, a solid system on both ends of the floor, and 5 titles in the rafters as proof of their success.

 

Also one hell of a three pt shooter

 

Cuz of the depth perception at the Toyota Center.

 

The more you expect, the more disappointed you will be, that's how I feel about the Rockets right now. They rely on James too much. They are just better coached and better prepared.

 

Fuzzy - well said, but also we have two many one dimensional players, GS - every single one of them is a threat on both ends....

I don't think you can win with guys who are not a threat on offense at least.

DD

 

50 yrs of sucktitude. Those are facts.

 

When did Boguet become such a flopper? I mean c'mon dude you weight close to 300 pounds you shouldnt be falling down like that

 

Poor Howard, these flops are killing the post game.