I usually stay out of the coach McHale stuff.... but he was pretty bad today. 1) Dwight's minutes - I get it that Dwight is a minutes restriction, BUT Dwight needs to be on the court every second Duncan is out there as much as possible. He was glued to the bench in the third when Duncan was getting rebound after rebound over Josh/TJ. He is the only one who can keep him off the offensive glass. Josh and TJ are athletic enough to get boards over Baynes and Ayers but Duncan is too tall and too long for them to be effective. 2) Hack-a-Josh - Josh needs to step up, period. BUT Coach has got to respond to the tactic. He either should have a) hacked Duncan or b) gotten Josh out of there. There is no reason to let a guy go 12-26 from the line. 3) Offensive Strategy - At the end of the game we ran that same stupid high pick n roll with James getting a red carpet to the lane where 4 Spurs are waiting for him. The Spurs were funneling him into the help every time. The guys defending Harden weren't worried about staying in from of him and they did a good job of not reaching. We should have countered with either the low pick n roll where Harden get its in the post and gets a pick OR the high pick n roll with a PF where James hits the PF at the free throw line where he can either finish strong with one dribble or swing it to the corner. TJ and Josh should have more liberty to take their Bigs off the dribble from the elbow area. This keeps the SA bigs out of position to help at the rim. There were a couple easy backdoor cuts by Brewer and Harden in the second quarter playing with Josh. I still think we match up well enough with the Spurs. I'm scared more for our free throw shooting than anything if we were to play in the in the playoffs. Pop has shown that he gives ZERO *****s about decorum and he will intentionally foul for an entire quarter if need be.
Great. Just forget about trying to improve your ft shooting percentage by practice more. It won't work either way, because it has not worked for Howard.
It's not all on him because they just packed the paint. Harden was right to pass out to his three point shooters. The problem is we have no 3 point shooters. That's the big issue with this team, all our shooters are average guys. Not true floor spacers, teams are just fine leaving their man to collapse on the paint. We really need to get a real shooter in here, a guy that teams won't ever want to leave open.
In hindsight not giving Harden the and-1 halfcourt 3 pointer was huge. I thought he had it. Refs were a joke tonight thought.
Yea I pretty much feel this way too. I don't mind the intentional foul as a tool here and there but I don't think its good for the league for a guy to get intentionally fouled 8/10 possessions in the 4th quarter. Josh/Dwight/Dorsey/TJ/Capella/Dmo I hope you guys do your homework this summer.
Did you actually trying to watch the game and see how the Rox played in the second half? Did this tactic actually happened when the Rox were making a big run and took a lead? We were playing bad offense before this happened, the tactic actually kept us in the game.
It's the GM and the team in addition to the coach. We do not have the right pieces. We lose on pg alone.
Yes when I chainsaw your arm off when I was trying to get the flower you were holding I'll cite that I did get the flower as well..
Waiting on the wise guys telling yall Howard is on minute restriction, we only lost by one one point despite Josh miss all the free throws and y'all all knee jerks. The sad thing is the wise guys are as burning as the rest of us, but they vent it out by calling everyone else knee jerks. Twisted, right.
Also, when the playoff starts, shooting % for almost every team will drop down, so I seriously doubt any team will find this tactic will be golden for them to use against us. If teams are shooting in the low 40s in the playoff and still doing a hack a Josh, I will take it in a heartbeat.
And the officials cost us ANOTHER division game with a blown call in the final seconds. Really frustrating. I guess we can expect a NBA report tomorrow to throw salt on our wounds .
Why should we be scared of the Spurs after that silly crap? We could have easily won that game. With Dwight playing more minutes, that's a win.
