Soooo.......... The whole Harden vs Curry debate for MVP was a farce. It should have been between Capela and Austin Rivers.
Brewer has proven that he is just not worth any more than $5 million per season. If he opts out and someone wants to pay more, let him walk. Brewer is great in transition, but is a total liability in the half-court game. That 3 he took last night that hit the top of the backboard was just brutal. Brewer has been abysmal this postseason. Josh Smith has also shown what his true value is worth. Josh needs to give the Rockets another huge discount or I'd let him walk as well. Hopefully they can turn it around in Game 5 to force Game 6.
45% from the ft line in the playoffs. we need to find someone who can actually make a wide open three. we dont need brewer unless its for the min
It's hard for him to get out in transition when the other team is either shooting free throws or making every shot they take.
When Brewer was good in the regular season, we wanted him back at almost all costs. Now, that the WHOLE team is stinking up the joint, he is not even worth a damn ham sandwich. Never mind that Brew and the much maligned Smith helped us big time in achieving a near historic regular season record. Go ahead, replace all of the role players, and see if we even make the playoffs next year. You improve on a 56-win club. You don't start from scratch. Smdh...
The worst thing for me is the dumb fouling. Did I see him hack-a-DJ at the start of the 2nd quarter before we were even close to being in the penalty? Fouling 3 point shooters, gambling for steals at the end of quarters (if you steal it, what are you going to do with it?). He's just not a smart player, and we can't have a team composed almost entirely of dumb players (see Smith, Dwight, and to a lesser extent Ariza and Harden).
He's pretty good at a couple things but his defense is overrated. For every steal he comes up with he gets burned 5 times reaching.
Random thoughts: Too many one dimensional and low bball IQ players on this team. A guy like Josh Smith might be perfect on a team that is smart and disciplined but lacks that X-factor off the bench. The same goes with Brewer and Jones although I think both of those guys carry less reward but less risk as well. This team isn't terribly smart or disciplined. We out-talented teams this season without ever forging a real identity. At times it looked like the lack of identity might be a strength based on how we beat teams so many different ways but you better KNOW who you are as a team come playoffs. We don't. I'm not sure Morey had a choice but it seemed like he would grab specialists to fill team gaps/weaknesses all season as opposed to getting players who had fewer gaps in their own game. Well-rounded players. Need some three point shooting? Grab a 37 year old shooter. Need to up the tempo of the team? Grab the human grey hound who is a one man fast break but does little else. Team being too careless with the ball? Grab another 37 year old player who never turns the ball over but never makes defenses acknowledge his presence. I know it's easy to pick on Morey and the team now but I don't (and never did) think the three stars plus filler is the right formula for a championship. Or at least it isn't the only formula. The Josh Smith pickup would have been that much better had Morey not wasted time going after Melo and Bosh and tried to secure a Lowry-level PG. An actual legit, two-way PG who can shoot the three and isn't a traffic cone on defense. A player that would allow Josh Smith and James Harden to finish plays as often as they initiate them. Whatever happens in this series let's hope this team becomes more balanced Over the summer because I really do believe Harden and Howard can be the two best players on a Championship team with the right pieces around them. We're closer than this series indicates.
lol .. his caliber ? ...... yea if you mean tough to find a player that can swing momentum to the other team faster than Smith ... don't wan't smith back even if the dude played for free
And he's 3-11 from FT this series. He's a 70% shooter pretty consistently his whole career. He's choking This is not about pace, or style, or being slightly more defended. This is about a guy folding under pressure. It's nice and all to get upset at Harden. You want to see something more there for sure. But it is important to remember the more he's showed you throughout the season has been with support. Absent Dwight and Trevor on D, there's not a single other player on the Rockets I care about bringing back, or would choose as a role player to go to battle with, etc. Perhaps Capela.. he's clearly a keeper. Think about that. Brewer and Smith have been not just bad, but deserved to effectively be given away bad. I'm not giving Harden a pass. I'm CERTAINLY not giving McHale a pass. McHale's job is to get the role players to play their roles and figure out rotation pattern, substitutions and plays that make sense against the opponent, which he's done a horrible job of. But, even with all that, the talent gulf between the two squads is HUGE. Dwight and Jordan balance each other out. Harden and Paul balance each other out. The Clippers still have Blake and JJ, who you'd clearly have in the top 6 players in this series, and Jamal off the bench. I'd take Ariza next, and Jamal has been struggling, but he'd probably be player 8 if you were listing out players to take from the two squads. Of course Rivers has catapulted himself up there, but I figure that's an aberration (see Austin Croshere, and others before him). So the Clips have 4 of the top 6 and 5 of the top 7 players in this series. And there you have it.
He'd be more useful if we would pick up the pace, sadly when we started the series that way we had about 60 turnovers, and have since slowed everything way down so we can take our time and miss shots. we should go back to picking up the pace, and running the PnR more.
anyone else notice when mchale clears the bench in a blow out and leaves out brewer this guy still feels the need to hog the ball and do nothing with it?...guy is all about himself
T-Mac just got hung due to lack of lift from his bad leg if I recall correctly (took off really awkwardly like he changed his mind mid takeoff) whereas Brewer just got excited and took off too early. At least he didn't quit on the way back after that. Jokes aside, that lost freebie was pretty painful to watch.