Mitchell & McHale discuss what is ailing the Rockets defense

Also almost none of the players especially harden never commit to a second effort to recover after a missed steal attempt. When they whiff, they literally just stand there and give up on the defensive possession. That's just a lack of pure effort. The reasons for that maybe up for debate. Maybe the team isn't conditioned well yet or maybe the coach holds no accountability.

 

funny because Harden +/- is better than Westbrooks or Capelas and this by far, random Harden hate?

 

Harden's lack of effort on D, constantly blaming teamates for his mistakes are a problem - IMHO, he is a Robin, not a Batman, and could really use a strong coach or player to hold him accountable.

They tried that with CP3, and Harden b****ed about CP3 calling him out and he was run out of town - so, we are stuck - Harden is a great scorer - but he won't win a ring as the top dog.

I am slowly getting towards trading him and Russel and starting over.

DD

 

He's not a good defensive player, especially off-ball or on the perimeter. He's good in the post. No one is blindly hating or jocking.

 

I think if things don’t pan out this season (i.e. break out of the 2nd round), this could be the end of Morey-MDA-Harden era. They don’t really have a window anymore. With this aging roster and cap space, it’s all downhill from now. I bet at least two of them will be gone. It’s been a good run

 

That comment was geared towards McHale.

Harden sabotaged Kevin hissy-fit style after sitting thru the comeback Game 6 vs LAC -- a game we WON mind you. He's an all-time offensive talent (regular season) but severely lacks leadership. This is even more evident when he doesn't have the ball in his hands on offense. Standing around is just another form of pouting.

 

113 through october for last year.....i wanna count that wizards game as outlier though. So its probably closer than we realize.

 

its hard for old fat ppl to get back on defense lol.....

it is what it is, we'll be ok in about 15 more games....

 

Drtg or PPG?

Why would that be counted as an outlier? Or... why not count the first half of the Bucks game as an outlier - they only gave up 50 points as the Bucks were clearly rusty

 

Defensive rating

Cause we were actually playing good defense in the Bucks game...we even out rebounded them. And that Wizards performance really was an outlier as bad as our defense was.

 

I'm going to hold off on making any definitive conclusions about a player based on individual +/- with a six game sample size. After all, Russ was 29 points worse than Harden in +/- last night (and had the worst +/- apparently of any Rocket player since they started tracking the stat).

It's not irrelevant, and doesn't make the one game an outlier necessarily... I'm just not going to draw any conclusions quite yet.

Moreover, at the end of the day, even with his shortcomings, and my Harden hate (not random), he's still a top player in the league... of course.

 

We gave up 67 points in the second half and 39 in the fourth quarter. If I look at average opponent points by half, they are giving up an average of 63.5 points per half (lol). The first half against the Bucks was 21% below that. First half against the Wizards was 21% above that... but the second half was 28% above that. So one half of the Wizards game was an outlier thus far.

In any case, through 6 games and 24 quarters, they've given up 40+ points in a quarter 4 times already and 35+ points in a quarter 9 times already. YIKES!!

 

Althought CP3 had slowed down considerably and was no longer a great man on man defender he was a great general and still pretty good at defense himself. He ran the team on both ends. Barked orders and had guys in the right spots and proper rotations.

These guys are both lost out there and not trying but in spots.

 

This.

And just saying, but even if he doesn't have a ton of mileage on his shoulders since he came late into the league, PJ is still 34, playing him 35 minutes per game from the start of the season is not going to end well, think about Ariza.

 

That's probably more because we had a ton of inuries and we were literally forced to play like 7/8 guys from the start, if i remember well.

 

Harden was the worst transition defender I have ever seen in my life on ANY level when he played for McHale. So no. I'm not watching the video.

 

Harden snd Westbrook are not guarding anyone. That's the problem. They just reaching and gambling on D. Also the switching defense needs to retire. Capel is not good on the perimeter and there is no communication. CP talks on defense these guys don't minus Tuck.

 

I mean we do know for sure the Wizards game is an outlier, as for the rest of the season we really dont know THAT much. Teams are hitting their shots at above their expected rates, lets give it till the quarter of the season before we really start discussing trends. So yea it looks bad but you shouldnt say we cant turn it around because we started off last year with pretty horrid defense as well. And it didnt change even when we took out Melo, it took awhile.

 

I think it was just Harden and Cp that were injured...in any case even when both were in the lineup we were still getting blown out and our defense was still bad.

 

The obvious and right answer: Jeff Bzdelik