Why do most prescriptions for fixing the Rockets seem to focus on offense?

Agree. Must not be obvious to someone when you hire the assistant in charge of a sucking defense to be the head coach....and assistant without any NBA head coaching experience. LOL. You really can't make this up.

 

The scheme is extremely flawed, it comes down to defensive rebounding. Not having Dmo really hurts. There's a reason James is always flirting with a triple double with rebounds since wings have to crash the boards thus packing the lane.

It's ok when we do collect the rebound but we're out of position when we don't. Think about how many open threes we give up after an offensive rebound! We gotta give up the most second chance points in the league.

 

Answer: Because down in our basketball sub-conscience we remember 10 turnovers by Harden and our season ending largely due to the fact that we are a one-dimensional offensive attack that can be stopped up by the better playoff teams. Additionally down in our basketball subconscience we realize that most playoff teams are very efficient in transition offense and virtually impossible to stop or make less efficient when they are running downhill with man advantage and we realize that our one-dimensional attack puts us in transition defense way too often for us to win a championship.

Diversifying our offense and lowering our turnovers would do more to help our defense than anything else we could do including changing our defensive strategy.

 

I think because we see consistency in Harden and Howard on offensive scoring. But no one else consistently provides. Thornton is a beast but has unplayable deffense (Can we play Jimmer indtead?). Ariza can get hot and that usually helps alot. Other than that we have a bunch of spot up shooters that miss and even though they are supposed ti be defenders, our defence sucks.

 

Yep, OP, that's the real question. These days, we rarely hold a team under 100 points. Our offense is still very good (although hard to watch at times), but our defense is horrible.

 

I think our offensive issues are easier to fix than the defensive issues at this point. IOW, we need to try outscoring the opponent because our defense is just so bad.

But I totally agree that it seems we stopped caring on defense. I've never seen Rockets play defense this bad consistently game after game.

 

People using the good old "eye test"

 

Because Charles Barkley

 

If you have enough offense then you don't need to play defense... Just ask Harden

 

Maybe the Rocket's style of offense: high volume of bricked long range bombs with the combination of a high rate of turnovers leads to easier points for the opponent?

Racket's offense produces a lot for the Rockets... and their opponent.

 

And last season we were ranked 12th. What happened?

 

Part of me feels like if we're going to build around an All-O/No-D star, we may as well go full-Phoenix and just hope for a few anomalous years like last season where the defense clicks. Hope that Capela develops into a legit presence protecting the rim.

I don't even get what's the deal with the D this year. We're getting annihilated on the defensive glass whenever Capela and Dwight aren't sharing the floor, and the decisions guys are making with regards to defensive rotations have at times bordered on insane. Transition D was mostly a disaster last year, so that's not a surprise. But it just seems like this group refuses to communicate on defense.

Honestly, I think for this season the contention ship has clearly sailed, so I just want to maximize the return on whatever assets we choose to deal, and figure things out in the offseason when we hire a new coach.

 

Posting a single game as refutation allows such smugness? LOL Okay.

 

People don't know how to talk about defense as much as offense. Probably because they don't like defensive teams. The knowledge level of defense is low in NBA fans, compared to NFL fans. That's probably because NFL is not constant motion, so you have actual defensive play-calling. In soccer and basketball, it's harder to understand what a defensive coach is coaching and what makes them different.

That said, the Rockets turnovers are about the worst thing affecting our team defense. Turnovers kill you on defense. And that's why JVG, SVG and Thibs all preach the importance of protecting the ball on offense. I find it astonishing how many TOs we commit while also leading the league in 3s. Shooting 3s should translate to less TOs per possession, since you aren't trying to attack the defense as much. And before someone says GSW has a lot of TOs, they don't on a pace-adjusted basis.

 

Shooting 3s, however, also translate to more long rebounds and thus more transition opportunities for the opposition. If you are going to be a high volume 3PT shooting team you need to get back and not crash the glass.

 

I don't buy this theory of connecting 3s to more transition points for opps. It's TOs that does that much more measurably. Offenses that limit TOs are more important than so-called, long rebounding offenses. Besides, corner threes do not careen off towards the FT line. The long rebound thing is just theoretical. They are just as likely to bounce straight up, high, which would give transition defense more time. And even if it's truly a problem, it's offset by the offense already having players positioned to get back.

Also, who says teams shooting 3s "crash the glass?" In fact, who actually crashes the glass on offense anymore at a high rate. NBA defenses have figured that out long time ago that you must stop fast breaks. Detroit Bad Boys had to learn that to beat Bird and Magic teams, who were the best fast breaking teams ever. 76ers were great at transition, too. Defenses learned that long ago.'

Offenses with three-men around the arc actually puts your transition defense in best position to get back vs motion offenses. It's a weakness of motion offenses that they can't get back as well and as coordinated.

 

What's weird is that the Rockets are giving up more points of TOs but
fewer points off fast breaks.