The Thunder play with a lot of energy. They MISS a lot of shots. BUT they gets tons of REBOUNDS. It is all about the rebounds folks. You can't let Adams, Grant and Westbrook out quick you and out physical you. Last year in the playoffs Nene was HUGE for the Rockets here. He stunk last night. Capela was a ghost. Rockets just need to match the intensity and rebound better and they can outlast the Thunder. The Thunder are interesting. They might be the one playoff team that has the highest variance to having a LOW "floor" but a HIGH "ceiling." They are volatile. Rockets are better than them, but the Thunder's ceiling allows them to be dangerous for anything. But the floor holds them back, ultimately.
Can beat them.... just would rather them play GS and tire them off.... that series would be more fun anyways because of the history.
Rockets were up 7 with 6 or 7 minutes left in the game. Rockets have only collapsed like that in winning time only a handful of times throughout the season (one coming against Portland the last game). This weird collapse with CP3 hardly touching the ball down the stretch has convinced me the Rockets tanked. I'm just hating the tweets coming out of OKC about Abrines and Westbrook saying they wanted to guard Harden.
CP3 did not touch the ball much because he was being defended well first by Patrick Patterson then by Paul George. But yeah... the team didn't seem to be trying extra hard. The regular rotation guys were out there, but they were just...
Of course they are. We still should be able to handle them, even at their best. Our top 2 are better than their top 2 and their third star doesn't make up for their lack of depth, particularly compared to ours. But if we play poorly at the end of games (we can usually make up the first 40-43 minutes of bad play) and they play well, they can beat us -- even in a 7 game series. Not having anything really to play for, other than to bring OKC closer to death and maybe lure PG13, and no E.G. Or Ryno, it's not a good sample of what to expect in the playoffs. Still, I'd rather avoid them and play the other 5 teams that don't pose as much of a threat.
I know Anderson is way over paid but the spacing he provides is very important. We had 2 key players out and still should have won. The refs where terrible and we still should have won. Give us EG and Anderson back and I still bet we sweep them . If not in 5 games. Let Warriors play them in the 1st round without Curry and Warriors will lose in the first round.
I think people are making a big deal about yesterday's game, but I'll be the honest the loss did leave a bad taste in my mouth. Here are some positive things to take away, Rockets were up 1 at the half and played a very average game without an Eric Gordon our 3rd best player. Lastly this was ideally the Thunder's best shot vs a game we did not care about. If you want me to be honest they are going to be a tough team but how many of you think we would lose in a 7 game series to them?
What did the team expect d after letting that game go. harden didn’t know what to do when they double teamed him and Capela was lost. The refs had a lot to do with it too. Those changed calls and calls on okc favor like that offensive foul on Nene help Okc a ton and gave them a couple of runs. But if Harden had played like he cared I wouldn’t have mind. It’s annoying when he goes into that mod, which is pretty much every time they defend him closely or double team him. Would have been better to have the bench in instead. Then I knew the media would make a big deal out of this and not only today but until and if we face them in the playoffs. They already call them the biggest thread to the warriors this whole season and now they have an excuse to say we might lose to them if we match up. I just wanted us to play like this game matter like if this was game 7 and see how we played idk why we didn’t play Eric. They said he was just been rested as a prevention. But Eric is always attacking against okc and giving us spacing same for Ryan. Either we should have bench harden Paul too or played with everyone. I wanted to eliminate them already from going to the playoffs and see what the media said after they didn’t even make the playoffs Man the playoffs can start soon enough the week is gonna drag forever.
