James Harden Played Like the Best Player on the Court in Game 1!

Luc Mbah Moute looks like a totally different player from the regular season. The 2 shoulder injuries he suffered totally killed his shooting. He was awesome for us during the season. Now he is struggling, so is Eric Gordon and Ryno. Nene has been a non factor this season. We had a great bench during the regular season but in the playoffs we are underperforming for sure. Lets focus on the next game and Go Rockets

 

your former username eludes me. what was it? lol

 

only so much you can do when the players around you can't make a shot, finish in the paint, or defend worth a lick.

plus your coach gets outcoached with no adjustments and poor rotations

yeah harden's defense wasn't excellent but neither was anybody else other than maybe capela.

harden aint jordan and even then jordan had hall of fame teammates who played defense and showed up plus a great coach.

 

@mathrocker lol

 

Gotta be better than “not bad at all” to beat the Warriors my man.

 

No, he was really not. Good take though Reggie.

 

He allowed plenty of dribble penetration on one on one defense.

It was his one knock this game. He carried the team otherwise .

 

It’s just 1 game. Time to make adjustments and punch them in the mouth game 2! Let’s go Rockets! I still believe we can win this. Remember what happened in WCF 1995 when spurs went up 2-0 and rox had homecourt advantage in that series initially. Long story short... championship!

 

Harden played great, yes he had some crucial TO but man the game was really unreachable, CP3 played ok could've been better but the guy was aggressive and you can tell he was trying, whats really scary is our bench and our role players were freaking dead man, like they were all negative on the court, it was really discouraging and irking and I think part of it has to do with the fact that our offense is running though Harden and playing Iso throughout the entire game, I don't think MDA will change his entire offensive schemes the next game but man its really really tough to beat that team with this style of play.

 

The game plan for the Warriors was to make Harden work on defense.
He does enough work on offense.

Game 2 adjustments should be more Chris Paul as the main point to save some energy for Harden.

I'd rather have the scoring more evenly distributed, this is the only way we can beat Golden State.

better ball movement.

 

Klay had 28, Curry had 18 and Iggy scored double digits and Young had 3 3pointers. I’m not saying Harden was on them whenever they scored but those 4 would’ve been his main defensive assignments. I do recall Steph getting some easy layups with Harden on him and I can’t count how many wide open 3’s Klay got. Klay had some looks where the defense was blown so bad and he was so wide open you couldn’t even tell who was supposed to be guarding him (good chance it was Harden’s responsibility). Iggy scored 11 points off 2 made field goals. 7-8 at the line and I think Harden sent him to the line on at least 2/4 trips when he got beat.

It’s hard to criticize Harden’s defensive effort though in a game where he had to expend so much energy on offense cause he didn’t have much help offensively and the role players were missing and they didn’t step up on D either obviously.

 

I understand, his teamates should've got his back and played better defense, the guy was literally was doing everything the first half

 

Harden was great but i thought atleast on three or four different occasions he missed Clint on a open lob. I'm suprised how little number of pick and rolls we had out there considering that has been our most reliable offense all season.Another thing we need to do is start the damn offense earlier in the shot clock so we dont give the Warriors defense to get set.

 

I have to wonder, if Warriors wins in 6 or less and Klay ends up taking that huge paycut in the off-season to keep the team together for 3 more years.

Is the West/league just ****ed?

I mean this team is theoretically better than Jordan's Bulls and they ruled the East for all those championship years.

Barring that Lebron joins the Rockets on a team friendly deal while we re-sign all our guys on cheap contracts, I don't see how anyone can beat them when all their stars take role player salaries to create a stacked team.

 

This. Numbers back it up too.

Warriors had 24 assists and only 9 TO’s
Rockets had 18 assist and 13 TO’s

Ain’t nobody overcoming that kind of disparity especially against GSW.

Between Harden and Paul they only had 10 assists. Not nearly enough. I think out of Harden’s 7 assists i’d Imagine at least 5 were to Capela.

In game 2 more Chris Paul as you mentioned especially early on and we need to get the role players involved from the beginning. Especially at home, that’s where role players usually step up. I’d like to see Harden be fresh to try and takeover when the game matters most. 2nd half. Tonight he had 24 in the first half and 17 in second. Most of his damage was done in the 1st quarter. In the second half he was getting tired and the role players had no rhythm cause they stood around and watched Harden from the start.

 

Ariza and Tucker combined for a whopping 9 points on 3-11 shooting and 1-7 from the three point line whilst at the same time Durant and Iggy had 49 points in between them . Our starting SF and PF need to be better from here.

 

Gordon was good

 

Harden always play great in Game 1 for every series.

vs Warrors Game 1
35 14-24 5-09 08-10 1 3 4 7 1 0 4 4 -07 41
vs Jazz Game 1
37 12-26 7-12 10-11 1 7 8 7 1 0 3 2 +15 41
vs Timberwolfs Game 1
41 15-26 7-12 07-09 2 2 4 8 2 0 3 2 +05 44

 

How can you play Gerald Green and Eric Gordon who are known awful defenders that aren't hitting shots? Play Ryno at least he can rebound.

 

He was, and how dare you!