luc was injured. green is a decent 8th or 9th situational guy but not the first guy you want to bring off the bench. nene is solid but not for this matchup
I was actually part of the group that thought Joe Johnson would hurt this team too much on defense to play this series, but in the few minutes he played tonight, he was actually very good on defense. His rotations were always correct and he did a great job of communicating. He could have easily gotten more minutes. I was also part of the group that thought Ryan Anderson hurt this team too much on defense to play this series (or ever, really). We were all correct. Dude was an absolute liability on defense and every second he was on the floor sunk this team even deeper.
The "Fire D'Antoni" calls are pretty ridiculous, but no doubt that in a few days when the front office has their meeting with D'Antoni, he certainly needs to be warned that if he runs a 7 man rotation in the first round of the playoffs next year, win or lose, it will be his last year coaching in Houston. I think he earned another season at least here again though. No reason to not bring this team back in its entirety.
Fair points. If I remember right, the move was a counter to Kerr's Hack-A-Capela. He could have done the same to Nene, though Nene was equally as bad in G1 as Anderson was in G7 on D. I agree that Joe Johnson could have used more time, and go ahead and run offensive plays for Anderson if they're going to insert him. But yeah, this was just a strategic error that needed on-the-fly adjustment and MDA and (I forgot the assistant's name) and the Rockets aren't so great at that. They were just asking to get abused on defense with the Ryno D isos and hoping to survive vs logically expecting not to be hurt. Trap, stunt, rotate, go behind...there are so many different things that could have been implemented as an alternative to getting smoked 1-on-1.
Rockets had a deep bench, unfortunately they all forgot how to play basketball. Anderson and Luc playing to their potential could have made a huge difference in this series.
Wow, cmon man I expect better from you. You know thats not true. You know Luc and Anderson were getting minutes and Anderson just went ......idk and Luc got hurt.
NO its not, they had key injuries to their players. I followed those Suns i know, it wasnt because of short rotaitons good lord.
That’s what I thought too. Johnson played fine in the first half. He did well handling the ball, controlling the pace, posting up and passing out for quality shots. For the life of me I didn’t understand why Ryan got to play in the second even though he was being torched but hardly no Joe Johnson who could have provided some rest for some guys and could have helped controlled the pace when the Rockets were just jacking up a bunch of threes.
You dont know anything about basketball It the grand scheme of things, the defense wasnt the issue, if we had done other things, they would have broken us down. Theres a reason we held them to a relatively low score and it was because of our switching.
I have to agree with the sentiment that Kerr out-coached MDA. Now of course Kerr has better top end talent (edit: and jeebus those refs banged the Rockets hard in game 7 no doubt), but he still made the better adjustments in this series. If MDA coached the Warriors, we would see zero playing time for Looney, Nick Young, and very little Bell . It'd be the Death Lineup plus Shaun Livingston. Why? Because Looney and Young suck on D, get lost on O, and have very little positive value. But Kerr knew that and still played and throughout the series got them to contribute, particularly Looney. Looney went from an offensive 0 (other than O rebounds) to rolling harder and setting off-ball screens off of rolls that lead to open shooters because Harden (or whoever was on Looney) didn't guard him. Kerr found ways to make it work. The same thing occurred on defense, where both teams mirrored each other a lot in style, but the Warriors mixed it up some with adding traps, hedges, help and recovers to their PnR defense. And once David West got burned on isos, he didn't play again. And when Durant was taken out in game 1 while hot, Kerr put him back in quickly. These are the immediate and necessary adaptions that an elite coach needs to make. Kerr is very conservative, but went outside his own box this series and this playoffs (going death lineup to start). MDA knew that Nene and Ryno sucked at iso defense and still played them to have iso defense. Other players could have fought the switch much harder with position and forced the iso against Nene/Ryno later in the shot clock, but no. When weaker defenders played in the game, the Rockets almost invited the switch...the defenders with treated like they had the same skill set as Ariza/CP3/Gordon/Tucker. They don't. You had to do something else on defense and you had to use them to attack on offense too. These adjustments weren't made. If we don't get LeBron, I don't know if MDA is quick enough to adjust to win it all. This problem can be nullified with 8 players who can defend and score, and adapt on the court. LeBron helps that a lot. A healthy CP3 quarterbacking the club helps that too. The Warriors made offensive adjustments throughout the series and Rockets didn't counter those with defensive adjustments. I also think their great game 4 and game 5 defensive execution diminished in games 6 and 7 because of a combination of lacking adjustments and fatigue (mental and physical).
That is correct; however, a great switching defense needs great switching players to execute it. You can't put defensive liabilities in the game and expect not to get burned on isos. They needed to add more variations to their D when bad switch defenders were in the game. The Warriors did it, for example, but many times by pre-switching and confusing the Rockets enough so that they couldn't find the weak link until late in the shot clock.
