I have never liked the idea of going all in small ball. I think small ball can be used in spurts but not in the expense of trading away all of your big men. What we did with the Capela trade was basically handicapping ourselves and we are forced to play only one way with very little room for adjustment. I’ve never liked the idea of a switching defence. There’s no Golden State this year and this switching defence just showed the laziness of the coaching staff. They can’t come up with a decent defensive scheme so they just said **** it let’s switch everything. All in all, it was still a close game and if it weren’t for Rondo’s uncharacteristically hot shooting, we might have a chance to win this game. But Vogel has outcoached MDA for 2 straight games. The timely double, sagging off Russ and box-and-1 against EG after he went off in the first two game were the reason they won tonight and our offence is going to continue to struggle. But it is what it is. Now how can we still win this series? We’ve got to do it on the defensive end. But ain’t much you can do when a guy like AD who is 7 inch taller than everybody on the court shoots over you and a guy like LeBron who is bigger than any body on the court coming at you like a freight train. They are gonna get theirs and I am pessimistic about it. But I want to see some adjustments from our staff. Put some pressure on the Lakers. Make LeBron harder to catch the ball. Show some fight and grit. Don’t allow him to play one on one. I WANT SOME ADJUSTMENTS! Win or loss I will live with the result!
No, we lack playmakers and just got rid of pointgod. Nobody outside of Harden can create at high bball iq level
1. I dont see how having clint helps us at all in this series. You cannot out size the lakers. Clint wouldnt get anything against mcgee and AD 2. Switching is not "lazy". I dont think our game plan is necessarily wrong. We have dared their role players to beat us as they are not a good shooting team but in both games a flurry of 3s from the bench did us in. We do have to find a way to get more stops so we can play at our tempo. We keep allowing them to get us in a half court game.
Houston gets too few rebounds, but it is the reason for today lose. Roco, Gordon , Tucker disappear today. Rivers and Ben do nothing
You know I never get this statement. At the end of the day the Rockets have one of the best attacking backcourts in the league in Harden, WB, EG and Rivers. Like how many other backcourts in the league have that many guys that are good at beating their man off the dribble?
If playmaking was about beating man off the dribble then Schroeder would be GOAT playmaker. It's about decisions, rhythm, holding the tempo, when to push, when not... reading defense and calling good play, reading offense and calling it on defense. Too many times we run around like headless chickens and it's not playmaking its rather brute force
Usually most teams has only one of those guys, even elite teams. We are supposed to have Harden as that guy. The problem is he's an easy man to shade and dent the ball in late game situations because he only has one method to get open which is hover around the top of the three point line.
There were too many sloppy turnovers and passes. They lacked crispness and urgency. Our rotation was also a mess. Rivers played like the rock was his firstborn. BMac was quiet too. Brodie's shot was definitely flat. Not sure wtf happened to Gordon, but I think the non calls made him hesitant to drive in the 2nd half and he turned into a pumpkin or something. Not many bright spots after they double teamed Harden in the 2nd half. 1st quarter felt bad when we had a small lead despite winning in key stats. Lebron really kept them in the game the 1st half. Not gonna talk much about his b****ing. Dude balled with some hard shots and insane blocks. Rondo has won a chip, so he's gonna have his moments if you let him. Don't talk about law of averages for G4, give him enough credit. He actually remembered it's the ****ing playoffs
I disagree, we have leading playmaker that's for sure but we don't have second fiddle/plan b. Russ was supposed to do it but you know he's brute force and unfortunately it seems like he ran across the bigger force in LeBron and has kind of shrink mentally, not being so aggressive with finishing at the rim. Every top team has multiple playmakers on the team and ideally 2 at the same time for crunch time. We only have Harden, not even backup playmaker. TLDR: in the crunch time while opposing teams plays are run by LeBron, Rondo or AD and your plays run through Jeff Green, RoCo, PJ or House because Harden is doubled and everybody plays hot potato... you are going to ****ing loose lol 9/10
Dude these takes are so fickle. Rondo in no universe is better than Westbrook. The Lakers don't have any backcourt player anywhere in the realm of Westbrook's ability. The dude led the league in assists multiple seasons dude. He's not a high iq playmaker but he's a playmaker. He's just a poor shot maker currently and has been out of the flow of basketball for a while. You had a four month break and then he missed most of the bubble games which means in a normal world this would be a pre-seaaon game for Westbrook in terms of number of minutes back to playing proffesional basketball with opposing teams. Can we at least admit this is a fair criticism of Harden? It isn't the ONLY reason we lost but it's a common theme of Harden's career in the playoffs where he can easily be shut down late in game situations because he's easy to deny the ball to due to how he just hovers in one general area of the court all the time when he doesn't have the ball. Are we also going to pretend that NBA defenses have suddenly discovered the magic of double teams with Harden? You don't think teams try to double Steph, MJ, Kobe, Wade so on and so forth in closing game situations in the 4th quarter? Did you notice all the spots LeBron scored at last night? Did you see in all the manners that LeBron freed himself? Harden if he wanted to be aggressive in the 4th and be known by theedia and fans to have that killer instinct he needs to find ways to free himself and score in other ways besides iso out dribble at the top of the three point line having 5 defenders just standing around and watching you. It's monotonous and allows defenses to key in and deny our most lethal scoring option. I want our most leather scoring option taking buckets in the 4th. Why do people think I'm crazy to want that?
yep, lol rondo is not even better than austin rivers... i bet you any money if hes on lakers he would have killed us just like dort did and just like rondo is killing us right now...
My take is about team-concept basketball. I understand that in the USA all they teach about is 1 on 1 skills but when the defense is tighter, pressure is bigger other skills come to play. Rondo is in no universe better than Westbrook - of course. But that was not the point. And if it comes to doubling Harden - again. Why you give him ball at the start of the possession if he is full court pressed? to gas him even more? If he is trapped at the beginning of the play just so Jeff Green will have to make a play, why you allow to do that as a coach? Jeff Green won't win you games against LeBron. Run a play to give Harden ball on the move so defense can't react and if they double team him off ball you have whole lot of space for easy buckets/shots.
If he is not better than Austin Rivers then why he keeps on poking the ball away from James Harden and Russel Westbrook? His bball mind is in another universe compared to Austin Rivers, only CP can compare when it comes to current point guards
Lakers have arguably the greatest player of all time playing at his highest level and the greatest big man of his generation. Provided they win this series, which looks likely, they will march to the Finals and nobody is going to be able to counter that. Doesn't matter how many Landry Chamets on a rookie deal you have. You can't outplay the contract to 4 wins against that in this atmosphere
