We had the #1-2 defense in the playoffs and the question was if we could play well enough, top 10 defense, to accompany our great offense from an efficiency standpoint to win a trophy. Defense was there for the most part, which did heavily rely on effort so fresh legs, but as a result our offense suffered. I'm not sure MDA recognised this or valued this very much as he simply expected our guys to just do the job - McHale mentality. Aside from adapting to double teams, the most frustrating thing is not recognising tired legs lead to gradual decline in 3pt% in general, but especially how hard we had to work on defense as something the team overall definitely did up until game 3 /4. At this point changing your whole offense, so Westbrook handling the ball and moving Harden off the ball was something preferable, but would probably not have sat well with James. This was Harden and others could've posted up more, gone a bit more to catching the ball on the fly to go for his massively improved floater or at least a more open opportunity from 3. The least we could've done was trying to have Westbrook and Green set the offense up more, the latter who's a very decent passer, with some off the ball screen action to get guys open. Now I while say that our roster was not built necessary for more inside action since we're not big, had never prepared for those double-teams and anything besides a lay-up and 3pt shot, but for an offensive genius MDA simply did not even try to give us different looks. Or maybe he did and guys just didn't execute. In any case, coaching and our stars failed in adapting and our role players are simply not good enough to compensate for a lack of preparation. Had we had some guys from Denver for example, we could've at least tried to have some lob action, some dunk attempts - leading to more FTs or fouls called and forcing the defense to change. Or if Gordon just managed to handle the ball better, Rivers was not such a zero on the court, Ben had been given more minutes and RoCo & Tucker had at least some type of floater / hook shot or push shot in the lane. Green and Harden if we found a way to get him open could've at least provided some more inside action when we needed it. Westbrook and Gordon were great at driving the ball, but with shot blockers there would also have needed to find a way to get Lebron & maybe AD focused on Harden and away from the basket, to get a decent look. Refs would've needed to do their jobs, but that's secondary. All in all, we failed on offense and should people keep in mind when judging our play-off performance and MDA's departure.
Defense was good? Lakers scored at will what are you talking about. We had stretches.. when LeBron sat. Once we got to couple of points of range then Bron was coming back and it was back to -20
As hot as the blazers were, they got cooled off by lakers. It has to be coaching. The first game lakers were confused by the rockets style of play, but Vogel had to counter attack to this style of play, and the rockets from there were beaten 4 games straight. Ironic isnt it? Why couldnt the rockets find a way to change things if they wanted to win? Small ball exposed.. Looks like they could not make any adjustments to the lakers style of play. Its like houston coach was like go ahead keep doing it, play this way it dont matter, it will work, but it didn't. Thats the problem with Mike Style it can be adjusted and doesn't win in the playoffs. Everyone said this before, it gets exposed, you cant run it up and down, and throw 3pt shots up like this and expect things to run smoothly every game if the ball is not going in. What ever happen to running plays to get baskets? lol You get the ball in the hole anyway. The post up game is very important. If i was a coach i would post up players and run layup drills all day. I think the game slowed down is the best. Westbrook is throwing the ball everywhere. Look at the turnovers all these players are so tired, they look lackadaisical sometimes cause there tired and out of control. Houston lacks rebounds, and turn the ball over too much its got to change for them to win. They really need to go back to traditional ball movement, with there is cutters, Post ups and layups. Shooting 2's when players have open shots. I would only take 3's when your open, or in need to get back in the game. Geez One thing is for sure if you double team Lebron then AD kills you. vise versa. Only way to beat Lakers is you need a draymon green and ariza on your team and you know whos guarding who.
It was better than I thought it would be. The rebounding disparity didn't go over 30 or 40 rebound differentials.
Vogel and Billy Donovan both out coached MDA. They made adjustments as the series went on. MDA wouldn’t even extend the rotation when House got suspended. We played three games without House and just expected everyone to play more minutes. Vogel being tossed aside and now actually coaching LeBron to a likely championship is proof that guys like Kenny Atkinson and Joerger Should get long hard looks. We need to find our long term coach and I think those guys plus Finch and Silas are most likely to be guys who are analytics friendly but also willing to adjust on the fly.
