McHale is doing a solid job. Guys are playing hard, and he's sorting out his rotations so you can't beat him up to hard there just yet. Give the guy time. But the players seem to respond to him and seem to execute his strategy - so they do listen to him, and the intelligence is there in the court. You can see it. No issue with McHale so far. The Lakers toyed with the Rockets, let it stay close, and than they decided it was time to close out the game and did just that. They are the better team. They have more size upfront, and a superstar who we, nor many others can stop. Once they asserted themselves in the 4th, it was over. Our team is a bunch of role players. A very good cast of Role players. If you add a healthy T-mac and Yao to this group, we'd be the favorite to win. Sadly we are just a .500 team for now and the future. But I don't think anyone should be frustrated with this game. The players nor the coaches - they played as well as could be expected from them They just were beat by a better, bigger team.
Considering how well the Lakers shot, how terrible Martin shot, how many more rebounds the Lakers got, and how many more FT attempts they were given, it is amazing we only lost by 9 points.
I agree completely. That was a horribly officiated game. I cannot believe the free throw disparity between the two teams.
Anybody else notice Scola only had 2 points after the half? He disappeared in the 4th qtr. Maybe he was tired?
KM settling for perimeter shots, I don´t give a crap if the rules have changed, just keep being aggressive and stop being afraid of getting blocked in the paint. Scola, don´t know why people don´t say this, but Scola looks old. He looks slower then he did last year, though I give him credit for still being able to score at a nice clip. Putting Scola on Bynum/D12 is just putting him in a position to look bad, don´t know why McHale does this (even for limited mins). Bud played at his max, which is great because that is all you can ask a player, but in my mind that indicates how low of a ceiling he has. Once again, Hill is not a Center, against teams like LA/Memphis I take raw/scrub/bust (whatever you want to call ) Thabeet at Center over Hill. Lowry, regardless of how good he is, what he is doing is just heart, ashamed that he is putting 150% into everything, and other guys are just "playing hard". I know I would be ashamed of myself if I saw a guy on my team just carrying us alone, while I stand in the perimeter shooting 3s, or just let guys rebound over me, there is no aggressive attitude in this team other then Lowry, IMO. I don´t know why we rushed Paterson, this guy is not ready to play, why are we rushing a young kid, that still has a lot to play in his life, when we can play Dal/Thabeet Scola/Hill rotation, and wait until PAT can return and be a real force. On paper this was a lost game from the beginning, it just seems like avoidable mistakes are made, which makes a difficult situation impossible. This is not a bad loss, but with the current schedule, we can be 2-5 with easy, we need to win against better teams. This is why people are excited for the possibility of Cousins, because regardless of how bad he has played this year/ how bad is attitude is, we would not get bullied inside like we did yesterday, it is that simple.
I noticed that Pat seems to be out of rhythm, settling for jump shots, no post game what so ever. I'd really like to see him take that next step and become a quality 4.
Lol, if Kobe feeds Bynum more he goes for 40 on us. That was Westbrook-esque. I'm not too upset with this one, these guys were motivated and they beat us. Also, Clutch could we please get video of Chase vs. World Peace, that thing was beautiful.
All in all, the Rockets just missed too many shots. I believe they had 16 more shot attempts than the Lakers. At one point they weren't even attempting to go inside. They just can't afford to live by the three.
Wow... great post, and I can't find anything here to disagree with. I did think Scola was close to Lowry in intensity last night... there a few times when he tried to urge on the team with his own play and encouraging others (closest I saw anyone not named Kyle demonstrating leadership). While the "points in the paint" were statistically closer last night than it seemed, it seems that unless Dalembert is in the game the opponents will eat us up inside (points and rebounding). We need big players, not undersized PFs that prefer to shoot jumpshots. One reason I was disappointed that the Rockets selected Parsons over Tyler, or kept Adrian over Smith... we keep avoiding size players and then wonder why we get pushed around by teams like LAL, MEM, and OKC. Offensively, we need to quit settling for the jumpshot. I have a saying when coaching young players: "What happens when you go to the basket? Good things happen." We have players that can drive to the hoop. Twill, Lee, Dragic, even CBud and Martin. We can't complain about foul calls if we play soft and shoot jump shots while the other teams drive to the hoop. Martin's head is really messed up right now. He doesn't drive since he isn't getting flop calls. And he didn't shoot (or at least didn't shoot with confidence). I do see him trying harder of defense so when he isn't scoring he does try to contribute in other ways, but he is really on the court to score. So he needs to keep shooting, and if he isn't hitting the outside shot he has to drive and try to score other ways, including getting to the line.
I agree about Thabeet over Hill. Early in the game it seemed that they would be having trouble dealing with their size on the boards all night.
He´s still coming back from injury so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt BUT, that´s what he has been up to this point in his short career, a jump shooter. He has looked awkward -unable to get a comfortable shot over his defender- 70% percent of the times he has tried to score on post-ups. I see his teammates have been looking for him anyways -more so than to Jordan Hill, who has shown more flashes than him- so I assume Patrick has something new to showcase, but we haven´t seen it yet.
On an unrelated note, did anyone see that zone we put on at the end of the first half? It was Lowry, Dragic, Lee, with TWill at PF and Scola at C. For a couple of plays Budinger subbed in and we still did ok, and then Parsons took Bud's spot and made a couple of mistakes. We started the run down 7 or so and ended it up 1 before we took a timeout. It looked really effective at disrupting their passing since we got about three steals. Why we didn't return to this defense in the second half I do not know. It was real fun to watch!
