Prediction: would McHale still running Harden ISO?

Agree.

 

Why are you hating so much on Lin, though? And I'm not even talking about those who hate on Harden. People attack Lin all the time, you don't see me dogging Harden in the manner you just did. And what if the OP said cant I just criticize a player without being called a hater, you do realize that would be bs, right? Stop the hate y'all.

 

actually i would rather have harden score 30 pts a game and defend like michael jordan.

 

Why such hate? You do realize that Lin is the pg, right?? Its his job to hold the ball, control the tempo, look for seams by "dribbling around" and spread the wealth. It's true with most true pgs. Lin's isos are r****ded as well. It's like Mac gives him the ball saying, here, it's your turn. That is what ugly isos are. Isos are for exploiting mismatches and to manage the clock with minimal chance or things going awry typically at the end of quarters, not for 4,5,6 minutes at a time like we resorted to too often last year.

 

That is not his job.

His job is to bring the ball up the court, look for transition opportunities before the defense is set. If there is nothing there, he passes to Harden who initiates offense. The sooner LOF's understand this, the better we all will be.

 

Huh? If there is a true mismatch, a team should exploit it for as long as it can. Yes, the Rockets ended up with more isolations than they wanted. I expect the number of Harden isolations will go down this season. Harden did not have training camp with the Rockets. OKC runs a lot of isolations. It is natural for Harden to default to what he knows when the offense breaks down. Hopefully with Howard and a training camp, Harden's isolations become much fewer.

To note, the Rockets were the 6th best offense last season with only one star, were incredibly young, and had one returning starter.

 

I must have parsed my sentence wrong somewhere, cuz that's actually what I said, that isos are for when there is a mismatch or in clock management situations, and not to be overused once the other team figures out a way to stop it, if they do that is. Last year, it was excruciating to watch isos lead to stagnance with no results, only to do it again and again. I do blame the coach for that though there are a lot of reasons for why it was difficult to develop a playbook together last year, though I was tiring of hearing Mac blame the idiocy of the youngsters for everything again and again.

And if you think about what you said, that we had a wonderful offense with only 1 star, you have to wonder if some of our players actually played better than we gave them credit for. I can totally understand Parsons exuberance on their chances to be a great team, even before Howard came along. I do believe in our core and that includes Harden, Lin, Asik, and Parsons, and now Harden. It's gonna be a fantastic year. Having coached for a while now, I will be paying close attention to how McHale has improved or adapted next year to decide whether to support his tenure here or not, just as a dancer would be critical of dance moves in a movie, or a fighter who sees a movie to see how accurate or inaccurate the choreography is, I can't help but see things from a pg/coaching point of view much more critically than I'd like.

 

Good point that OKC ran a lot of isolations (and still does). That probably influenced Harden.

 

LOL Yao went to work.

 

Man if Harden run a lot of ISO plays this season. Jokers on here will be pissed.

 

I wouldn't care that Harden ISOs as long as he makes a good, quick decision.

What I have issues with is what we saw last season. Dribbling out the entire clock then dumping it off to a teammate with 3 seconds left. Taking really terrible contested step-back three pointers again and again when there are open teammates around him who have better shots available.

These tendencies got worse towards the end of the season and especially in the Playoffs. My hope is that now with Dwight on the team he will not fall into these bad habits as often.

 

Nothing wrong with isos. Except that oftentimes last year, it was not strategy but rather a lack of strategy that led to the isos. As an example, if you have prime Shaq, you feed him all day. If you have Harden with a mismatch, you feed him all day, but if it is not a clear mismatch you run your offense to get everyone involved and enthusiatic about running the floor. I love Harden's game. He's a budding superstar of the highest order and I only backed off from an even more Harden-centric offense when I saw that he was struggling with so many similar sets run for him again and again.
We shall see how Mac decides to run the offense this year. I know he comes from a background of playing with an all time great who played the point forward position a lot, but I don't think Harden is the playmaker that Bird was, and in this situation you would have to depend on your pg to make the plays.

 

how smart he is? if the teammate made the shot, he gets an assist. If not, nothing goes wrong toward his stats.

 

How can a Rockets fan have issues with Harden iso plays?? Harden IS the offense, boys. It goes through him. And Harden incorporates his iso plays in a way compatible within a team-play. The guy average 26 ppg, got us into the Playoffs and you bumming about his iso plays? Delusionalism. Smh.

I don't see anything wrong with Harden making a pass with 3 or 4 seconds on the shot-clock. You gotta understand the team makeup: they are shooters, and they shoot. Harden holding the ball until 3 seconds and pass it off to C.Delfino, is good team play. Delfino is a shooter. He doesn't need a lot of time to get off a shot. He catch and shoot. That's the personell we had and Harden utilize it correctly.

What's bad iso play is when Jeremy Lin dribble into the interior of the defense and then try to fight his way out of it; burning up the shot-clock and wasting a possession. You don't see that in Harden's game. I would expect if Lin get into the interior of the defense, he got a man set-up around the rim or at the perimeter to take the pass and score. However, Lin don't do that.

He drive it in, dance around the interior of the defense and then fight his way out of it and give it up to Harden. A complete waste of time and effort.....and b.s. And I really like J.Lin.

 

Uhhhh what.
Disagree here. There's a difference between creating open looks for shooters and shovelling the ball off with no clock left for someone to jack up a contested 3. Thats what frustrates people. It's the right play for Harden to isolate, cause the defence to shift and then give it to a shooter, but it isnt really when its just shovelling the ball on.

 

You exaggerating with the "shoveling the ball." I watched Harden when he got the ball in iso. He's looking at the clock, doing his iso; getting the defense to focus totally on....all eyes on him and right when it looks like he's about to shoot it because of the shot-clock winding down, he rip a pass to a perimeter guy. It doesn't look CP3-ish but, it's good team play.

He can definitely work on getting that pass off while on the move than being a bit stationary on the perimeter but it's good team play. Garcia, Parsons, Delfino, Lin and Bev wasn't complaining. Most are good shooters and they don't need a lot of time to get off a shot.

 

Yeah James did that a lot this past season. And agreed that sh** is very frustrating.

 

That is not a good team play,,bwhahahahaahaha..Man what are you talking about. You can best believe his teammates are saying Harden what are you doing, shoot that B.

Dude sometimes will wait until the last second and pass the ball. That's a freaking turnover, wasted possession 9 times out of 10.