im with you how hard can it be to just stay on your man. If i was mchale i would just bench whatever player on the perimeter that is not doing it. If its harden or parsons in the 4th so be it ! I rather get a point across and let them know how important defense is and take a L, vs letting them play 40mins and going out and doing the same thing everygame and still take a L. Someone time a coach has to step up and demand respect on D. They dont have to play to D because at the end of the day they know mchale not going to do nothing about it. BENCH EVERYBODY
1. You can't expect Harden to play good defense if he is asked to play 24 minute straight in the second half. Quality PT > quantity PT. Coach made the choice of offense over defense when Harden played the whole half. 2. Our big man not hedging hard on PnR's. Bigs are just as much as fault as our guards who get stuck on picks. If this is by designed, then it's on the coaches! 3. Our defense is never aggressive. We let the opposition offense come to us. If defense is reactionary and fails badly, change it into attacking defense by trapping their ballhandler. Traps are a sign of aggressive D and we NEVER ran traps! 4. No game plan. Our defense is one-size fits all. Something is majorly wrong if defense ended up with Lin or Bev contesting Dirk's shots on multiple occasions. Should've put Asik in and shadowed Dirk on every play. Playing against Clippers, defensive game plan should have one objective: TAKE THE DAMN BALL OUT OF CP3'S HAND! Instead, we let CP3 ball hogged and wrecked havoc on our D.
I thought McHale plays Beverley over lin for defense purpose as many bullying pre-12 posters assumed. I sincerely hope it were the case and hope the result had showed up. the reason i said many time Beverley's defense is overrated by many posters here. his defense is solid but not spectacular. he is good at ball pressure defense and tends to like to chase loose ball. other than that, he is average on all other parts of defense. to expect our defense will be improved by adding him into the starting lineup is a day dream. I am an old school. if you look at all my posts, i prefer defense over offense.
Agg, I look at Bev starting differently... a) Bev fits in with the starting unit for the mere fact is that he is not heavily needed for scoring, so that alone makes him a better fit. b) You need scoring from your bench so at this point Casspi and Lin can help in that area.. Every championship team has a player that can come off the bench with instant offense.. Ala Vinny "Microwave Johnson and "Sam Cassell. As for defense, in this day and time of how the rules are Bev is a very good defender, but he has a lot to learn. The problem is that the rockets are not playing TEAM defense and that is the key. With the rules are as they are today you have to have a great team defense. No disrespect to any fans on this board but Lin and Hardin both would struggle if they played in the late 70's are 80's. Today's game has no hand checking or bumping.. It's a hands off game now. The biggest problem the team is struggling with right now is understanding their role and playing as a team. Once they understand those two things all will be fine with the team. This is a very young team that has to learn each other and how to play with each other. Hubie Brown and other announcers have made this comment.. "This is a young team and they have a long ways to go before they reach their ceiling". T_Man
i am talking about defense. no bev vs lin. who starts is up to McHale. i go with whatever his decision is even i disagree. the last game is the first time he really separated starters and backups. if you look at playing time you know what i am talking. this is what is supposed to be when you have your starting lineup. i just warn those posters who are high on Beverley's defense.
Team defense can only go as far as the weakest link. No matter many elite defenders you put around Harden, the team defense is going to bad as long as Harden plays no defense. Think about "Domino" effect. You cann't unplug a hole to fill another hole. Soon, you will have holes all over the place. This is why Hard must put efforts in defense and play at least "accetable" defense. Let other player driving by him and then trying to poke the ball is pathetic .
agree. everyone has to pay attention on defense. with one all around defense player, like battier, will help our defense. battier is an elite defender. beverley is not. so using superior defense to describe beverley as some posters did insults battier.
Actually, Heat's starting line-up includes all good to elite defenders 1-5 by position. Especially, Lebron James, their best player, is also the best defender. This is why they won btb.
From what I observed, Asik was just going through the motions when he was out there. I would much rather have seem DMO out there than Asik - which is really sad considering how solid Asik was last season.
When we score 120 points and lose, it's hard to take seriously somebody who blames the whole thing on poor offense in the fourth quarter.
Not to mention 12 consecutive possessions in the final minutes were the other team scored on WIDE OPEN shots. I get that the late game offensive execution isn't great, but its the least of their late game problems. If you'd guard someone i'd help get stops which helps this team get easier buckets.
On the flip side, defense takes considerable time to develop while our offense is already at an Elite level. So in the long run you would ideally want a stronger defense, but in the reality of the present, you can't just say to the team "Play better defense!" and necessarily expect them to suddenly step up their game when they've played dodgy defense all season. In terms of winning the Mavs game, our chances of winning would probably have been substantially higher if they'd just gone with high paced ball movement until the final 90s instead of 4 mins of dribble/iso half court basketball (one of our weaknesses). Essentially, playing our brand of basketball (defensive warts and all) built up our tremendous lead. Letting the Mavericks lead us away from our strengths into a half-court game due to fear of letting them catch up became self-fulfilling. Was defense a one of the reasons they caught up? Yes. However so was getting away from our offensive strengths.
Defense was a problem the whole game and in particular the 4th because they scored 36, but we only scored 19 pts. -17 in a quarter is horrible. If you're able to stop a run with a bucket at least you can slow the momentum. A little better offense in the 4th and maybe we're able to survive with a win.
I see this confusing too. On offensive side, coaches keep saying that the ball was sticky and should have more movement, yet they put a good ball movement player Lin on bench, and let Beverley start, since he "fit" better by put ball in Harden's hand. On defensive side, coaches keep saying we need James to defend better, yet they put Lin on bench and Beverley to start because Beverley could cover up James's shortcoming in defense. To me it is like, you are making sure ball goes to James Harden's hand and you are wishing for ball movement, and then you are covering James Harden's lazyness in defense and hoping the whole team improve the team defense on top of missing one player on the defensive side. So basically it is like we are trying to put all the eggs in one basket, that is James Harden. Offense will depends on James plays super good, or willing to share, and defense depends on him too, as he drags down the whole team defense. Since everything go through him, and he is playing 40+ min/game, Rocket team performance rely on Harden play well and smart in all 4 quarters. Only half a quarter problem with Harden, the team lost 10+ lead and lost the game. That's too much pressure on Harden for sure.
This team plays horrible defense .... How the hell are they this bad with Howard in the middle and Jones blocking ~2 shots a game. Oh , the guards think they are bullfighters instead of ... defenders.
We have problems with the zone defense so far. Coaches should figure out how to teach players to attack it. On defense, we have particular problems with pnr. When they force us to switch, we have all kinds of match-up problems. One step at a time. You think the players aren't frustrated with the close losses? At least we were on the verge of winning another game. Let them figure it out.
We really don't play horrible defense. It is bad at times, but Ellis/Dirk weren't getting layups, they were hitting long shots. Playing two youngsters in Bev/Jones doesn't help, as they can't quite recognize all the plays just yet, but that will improve. A defensive anchor would help. We might consider swapping Asik for KG, which would be a big improvement. I really wish he could get Favors, that would be the perfect long term fit.
Reminds me of the wooden bucket theory. The shortest plank is the maximum level of water the bucket can hold.
Problem is Parsons and Harden. You can't have two perimeter players that doesn't play defense. Harden doesn't need to play good defense, he just needs to be average. He is by far one of the worst defenders at his position. Parsons should excel on defense because of his size, but it's just not happening.
