Yes those are concerns but the reality is you do not have to address any of them. If you just bring back Lin Parsons and Asik we still win. Add a healthy Harden and we win big and we are on an 11 game winning streak with a 16-4 record. Instead of 13-7.
And we'll have a regular season to fondly remember when we're soundly defeated in the first round of the playoffs for not addressing those problems...
Harden said he was committed to improving his defense. It's time to show the result like Lin did and quit the too much offensive load B.S. The Rockets have a bunch of talented offensive players. If Harden were to spend more energy on defense, other Rockets are more than capable of picking up the drop off on offense. Perhaps the injuries to those guys are blessings in disguise because the team can no longer mask its deficiencies with wins. Fixing it now is better than losing it later.
1. Harden was not playing like a rookie, dummy rookie. 2. McHale failed to recognize that and he kept him playing even though he was sucking.
Yes, the concerns that you listed are definitely not knee jerk reactions as they've been big issues since the 1st game of the season. However, there were some crazy knee jerk threads like "with harden, we can't win a championship" along with posts (serious ones) saying that we should trade him and that hes being exposed.
Yah, I would put that more to the Suns not being able to hit WIDE open jumpers than anything on our defense. The number of open mid-range jumpers that they missed was the ONLY thing that was keeping us in the game.
Yes, it could have been much, much worse. During that long stretch in the 3rd quarter the Suns played horrible on offense, didn't even look like an NBA team, turnovers, missed layups, missed open shot after open shot. We were lucky to still be in the game.
Crazy how quick you guys turn on the guy who turned the franchise around. How come it wasn't so bad last season?? Dude is injured and struggling. Saw hardly any drives to the rim last night, that's not the James Harden I know. Hope his foot heals ASAP so I can come back to these threads and read the same users telling everyone how good he is. Smh
The lack of drives wasn't Harden's foot. The lack of drives was Phoenix's defensive plan. They put a long defender on Harden, hedged the weak side any time Harden even thought of driving, angled him towards his weak side and towards the base line, physically faced him up and made it hard to even pass to Harden, and any time he got past the first defender they had 2-3 bodies forming a wall in the driving lane. They took away Harden's driving lane, took the ball out of his hands and made him uncomfortable all night. And with Parsons and Lin out, there was nobody on the team good enough to relieve the pressure on Harden.
The Rockets have played very poorly since middle of the San Antonio game, really. They were lucky to win that game in the end. The Spurs were getting better shots than us at the end. I usually defend McHale, but if Harden isn't playing D because of his offensive load, then its the coach's job to see that and find a way to shift the offensive load to others.
pretty sure you would have sex with a big bubble butt booty if it offered you free sex. who would turn down free sex?
imagine how those well respected posters would spit all over you, if you put this thread up after a win. There are so many so called true Rockets fans here cannot distinguish between loving the team and loving the team with insights.
