Fair, but most teams this year are riddled with key injuries. Talking about injuries....a break for the Rockets with key injuries for OCK, Clippers, and Phoenix. Those teams will be feeling it in the long term.
This team has "issues," it is games like this that cause me to wonder if they are even going to make the playoffs.
The Rockets defense was fine. They lost because no one other than Harden and Howard bothered to show up. If Lin doesn't play well there is literally no one else worthy of being on the court. The Rockets starting SF had 0 points the last two games... Brooks has to play in crunch time when he shouldn't.. Same with Garcia. This is a game we win with Parsons, Lin playing well or possibly if Beverly is healthy... But right now we are what we are, Harden/Howard and a bunch of castoff chumps.
I posted that to prove that paying someone an avg of 22 million equates the same results as paying someone 8 million for the same play !!! You just to naive to grasp that Delfino missed 15 games last year Patterson, Morris and Douglas missed games before they got traded Harden and Parsons missed games Injuries are apart of the game just ask Thunder, Bulls and Nets. The other opposing team could give a rats ass about this team injuries when that ball goes up at tip-off
Celtics up on GSW @ the half. A GSW loss is the ONLY thing that could salvage this night for me. Please, Lord?
You know what I learned from this game? Damn, this team looks ugly without Chandler Parsons and I mean that in more than one way. The team really, really needs him to come back soon.
Well, the foot over the line at the end was the proverbial straw that ruined the camel's back, at least for me. It's not like we haven't struggled with our defensive rotations all season, so I'm more used to that sort of blunder, I guess. :-(-
Agreed on Garcia perhaps. But Brewer saw pretty much zip minutes till the last two and pretty much worst by Greg. I'm not excusing Brewer for playing for a total of 48 minutes with 0 points, but if you sit too much that's what happens to you. Good solid NBA players get rot on the bench all the time. A good NBA coach should understand that it's an 82 game marathon not a single game sprint, so you need to give more players more consistent minutes. Otherwise, you throw them out and they are going to choke!
I was more angry about the late turnover out of a timeout, with 25 seconds left. The turnover where AB blindly pass the ball to, I think it was Harden.
I was more angry with the missed FTs. That shiat has been going on like for ever. Can we practice how to make FT for once. Fire McHale!
I think you are partially wrong here unless Asik comes back. No brainer that CP is missed as his other half in Brewer managed to get 0 points in 48 minutes. The Rockets is okay offensive without Howard, but they will suck big time without him on the defensive side so I feel Howard is as or more important.
Totally agreed! The lack of awareness of three point line finally came back and bit him in the a$$ big time! This has happened way too many times! No excuse for making this kind of mistake over and over!
A few reactions: 1. Frustrating and ugly game. But people may be overreacting in terms of the negatives. The team did play pretty solid D tonight to give themselves a chance despite the offensive struggles. The effort on D is a positive. If a few plays turned out differently-- 3 straight missed FTs by Harden and AB, for example-- and HOU won a close game instead of lost one, the emotions on the board would be at least significantly different but we would have still has essentially the same quality of play. 2. If the team has a Minnesota like 0-10 record in close games, I'd be worried about late game issues, but they don't. The issue really is how the team got to the final minutes in a dogfight in the first place rather than "crunch time" performance. This is true especially since their "crunch time" issues are the ones they had in the rest of the game, too. 3. I think the issue is that the offense devolves into a bunch of 1 on 1 play vs. set defense, especially without Parsons in there to kind of direct traffic. When they do score, it's often from an individual making a tough play-- Harden drawing a foul or hitting a tough floater, Dwight scoring off of O rebounds-- or shooting after one pass. Not a lot of stuff resulting from ball and player movement. The team having more TOs than assists tonight reflects how unpleasant it was to watch. 4. A lot of the stuff that Parsons does on the court is painfully obvious in his absence. He is great a running out for fast break layups, shoots 3s, finishes around the basket and keeps the offense moving. Without Parsons around, the team ends up with too many half court possessions, lack of ball/player movement, guys going 1 on 5, clanked 3 pointers, defense packing the paint and forced bad interior passes when help defender arrives. 5. In the Lakers game, the team got over its issues in the 2nd half and won by a good margin. But the Lakers were a much worse defensive team than the Hawks. You can't score efficiently on the Hawks by going one-on-five all game long.
I can't disagree with you more as you need them in tight close games like this one. Brooks is shooting 87.5% for this year, but missed both of his FTs in the last few minutes. Hardin missed on just before or after the miss from Brooks. It's all hypothetical but those could have been game changers.... However, seriously the only few you can sort of depend on from the charity line are Harden, Brooks, and Lin/Bev in that order....the rest either don't get to the line enough or just pure junk (Casspi, Garcia, Howard, Jones, Parsons).
