To counter: This has some indirect impact on Barrea on the offensive end, but is a different argument generally. The Mavs have been horrible defensively with or without Barrea on the court. They've been better offensively with him. Factor in that its easier said then done to just pick one guy and go after him offensively. Harden's generally our only guy to do that. Harden has a tendency to just do that foul line post up, though... which is effective, but Barrea has a decently strong base, so Harden often gets the ball with the shot clock running down. I'm not exactly thrilled about say Trevor Ariza getting the ball on the wing with Barrea guarding him... I wouldn't double as you're just creating the scramble that eventually happens anyway yourself. I do like the go under screen suggestion. You open yourself up to Barrea having a random great 3 point shooting night, though, and then we have a thread after the next game - why did we give Barrea so many threes! Harden is guarding Aminu, which makes sense. The issue isn't Harden/Ariza/Brewer... it's Terry and Prigs. How do you mask them. Putting either of them on Ellis doesn't solve the problem. You could switch them to Aminu, who is challenged offensively, but is a decent rebounder, and creates different mismatch problems. I'm not sold on Nick Johnson playing meaningful playoff minutes... though Capela has worked. But Johnson playing when Barrea plays, means Johnson is playing minutes with the starters... would you start Johnson? Of course not. But to bring him in randomly to stop some runs? Not opposed. A three or four minute stretch of pure "lockdown" type focus... and try not to f'up anything else. On the whole, this is probably a bit of an over response to a BAD game by Terry, Prigs and Ariza, and a good game by Barrea. Yes, Barrea has generally been good, and I expect will continue to be that pest in the next game. But the Rockets have a better chance of winning if (i) the bigs don't miss so many free throws in a row and (ii) one or more of Terry/Ariza/Prigs.. and Jones has a better game, (iii) LINEUPS, LINEUPS, LINEUPS, and (iv) they have better shot selection. TO start that second, Ariza took 2 random long mid range jumpers, Prigs took 2 random 3 pointers, Dwight has 1-6 on FTs, Josh Smith was 2-4 on FTs and missed a shot (a 3?). The long shots led to transition buckets. McHale responded by subbing Terry, Harden and Jones for Ariza, Prigs and Smith. I guess he thought he would stop the horrible offense, but forgot that he just fielded a horrid defensive team when the Mavs had picked up some rythm - Terry, Harden, Brewer, Jones, Dwight... not going to win the games defensively there. So what was a quarter that wasn't going great, but the team was only down 4, the next lineup got outscored by 10 points 3.5 minutes. He got Ariza back in the game and they were -3 the rest of the way. In Game 3, for example, not that the defense as great, but Terry played 27 minutes and in every single one of those minutes he had 2 of Dwight, Ariza, Smith playing with him. And that has "generally" been true the whole series. The Terry, Harden, Brewer, Jones, Dwight lineup we saw last night was the only time McHale has tried it to date, and it's no surprise it failed miserably. When Terry plays, you absolutely HAVE to HAVE two of your better defenders out there with him - Dwight, Smith, Ariza - pick two.
What I'm disappointed the most in is that he was allowed to drive the lane with no contact. Knock him on his ass a time or 2. He cannot be allowed in there without some repercussions. I'm not saying get flagrants or techs but they have to put a body on him. I was especially disappointed towards the end when Dorsey came in and the mavs starters were still in. I really thought Joey was going to do something but, alas, he didn't. I also agree that going over the screen on him clearly isn't working. Putting Harden at point does not mean he's going to be guarded by Barrea. Carlisle isn't that stupid. There hasn't been a player I've disliked more in a long time. I really can't stand that little s*** and can't wait to see the look on his stupid face when we win Game 5 and they go home.
This. To call JJ a scrub is to be condescending - he's a really nice bench player who can attack the rim and run their offense. He's also a better offensive player than Beverly. I find it funny that folks here are looking down on JJB because it wasn't all that long ago that they were cheering Aaron Brooks (aka "MiniMe") who is smaller in stature than JJ.
On paper, that line up doesn't look as horrid as you're making it out to be. Howard, Brewer and to some extent Harden are good individual defenders and play good team defense. How/Why is that line-up a horrid defensive line-up per se?(I know they lost game 4).
Exactly . We are getting whistled for a lot of little , light contact . If they are gonna blow the whistle regardless we need to put barrea on his ass . Dwight , tj and smith should foul him hard when he gets into the lane. If we do this he will think twice about coming in there again . I was suprised it didn't happen in game 4 and I expect it to happen game 5 . Monta and barrea have to know they can't just come to the basket without having to go through Dwight or smith.
The Mavs aren't pricks - you are confusing them with the Cavs. Simply don't understand all of the hatred for JJ. He's a really good bench player who has been able to step in and instantly contribute in the wake of the Rondo debacle. He's exactly the type of player that the Rox could surely use right now at PG. Just think for a moment how the Rox would look with him at PG alongside Harden.
No, no I'm not. Chandler, Dirk, Barrea, Parsons, Harris, Ellis, Carlisle, Cuban, all of them are pricks who should be condescended to at every chance. Just put on your Mavs hat, already.
Calm down. Those guys aren't really pricks (well except for Cuban :grin. Save your animus for the next round and even then the Spurs and Clips aren't really pricks either. I simply don't see any need to be angry and condescending when you have the better team and make no mistake: the Rockets are a much better team than the Mavs. This ends tomorrow night.
In all due respect, Ariza couldn't hit HORSE threes last night. He consistently missed wide open shots.
Barea has always killed us. Its not just Houston, but when its us I swear he is their best player. Every time Barea comes in, I know they're going to make a run. Its been this way for a long, long time... He doesn't miss a layup, ever. He barely misses 3s. I just dont get it, but wtvr.
No one could hit last night but Harden and then JSmith. I do say that Ariza's shot was short on 80% of his shots. Unfortunately it happens and the Rockets hit that wall. They started to get over that wall in the 4th but was too little too late. Game 5 will be a totally different story.
I'm calm. They're pricks. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. But keep on defending your guys from the awful meanness of Clutchfans. Quick question, did the MFFL tattoo hurt?
He's been consistently effective against us in every game, even the ones where the rest of his team was crap. He's the one thing on their team that keeps stabbing us in the side, and there's no reason whatsoever to not expect that in the next game unless we do something about it. Any player that's beating the crap out of you consistently might as well be consider elite from your perspective. It doesn't matter what their normal box score looks like.
Howard is really the only good defender there. Defense incorporates a lot of components. Harden has definitely improved. But he's not amazing. He's just not an obvious liability anymore. Brewer has had his moments, but on the whole is nothing special. For Harden, for example, consider while that lineup was out there, since they were jacking and missing on offense and there was a lot of transition play at the time, Harden just is not a great transition defender. I think one of the buckets during that stretch was him barely trying as the last man back defensively. While I don't mind that he barely tried that much - looked like he was thinking about saving those fouls, too... it doesn't change the fact that it was an easy 2 for the Mavs. The PnR was working, and the Rockets were scrambling. This is another area where Terry/Harden/Brewer/Jones all don't do great. Occasionally, they'll have positive moments out of it. A sneaky steal, etc. But if the opposing team's offense is clicking, not turning it over, with that line-up on the floor, you see what you see.. which is easy buckets. Ariza in particular is the guy you want to see out there with Terry. Because Ariza understands defensive rotation better than anyone else on the team. And he and Smith are just fundamentally better defenders than Terry and Jones. The real problem, of course, is that this problem isn't solved when Prigioni comes in, since he can't defend either. McHale just experimented with strange lineups last night that didn't work. He tried to go small int he 3rd quarter, too. This time the lineup becomes Terry, Harden, Brewer, Ariza, Howard... and they're minutes 7 in 3.5 minutes. So then McHale replaces Terry with Prigioni - as if that will somehow improve the bad defense. Prigioni plays with that lineup for just over a minute and they go -7. So in the say 5 minutes in the third where McHale tries to go "small ball", they go -15. I suspect McHale is/was frustrated with Jones, who is still way too volatile a player, offensively and defensively and was part of that 2nd quarter squad that struggled. He had 0 fouls in his 18 minutes, wasn't playing physical, was struggling defending the likes of Villanueva, etc. I understand his frustrations... but don't understand the lineup responses. What is clear is that he went to lineups that he hadn't used in the series to date. Terrence has played really pretty awful this series. He's shooting 38%. He's rebounding ok. His defense is not good. The cumulative loss of Bev and DMo has hurt. But on the whole, they still have this series in hand. For round 2 they'll have to figure out how to mask their PG difficulties and Jones HAS to start playing better.
