Im talking about Dantoni and Morey, and its not sarcasm, how is personnel issues and defensive rebounding excuses lol? gimmea break. It wasnt bad coaching, lack of defensive rebounding.
Will be signing jimmy butler Chris Paul will still be here MDA should still be here but up in the air We will try our best to keep our current roster while obtaining jimmy
The point is there’s always a reason for losing. It’s not as easy as “rebound better”. But even if it were easy to get better rebounding, it’s not that simple. It’s not like there’s a leak somewhere and you just fix it and all is good with your system. In the Rockets system there’s a leak, it gets fixed, and something else gets broken. In a best case scenario they fix the leak with brand new super strong 100!year warranty piping without compromising the rest of the system. In reality that’s not possible. Even if you could get close to that... you’d STILL have things to worry about. Is the guy running the system capable (MDA, or Harden for example). Clunky analogy but more of the point. Last year was the year. The system worked flawlessly. There were some leaks starting to sprint here or there but always easily repaired. It was as they say a “well oiled machine”. Until the catastrophic crack that was the CP3 injury. Now that part of the system is forever weakened and too expensive to fix. Among other problems.
Rockets go back to drawing board from here. Isiah hartenstein might be next contender to get moved up. Wonder if hartenstein playing in summer league? Rockets don't have picks 1-30 in first round. Maybe cam reddish can get signed if he goes undrafted. House need a raise in pay? Maybe?
Precisely what I have been saying. We have too many crybabies and grown men with hurt feelings running amok in the forum right now...throwing temper tantrums and full of doom and gloom. Talk about going from one extreme to another. This is what happens when people dont assess their team realistically and buy into the pipe dream. Trade Harden! Blow up the team! Fire Morey! LOL! Yes the team has flaws and Harden and CP are flawed but our infrastructure is solid and game plan is pretty good. What Rockets need to do is have an honest talk with themselves, identify the weak spots, and try to address as many as they can. 1) Mike's coaching. I have said it multiple times so I am not going to repeat the specifics, but Mike is not the kind of coach that will be the difference maker for you to come out top. History is against him. He is a stubborn coach with myopic vision. However, I am not sure what better alternatives are there. Some of his philosophies helps the team the way it is constructed and the way it plays but then his flaws rear their ugly head in playoffs. 2) CP's decline. Despite CP's decline, he is still needed on this team. He is the stabilizer for James Harden. Without him you might see more of Harden against the Spurs. However, we also have to accept that CP's production will decline each season. The team needs to be improved elsewhere to counter his decline. 3) Front court/Rebounding. We have no rim protection/rebounding presence other than Clint which works fine against 95% of the teams out there. However, if he is injured, we are doomed. And the way Warriors play him, effectively denying him any look at the lob, they effectively take him out of the game. This makes Capela the most expendable asset. The question we have to explore here is how can we turn Clint's contract into one or two good serviceable players. Doesnt have to be stars, just effective role players. Easier said than done. 4) Better Three point shooters. We shoot the most number of threes but we are actually not very good when it comes to making them. I dont trust out 3 point shooting, especially in crunch time. We need to add better 3 point shooters on this team. It doesnt take Rocket Scientist to deduce that if you take 50 three pointers in a game, if you ave better three point shooters next to Harden and CP, you will score a lot more points. 5) Bench: Since last season we have added scrubs and rejects on this team with the hope that Harden and CP will elevate their game. This might work against most of the teams in the regular season, and it does, but against a team liker the Warriors, you will get exposed. This adds a LOT of pressure on Harden and CP. You want players that can support these two, not cripple them. We need to add one or two more reliable bench players. 6) Another point of attack. 75% of our offense runs through Harden right now, if not more. This year we saw a decline on offense run through CP, and with his age, it might worsen. If you stop Harden you have effectively ground the Rockets offense to a halt. We need a third playmaker/offense creator badly. 7) Revisit the mid range. I understand the reason why Rockets shoot a lot of threes especially against the Warriors. Statistically, it is the best way to negate the talent gap. However, Rockets need to consider adding even 10% of it in their offensive scheme just to keep the defense guessing and honest. Right now the teams know we are stubborn as hell, and they dont even bother expending energy defending our mid range. We need to stop them from cheating. 8) Athleticism. We lack it. Clint Capela is our most athletic player?. That is just sad. We need athletic wing play. It helps both on offense and defense. It also energies the team and the home crowd. A lot of times our team looks old and slow. If Rockets can work on some of the above, they can improve as a team, and improve their chances. Coupled with the likelihood that the Warriors team might not be the same, they are still in a very good spot. A lot of it also comes down to luck. Sometimes you catch a break, other times you dont. But as long as we can correct our glaring weaknesses and give ourselves the best chance to win, I can live with it. Lastly, please cut back on the annual MVP talk. Please. And I blame this on Morey. Every year he campaigns for Harden for MVP trophy while making claims that trigger the basketball community (eg. Best offensive player ever). First of all, he actually hurts Harden's chances for votes when he does it. Folks around the NBA dont like it. Second, he sets up a unreasonable expectation for Harden. Its almost like he is setting him to fail. Third, It gets into Harden's head. Harden may say all the right things but I can tell you that award is in the back of his head the entire season.
GSW played Clippers and us so far, average defnsive teams the whole year. Bucks played detroit and the celtics, Celitcs are good i guess and the Bucks are eilte. Nuggets and Spurs lost, so it doesnt matter. Blazers are gonna get canned in the WCF, lets see how amazing their offense is. Do you really think offense is why we havent won the last couple of years? Like think about that, even though you arent even looking at any context whatsoever for this PO stat. Which respectable anaysts and coaches have said this about us. The years we have lost in the Dantoni era has been either because of defense or lack of talent on the floor, im giving you the facts, In fact go listen to the CFs podcast and the Lowe Post..
What? If you dont have the right personnel, its hard to beat teams with more talent, simple. This whole paragraph is slippery slope fallacy man. But again, thats still a personnel issue, yea Dantoni has a system, and if he doesnt have the right players, its hard for him to adapt, I agree. But the system does work. Its not like Moreyball or our offense was the reason we lose every year, does it have its flaws yes, of course, but I feel like there are bigger problems to focus on.
By no means an excuse for every year but I think adjusting for opponent is something you have to look at with the rating stats. Warriors played LAC(6 games)and Houston. Rockets played Jazz(only 5)and Warriors. Pretty clear who played the worst couple of team defenses. And the Warriors got an extra game against a bad defense to boost their stats overall. I believe the Warriors offensive rating was worse than their regular season number in our series.
In games 6 and 7 last year, the Rockets blew double-digit halftime leads and scored 25 (!!) and 38 pts in the 2nd half respectively. In the 2016 elimination game vs the Spurs, the Rockets scored 75 pts total (33 2nd half) - against a Spurs team without Kawhi.
Well... partly. Yes. 50%. The Rockets held the Warriors to 105 or less in 4 of 7 last year. Unfortunately they lost the one where GSW scored. 101. That was game 7... where the Rockets couldn’t score. The majority of them? It’s a constant stream of “ISO ball not going to work in the playoffs”. Guess what. It didn’t work in the playoffs. Surprise.
There are multiple cases now where the Rockets “should have” won but didn’t. Spurs Game 6. Game 1 against the Clippers (which they came back and won the series luckily), Blazers first round, blown 2nd half leads being up 3-2 (albeit injured so a solid reason) and this year, game 5 and 6. Absolutely talent trumps. Talent trumps system. Talent trumps coaching. Talent trumps analytics. Etc. Rockets need more of that. It doesn’t mean it’s all on talent only though. Doesnt mean current system, team or players don’t deserve massive criticism. Doesn’t need mean system will get you there. I don’t think it will even with more talent.... UNLESS you’re talking about AD or Kawhi or a legit top 10 player. And even then no guarantee. Say what you want about Russ, OKC on paper should be in the WCF and can’t get out of the first round year after year. Talent matters. Fit matters. Style matters. Etc.
No CP, for those two games, one of which we had a historically bad shooting night and still only lost by 9 ponints. That game was not a good showing for anyone on the Rockets, they were all bad from Harden to Dantoni.
The whole line of thinking deserves a statistical analysis. There will always be sample size and similar type biases. I don’t have a few hours to spend researching every team for every year of the last five years. Just did some quick lookups. But like the 538 table on FT rate.... I suspect what has already borne out in a quick look will hold.
What? Yea, 3 pointers have high variance, we lost that but having good looks and missing them, I can live with that, plus you even said it yourself we didnt have CP. Really? Give me some names of some respectable people who said so. And this term ISO ball is really annoying, we are a pick and roll team, GS switches everything so thats why you saw iso ball in that series, not to mention we have the best Iso player in the game.
Just listen to nba radio. They have people on all the time and cycle through 10ish of their own hosts. And we play ISO ball. There’s no other way around that. That there’s a pick involved at times doesn’t really change that. 50% of the time with the pick it’s to iso against a different defender.
Yea, Im well aware of those loses and some can be attributed to offense and some cant. Really? Do you know how close this series was, do you think if even if we had better role players, we would have lost? In a series this close I doubt it, I think we beat GS had the Memphis trade gone through.
I think we don’t. I think this series is the perfect way to show “if only” is a horrible way to look at it. If you told any Rockets fans that Steph and Klay would suck for most of the series and that tied 2-2 basically tied in game 5, KD would suffer a series ending injury that we should have this in the bag. It’s not that simple. Imo.
When one team repeatedly wins the close games and series - regardless of missing personnel or being down at halftime or having your star player with 0 halftime points or whatever else - then the series aren't as close as individual game scores may indicate. The Rockets could add all the role players they want - I think Golden State adjusts and still wins because they have a long history of making plays when needed, while the Rockets have exactly the opposite and shrink in the biggest moments. Even last year, it's crazy to just assume the Rockets would have won if only they had Chris Paul. The Warriors have been in worse situations (1-3 vs OKC) and figured out ways to win.
Yep. Can't disagree with too much of what you wrote. Going through the list...Shump's gone. Faried might come back, but might not. I find it difficult to believe he was completely unavailable for Game 6. Of course, I think MDA is gone soon, so perhaps he comes back on another minimum deal??? Probably not. Rivers is gone unless they burn the MLE on him; he's got a lot of value. House is gone, or at least, i think some team will offer more than the 2.0 I think the Rox are limited to matching. What does that leave? We have Gordon. We still have Nene---I wanted to shuffle him off at the beginning of last year, and I was wrong: he showed more grit than Capela. Pity. We have Clark, and Hart, and the rest of the guys listed on the trade machine. I have faith in Morey being able to take advantage of more cash-strapped teams, assuming Fertitta isn't full of $hit with what the Rockets may spend.
It does sound a bit like the old joke with Milton Berle, "I only took out enough to win." No clue whether the Warriors could have dug deeper and still won if the Rockets managed to make a tighter run in one of those games. I think getting a more painstaking coach might be enough to get them over the hump. The Rockets weren't that far away from beating the Warriors. Really. And if they could beat the Warriors , they'd have a good chance of beating the Bucks. Or Raptors, who they beat like gongs in the regular season.
