*-1! Seriously! Who is mistaking this team, with a monster roster overhaul, starters + rotation, with a first year head coach and no player who even placed as an All-NBA selection last year as a "great team". Bruh, why you bringing a knife to a ...I mean why you bringing Spurs or Patriots standards to a Rockets forum? I'm thrilled with our start. I'd submit something like 80% or more of Rockets fans are as well. I couldn't be happier with the results. Some internals concern me to be sure but the early W's give you plenty of margin for error to iron those things out. Win with plenty of mistakes and things you can fix to get even better? THAT actually is what great teams do. Just sayin...
We are not a great team. Right now we are a team in the top 4 stakes in the west. Warriors are a great team and probably the Cavs. Everyone else is in it to have a remote chance.
This statement also applies to the whole season Over time, you are what your record says you are, and close games that drag down your pt differential, should drag down your W totals. If you outperform your Ws vs pt differential...it's not lucky.
Thoes close games showcase confidence and mental strength ,as a team I think they still have to over come this habit "we will decide at the end ".But luck,I don't know man .It's looks more than a will and hunger for a Win.
It's not so much the last shot that concerns me. It's the 4th quarter against competitive teams. Twice in a row, we let OKC come back while we shoot terribly in the 4th. Seems to me more psychological than anything else. Our game slows down and the ball gets sticky. Feels like we are just trying to milk the clock and maintain the lead vs increasing the lead. We're just playing scared in the 4th in tight games.
You can same the very same thing to GSW, SAS and BOS in their losses to us. Ball got stick, they couldn't make shots, etc. Let's look at both sides of the court here. Those are like the Top 3 teams (Boston is #1) in 4th Q ORtg, and we stopped them dead. But you're right about one thing. 4th is by far our worst Q in ORtg. Of course, a lot of that is going to be attributed to Harden sitting the first 6 minutes many of those games, combined with blow-outs when he sits in the end game. He played entire 1st and 3rd quarters (for like 12 games, early), and gets most of his rest in 2nd and 4th. So, 4th ORtg for us is misleading. I don't think we get too sticky, vs what happens to everyone in the league...and being able to win at a slower pace in 4th Qs is a requirement of success in this league..any how.
We have got to close out better. Harden needs to trust his teammates. I don't believe him though. Last year he could not trust them
I found nothing, besides Bev's defense, impressive about last night's win. How many of those wins did we have decent leads late in the game and completely shut down offensively?
We shut down GSW, SAS and BOS in close wins too. What you are saying happens to us, we did to them, as well. soooo Do ppl remember most what happens to the Rockets and what we do, unless what we did to them is the story of the game. Keep an eye on how sticky the ball gets with the opponents. We shut OKC down
It's not all black or white. The good is we are absolutely better at closing teams out in the fourth and escaping with the W in those close games. Like others have said, these are games we lose last year. A lot of the times Harden makes the right play or the aggressive play and for whatever reason just doesn't get the call or turns it over but you live with that. The bad is that we are often up double digits in the fourth and LET it come down to the last possession. That same Harden a lot of the times stops being aggressive, let's the air out of the ball, jacks up a poor step back 3, and the other team storms back from down ten. Just like sometimes he misses the drive, he'll make the occasional contested three enough to reinforce him shooting it way too much, and I cringe every time. Overall I like that this team has the ability to close, sometimes because of Harden sometimes despite him. Hopefully they will learn to not let it get to that point by continuing to step on the gas. It has made for entertaining TV though.
The funny thing about all this is, if the Rockets had lost those 7 games instead we would have a thread about how the Rockets cannot execute and come out on top in close games. It's important to put things into context. The Rockets currently have: 1. The highest amount of road games played so far in this league. 2. A top 3 Strength of Schedule by most measurements I mean, we need to be grounded in reality and not expect this team to be winning at a rate that Championship caliber teams are winning at. Most people started off this season thinking we would be lucky to even win 45+ games, and then it shifted to lucky to even get 8th seed, and then it became lucky to even get top 4 seed, and now the goalpost has shifted all the way to not winning games by big enough margins. Don't get me wrong, this team could still improve in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day Houston is the underdog team of this league. Whilst we could be winning by a bigger margin, we should not be comparing ourselves to the likes of Cleveland, GSW or Spurs because we would only set ourselves up for disappointment. This team still needs another star, and the rate at which Houston is winning at with their young talent will only give us more leverage in the future to do so.
Going 7 and half minutes without a field goal in the fourth is bad, no matter how you look at other games. I'm not impressed by us holding onto 13 point fourth quarter leads. There is a difference between close games and games we almost blow. Last night was a game we almost blew. We got lucky because not only did we give them the chance to win the game, we turned the ball over with 28 seconds left (or so), got a clear path that brought them to within one, failed to secure the rebound on an air ball (Harden didn't box his man out from the corner he cut right behind him), and gave them another chance to win the game. If anything, I was impressed with the defense (mostly Bev's), but that's it. Although, part of a defensive possession is to secure the rebound and it seems like late in games our rebounding has reverted back to the ways of early on in the season. We had improved exponentially in that regard.
And sometimes I feel like Harden forgets that he's not going to get the whistle during the last few minutes of a game. If he's going to drive, he needs to drive with the intent of scoring, not drawing a foul. And only pass if a man is wide open. His drive/pass is becoming too predictable. A lot of people say we should just be happy with our current performance. I am not one of those people. The difference between the elite teams and good ones are the small things.
really don't understand why some people feel so good about the last game, it was one of the worst basketball games I've watched this year without any exaggeration. Just because we won doesn't make the problems go away. I'm starting to get worried about Harden's performance against stout defensive teams. A little drop in his game is expected, but shooting that poorly while turning the ball over 8 times is just unacceptable, and this is a recurring pattern.
I'd be with you if we were two teams shutting each other down in the 4th quarter and slugging it out defensively. While that's partially true, the fact is the Rockets are usually up double digits either at the end of the the third or beginning of the fourth in everyone of these games. So those other teams aren't going blow for blow with us. They are closing the gap while we are playing loose with house money so to speak. Houston led going into the 4th in every one of these games sans Boston. So it isn't quite the same.
We get the leads because how we manage Harden's time. Many of the lost leads start early in the 4th because Harden is out and the other team takes advantage but slow down and lose to us in the end game We are 7-1 in games that go down to the wire We can discuss this in circles. But imo, all you guys are saying is we aren't a Top 4 team. This isn't so much a systemic problem to fix with coaching and style vs an issue with our inability to play Harden entire 4th quarters combined with opps HAVE to make a run at us and play fockass'd or it's a blowout
this is not true, especially since Bev came back Zach Lowe has just tweeted this We are actually playing better when Harden is on the bench...
Because it was a W? We managed to pull it off despite playing bad on the road against a team who was on a 6 game win streak? Forest gor the trees
