He wasn't driving the ball at all at the end of games. Over the 6 games, in the final 3 minutes of the 4th quarter and overtime he only drove the ball three times without getting fouled . One he made one and he missed two. He shot 3 FT in the final 3 min of the 4th quarter of game 1. He shot 4 FT in the final 3 min of the 4th quarter of game 3. He shot 4 FT in the final 3 min of the 4th quarter of game 4. He shot 4 FT in the final 3 min of the 4th quarter of game 5. When he's taking 3 point shots and step back fade aways then he's not going to get fouled much. Agreed that the issue was the shooting percentage. He was taking many more difficult shots than normal and not getting his high percentage looks on drives.
No argument there. I was screaming at the TV during those games for Harden to drive to the damn hoop. The two games where he finished well(Game 4 in regulation and Game 5), what did he do? In Game 4, he drove to the hoop and got to the line and helped put the Rockets back up 2(before Lin f'ed it all up). Then he drove to the hoop and dished to Dwight for a dunk to force OT. In Game 5, he drove to the hoop for a layup to put the Rockets up 4 before hitting that 3-pointer that pretty much sealed it. Harden does deserve a ton of heat for his lousy play in this postseason. But I also don't understand why McHale couldn't get him to drive to the basket. Seriously, if he's going to settle for bad fadeaway jumpers, pull him out the game. At least Lin had no fear of attacking the basket.
We see our players through the lens of our offensive system. Which eschews midrange shooting, lacks player movement off the ball, and lacks screening away from the ball. The fact we were able to win a lot of games in spite of that is testament to the talent on this team. You put average NBA team talent with our offensive system, you'd get a perennial lottery team.
Harden wasn't driving the ball because of what Portland was doing on defense. The Portland center and PF were both sitting in the lane and Harden's man was overplaying to the outside (usually the left). The only lane for Harden to drive was to the middle where the two bigs were waiting for him. I'm not sure that I want Harden going 1 on 3 and trying to attack two bigs on a regular basis. I don't think that's a high percentage play. To me you have to make Portland pay for selling out on defense like that. If they are going to play Dwight 1-on-1 and pretty much ignore our PF then we have to take advantage of it. Howard's going to setup in the post so it's a given that his man is going to be in the paint. The bigger issue is Aldridge not playing our PF (Jones or Asik) and dropping back into the paint. Those guys have to be able to take advantage of the fact that Portland wasn't paying any attention to them. It could be scoring or even rebounds but if there has to be some price to pay for gearing your defense to preventing Harden from getting to the rim.
The Blazers didn't exactly shut us down, they were outscored cumulatively throughout the series even though Harden was sleepwalking half the time. Really if they believed their own hype and thought they were killing it on D a couple of weeks ago I can understand why they're getting smoked now.
Truthfully, we didn't have that great a problem scoring on them, but we also played matador or ballet defense on them. We practically lifted them to the basket.
Screens!?! Is he joking? In today's NBA, it's all about analytics and coin-flips. More "pop" also helps.
I think the problem is during crunchtime though. For example, when we come out of timeout we usually just see Harden iso and then a step back jumper. In all honesty, (bad series aside) Harden is pretty damn good at those - just don't think that's going to work so well against top playoff teams. More than anything, I'm still salty about that last defensive stand.
The Rockets scored baskets at the end of games - it's not like the Blazers pulled out the master lock and threw away the combination. It was the other side of the ball and faily moves like the Lin double brain fart moves that killed them.
Maybe Lin and McHale should both be sent to the lockerroom with a minute left during regulation. We could still be playing is that was done.
My biggest gripe is about our defensive effort, I could care less about Side show jackass and his comments. Our offense worked for the most part but McHales lack of ability to draw up a good play after a timeout or in crunch time was also a big issue. We were able to open up some solid leads in a couple of games against Portland but then we would turn the ball over and let them right back in the game with mental lapses on defense. You don't have to do all the fancy things the spurs do in their offensive sets in this league to win, you will see this when Durant and Westbrook play 2 on 5 against SA in the West finals and smack them around. If the rockets can learn to play team defense they will have a real shot next year. They are going to have to bring in some smart minds over the summer though and really work on communication.
I tend to agree with you, except I think there's more talent in the players that's just not being drawn out. I've seen all of those guys show additional capabilities at certain times. Jones, Garcia, and Casspi have some ball handling ability, because I've seen them go to the lane before and score very nicely. Lin has a decent mid-range jumper, but squanders it on trying to drive over guys nearly a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than him. Howard should be as much of an assist threat as a scoring threat. Asik actually does have no offensive capabilities besides dunking and setting picks for others. (For God's sake, Omer, learn to catch a pass, keep it off the ground, and dunk it). AND YET, what you have described is the normal default mode for the team, and the extra capabilities show up only when needed in some terrible situation. Or they don't. One thing in particular that drives me nuts is the only-one-half nature of Parsons. I can't completely understand it. He'll score 20 pts in the first half and be almost silent in the second half. Or vice versa. Maybe teams are changing their defense on him in the second half, but this is just too huge a change from one half to the other, and I've seen it too many times. I think after he scores 20 pts in the first half, he starts to feel like he's done his scoring job and tries to reverts to being an assist man or some other role to let others score. We've all seen how many shots he'll pass up to hand it off to someone else, when HE had the better look. STOP IT, Chandler. If you score 40 pts in a game, that's fine with us. I'd say (and I've been thinking this since last year, too) that he has MORE weapons than Harden. He's taller, so he can find ways to actually lay the ball in where Harden would have to eurostep his way to a foul. He's a decent-to-good shooter from different ranges (although he shot so much better from behind the arc last year, and I have no idea what happened). When he wants to turn it on, he can do it like a lightswitch, so I have no idea why he only turns it on for one half of play. Harden needs to stop running the offense, but we don't really have anyone who actually tries to be a point guard, so Harden gets to play that role. That's probably due to not having enough plays to run to begin with. Double teaming James or Dwight and taking your chances with the open men behind the the arc is a pretty good defense strategy against us. And for God's sake, every single one of them needs to work on their layups and/or their free throws. It's embarrassing. No team is even getting to the championship when you have our team's free throw percentage, and we have guys that frequently miss easy layups. Not that I want to relive it all, but I could probably point to an easy layup or three missed in every game we lost to Portland. A single layup or free throw is the difference between a win and a loss or OT. That's why they so many turnovers as well: they don't treat every possession as a precious opportunity to score. They have too much confidence they can make it up later. Not in the playoffs, guys. I see enough talent. I don't see the attitude to bring it out every night.
They're doing us a favor. FO will know we fans are not speaking out of thin air, but our opponents are the ones pointing out our major flaws.
may be irrelavant but the rockets were 18-6 from feb to march. Kelvin Sampson left beginning of april and the rockets went from a 0.750 winning team for two months to a 0.500 team in less than a month. pretty clear how well prepared the rockets were coming to a game with sampson vs without. dean cooper was scapegoated but i'm sure UH faithful can't wait for next year to start.
The sad thing is that is all we have to hang our hat on this year! The Spurs could care less how many times we beat them this year. Beating the Houston Rockets does not define their season. Winning a Championship is the only thing that defines whether or not the Spurs had a successful season. That is why instead of trying to make a late push to win that last game against Houston, Pop rested his players... The regular season didn't mean a thing. Except for one thing. They got Top Seed! Yes; all that Portland has been saying is true. I watched the Thunder last night morph into the Houston Rockets in the fourth against LAC after being up 16 with more than nine minutes left. I swear the only thing OKC didn't do was put on our uniforms! Hopefully it will sink in to our guys that there is still a lot of work to be done. And most important, their up for the challenge.
