2 garbage free throws from Harden at the end of the game. OK, my mistake. 2 legit free throws. Does that sound better to you?
Honestly, even with this being the worst officiated Rockets game of the year (barely edging out the Atlanta Hawks game which was #1 coming into tonight) we STILL should have won that game. We had a 7 point lead with about 5 minutes to play in the 4th, we were in position to win it. The Bulls just turned up their defense and ours remained in 1st gear.
Exactly. None of us are absolving the refs of their sh-tty performance tonight. But despite their one-sided calls, the Rockets had a 5 point lead with less than 5 minutes to go. The only BS foul the rest of the way was the offensive foul on Harden. Otherwise the game was lost on poor offensive execution and equally bad defense. Seriously, how do you leave Butler wide open for a 3-pointer?!
Basketball is a 48 minute game. If we had gotten about half of the calls we deserved, the last 4 minutes would have been garbage time with Joey Dorsey squaring off against Nazr Mohammed. I had to look up the last time we got jobbed this badly. I remember it distinctly because we didn't even shoot free throws until the third quarter of that game. Rockets @ Phoenix. 2012. We won that game but just barely. Even then, the free throw disparity wasn't that crazy -- only 10. http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201202090PHO.html
Again you seem to disregard where a properly called game would've that lead at... Yeah they choked, but you can't act like they didn't have a huge impact on the outcome of the game...
Yeah that flop by Butler was pretty egregious and Pau going down for a finger brush on his hair....classic soccer. DD
Maybe the lead would have been 10 with a couple of minutes to go and we wouldn't have choked away the lead. Maybe if they called a few more fouls, our players would have been more willing to drive to the rim rather than settle for jumpers. Obviously no one is saying the loss is entirely on the refs but it is a large reason as to why we lost today.
Yeah, True! I am just happy there was an actual effort on Rockets part, def glad they're past the whole NO game.
Ariza played disastrous down the stretch. He fouls a jump shooter, backs away from defending Kirk Hinrich in the corner, terrible turnover, can't hit a shot.
+1. So obvious to tell with some of these posters. When you are attacking the rim at will (62 points in the paint) and not getting any calls, it changes the landscape of the game. That's why we kept shooting those stupid jumpers at the end. There was no chance we would get any calls while getting mauled.
Why were we stuck at 100 points in the final minutes. They were stuck at 95. But when they started scoring we stayed at 100. Almost broke the remote. This loss was so frustrating because we allowed them to go on a 19-5 run in the last 6 minutes.
On the bright side, except for the last 4 minutes (which will probably never change as long as Mchale is here), the rockets played very well offensviely
I ****ing understand that if we had 30 more free throws we would have been blowing them out and we would have won. But that didnt happen and we were in a position to win the game and chocked it.
Refs were a factr but i have to put this on Mchale for taking Dmo out. He was your most consistent guy in the post out there. This is why the Fire Mchale thread still lives on
Rockets Offense did well for a team with only 3 made FT The last 5min was bad but prior to that Rockets were scoring at a decent clip against a Tough Defensive team
I wonder if the same posters who so insistently demand perfection from our entire team night in and night out, circumstances be damned, use the same philosophy for the other aspects of their life? It's absurd. You're never going to play the perfect game, but it's almost impossible to play as well as the rockets did for 42 mins and then put the team on blast even though they were playing 5 on 8. Believe it or not extenuating circumstances can have a marked impact on performance. This team was flat out handicapped as the game progressed. There are always ways to play better, but to to always think that there's some sort of "blame" that needs to be placed due to some sort of incompetence is just flat out wrong.
I was puzzled by that move as well. Smith was playing great and hit a big 3, but why not at least try to post up DMo? Although if he were in I'd imagine it'd be DMo taking the same shots Smith took, ah well.
