SMALL BALL DOESN'T WORK. MDA b****'d ABOUT HIS CONTRACT. IF MDA TRIES SMALL BALL AND IT DON'T WORK THEN FIRE HIS WHINY ASHE SO HE DOESN'T GET ANY OF THAT EXTENTION HE WHINED AND MOANED ABOUT!
It must mean that to both of them Paul brings something very meaningful/valuable to the table that truly outweighs the worry about his health. Maybe us keyboard scrubs can't see it.
I don't think Harden wants to do that though. D'Antoni basically insinuates in the pod that he changed his preferred offensive style for Harden. Now, he's done a great job drawing out Harden's highest potential as an isolation player, but it is what it is. MDA wants to run and gun. But in my opinion, I think he should try and force the issue a bit this year. We need more movement.
The reason for MDA's love for CP3 is the coach on the floor aspect. CP3 see's all the details that coaches look for and he can execute on the fly. Those on this board that see CP# as washed up are just flat wrong. He isn't young anymore but the guy was a perfect fit for what this team lacked, self-sacrifice, intensity, smarts, great shooter with or without the ball, and most importantly a true leader. WB0 will no doubt bring heart, intensity, freakish athleticism, all traits the Rockets can use but the areas lost with the trade need top be filled by someone on the roster and Harden needs to take the next step as a leader.
Favorite part.... All this talk about needing to change our offense and isolation won’t work....he thinks is a load of ****. Pointed to our near all time high offensive efficiency that only the best version of the warriors could top. Stated plain and clear. We aren’t changing much because what they do is extremely successful. What I like to hear.
That’s not what he said. He said they found what works best for the star and team he has. I believe he said no matter what it is the goal is to be as efficient as possible and they believe they are doing just that with this team.
People who don't read between the lines and say MDA doesn't care about winning it all in order to feel successful because he's too positive ignore the details he brings up during the Spurs series in the same conversation. He might truly believe what he says but those losses still have an impact on him, let alone finally winning a chip.
Possibly. Two things I can think of are that Paul is a much better defensive impact player than most people tend to realize. For example most people would expect Westbrook to be a better defensive player based on athleticism and size, and even ability to stay in front of his man in iso for example, but because defense is a multiple possession event and because Paul does a lot of critical things with communication, directing, reading the offense etc, he affects your defense in ways Westbrook generally won't. Similarly on offense, he does have an ability to positively impact your offense even outside of his own numbers, directing guys, controlling pace, looking for the hot hand, etc. Coaches tend to like things like that, and he probably produced pretty well in minutes without Harden, maybe better than Russ produced as a whole, I haven't cared to look at that, so I don't know, but they are probably also seeing things like that. Still, health is always going to negate other things, so I'm assuming they recognize that.
I have been wondering about that. Perhaps the league is ok with coaches talking about it but not so much about GMs? I don't know.
Great listen. Woj is very good at teasing out stuff difficult to answer. I thought he did a great job framing the difficult questions and went right at it, Dantoni is very smart. He would have been great at what he would be doing if he hadn't been a coach as career. The most interesting thing to me Dantoni admits that he would be lying that Wes and Harden for sure will be working, but then also said he is excited to coach this dynamic to make it work. His thoughts are you always want to go with the more talented team and tinkering for the better or worse is necessary when the other team flat out beat us. This is aligned with a lot of us.
When comparing Chris Paul and Westbrook critics tend to overlook the fact that what Chris Paul brought to the table was what he could bring In his first year here. Chris Paul chose to Max out his contract and that left the Rockets in a bind when trying to add more talent. I have a feeling Morey will sooner ship out Westbrook after a two or three year window if this combination of Harden/Westbrook doesn't yield a finals appearance. Health seems to be the last variable with our championship goals, we had more versatile talent in terms of defensive capability and if we want to continue to go further in the playoffs we need to add a few more quality players that can pick up the hole that Ariza/Luc left when they signed elsewhere .
