Donatas Motiejunas cleared to return to Rockets practice

But that still doesn't make sense. Aren't the Rockets required to have 12 active unless they get a 2 week waiver from the NBA? If so, then McDaniels and Dekker clearly aren't active, which means DMo is.

Confused.

 

I could be wrong here. Maybe its that you can only have UP TO 12 active, but you must have at least 12 ON YOUR ROSTER.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">JBB: “We all know D-Mo is a workaholic. Conditioning will not be a problem for him. His emotions will be part of the problem initially.”</p>&mdash; Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Feigen/status/672844378365292544">December 4, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

Is the JBB quote a shot at Harden?

 

He goofed in saying that KJ being sent down results in an opening for DMo playing. The fact that Dekker is inactive already has an opening for DMo to play, KJ being sent down then is basically unrelated to Dmo at all.

 

Exactly right.

 

So, what do you guys think? Will he play?

I think I´ve never been so excited to see a rockets player come back from injury. Don´t really know if it was the cleveland game last year, but, seeing us competing with a full roster was such a thrill.

I agree with someone from the previous page, it is not fair if he is not playing tonight. I had already made peache with the idea of him coming back around christmas

 

I think he'll play, but in extremely limited minutes. If he played more than a short shift or two, I'd be surprised.

 

Just having this conversation 21 days before Christmas is great!

 

Yeah, I'd guess 10 minutes. 5 minutes at the beginning of the 2nd and 5 at the beginning of the 4th. Enough to build up a sweat and take him out just before he gets winded.

 

I won't claim to be an advanced stats expert, but I do know that DREB% is calculated using available rebounds (how many you get vs how many you let the offense get). The amount of shots that you let go in has no bearing on it.

So yeah, I think it should be a cause for concern since we are near the bottom of the league. I don't think we'll ever be near the top due to our style of getting out on the break, but closer to the middle would be realistic.

No doubt. We were 20th in the league last year, would be interesting to see what we were among the league while D-Mo and Howard were on the court together.

 

DMo is not a good rebounder. Not even close. But he's good at boxing out people which helps for his teammates to get the rebound. Rebounding is not defense, it's a lose ball situation. I don't like when people say that rebounding is part of defense.

 

While I agree about the boxing out part, I disagree about rebounding being full separate from defense. You end the defensive play by getting the defensive rebound. Otherwise, the defensive effort was for nothing.

 

Among all 2-man combos within our lineups last season, DMo was never in a combo with below than team average defensive rebounding. Interestingly enough, T-Jones was exclusively in the below average defensive rebounding combos:

Spoiler

 

Similar thing with 3-man combos:

Spoiler

 

Great stuff. Thanks.

A few comments on this (really just restating what you said)

1) DWIGHT! You throw Dwight into any lineup and we will be fine rebounding.

2) When you take Dwight out, almost every other above average DRB% unit included DMo.

My untrained eye tells me that any combination of Dwight, DMo and Capela will be fine at generating rebounds.

 

So if you don't get offensive rebounds you're bad on offense?

 

The better he plays this season, the less likely Rockets can keep him. What a strange position to be in.

 

if he plays as everyone expects, why wouldn't Rockets go all in to keep him? who else are you going to get who can play PF/C, has inside and outside game and is a plus defender, good passer, hard worker, makes others better, all around player? I'm pretty sure DMo will be better than R. Anderson at the end of season.

 

Sounds like he will get time against Mavs. Also, anyone else read Carlisle's quotes regarding Harden that Feigen tweeted.

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