Donatas Motiejunas now a restricted free agent, no qualifying offer for Terrence Jones

Everybody quit on the team at some point.

 

There goes DD with his "just needs the minutes" routine again. That phrase to half of the fringe starters in the NBA.

 

No, not really, just Howard.

 

There will be some growing pains, sure. He won't be the collosal failure you're making him out to be.

 

I mess with DD a lot, but I'm with him on this one. Dwight's clearly entered the decline phase of his career, and I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if Capela passes him as soon as next season.

That said, jopatmc has gotten a ton wrong, but he was right and I was wrong about Lawson & TJones, so I'll resist my natural urge to mock him here and take a wait-and-see approach.

 

Not confident in Capela but Dwight Howard last year wasn't very good defensively last year, there were 17-20 better starting centers defensively. He wasn't nearly the same player as 2-3 years ago. Offensively he just couldn't get low and in position.

 

Harden quit too. He played no D.

 

Dwight became mentally weak because he wasn't getting the ball like he wanted. So he didn't give max effort like we know he could.

 

Everyone gets some right and some wrong - the internet only remembers the wrong.....

DD

 

That wasn't all effort related, he lost a step and not as explosive.

 

A multitude of sins by perimeter players by elite defenders in the post. Dwight Howard covered a lot of errors made by the Rockets perimeter players his first two seasons. Teams avoided the paint. Last year Howard didn't cover the paint well, in fact he was average. That drop off from elite to average wrecked the Rockets defense.

So you can point to Harden, and I am not going to deny he is at best an inconsistent defender.... but a lot of last year was Howard not doing what he did in the past. People also started complaining that Ariza's defense slipped and the same with Beverly. Most of that feeds into #12 losing a step and not really switching as often as in past years. It also shows how important Howard was to the Rockets on that side of the court last year.

 

In those two seasons he was more involved. They ran the pick and roll to damn near perfection. Last season everything went wrong. Players were jacking up shoots even when our big men hand great position in the paint. When your big fella runs the floor and establish great position you reward them. Everybody and their granny's know that Nook. So like I stated he didn't give his usual max effort.

 

Honestly it wasn't that hard to see that Jones was a scrub, Lawson wasn't going to work out (had nothing to do with Harden) and that Dwight would declined - hell I said that before he even joined the Rockets that his body looked like it was breaking down and he never impressed me as a post presence.

People act like it's some magical insight to see this stuff. no, it's just taking the rose colored glasses off and realizing that the narrative that people want to believe is hardly ever true.

 

Soooooo.....they signed Chinanu.

 

Howard quit. He pouted. He was froze out of the offense.

Before Howard quit James Harden quit. He quit getting Howard scoring opportunities. And he quit defending long before Howard did. He quit leading and James is and was the leader. He sucked as a leader. He was divisive, cutting off Howard, and separating himself from ALL his teammates. He made nobody else on his team better. Even the player he endorsed us trading for failed. Eventually his lack of defense and his lackadaisical attitude that he brought to camp permeated the whole team. Even Ariza sagged off defensively.

The whole team quit. The coach was fired at his request. Another coach was brought it and nobody, including James responded. Nobody was going to respond until James did. And he never did.

Last season was a disaster. It was James' disaster. He made his bed. He led his team............nowhere.

He says he's learned. We will see.

Right now, I'm not seeing it. He's recruiting free agents by telling them he's gonna play the Steve Nash role and get them the ball. Hockey puck horse piss. He ain't Nash. He has no chance of ever becoming Nash. Nash is simply nowhere in James' basketball DNA. James is a scorer. Nash was one of the greatest distributors of all time. Two different things my man.

I'm hoping it's all rhetoric. Just all a dog and pony show. And I'm hoping James realizes what he and this team need to reach ultimate success. That is ball movement, lots and lots of ball movement. The kind of ball movement that can only happen if James eliminates all that dribbling at the top and all those stupid pull ups that he sucks so bad at. You see, James took 9, count 'em 9, of those stupid pull up jumpers a game......trying to be like Curry.....which he ain't anything like Curry either. He shot an abysmal 37.5% on those pull ups (Curry was almost 60%) with an abysmal efg of 46.3%.

By the way, just for the record, that's worse than Dwight's efficiency even after throwing in Dwight's turnovers and crappy FT shooting and leaving James' turnovers out!!! No wonder Dwight quit. The hypocrisy of James wanting to eliminate/minimize Dwight's post up touches while James took 20% more pull ups and fed the basketball to other non-open shooters for contested shots and ..... turnovers. Gimmeabreak! I would've demanded out, went public with the stupidity of the play, and forced my way out if I were Dwight. Because that was a season full of stupid play and terrible leadership from Harden. Harden wasted almost twice as many possessions jacking up crappy pull ups that were about half as efficient as Dwight's post up possessions.

So to be clear Dwight quit. Everybody quit. After Harden quit. I would've quit too. I wouldn't go down there and defend when Harden wouldn't defend, and then wouldn't give me the ball but instead would jack pull ups. Dwight should have brought all that nonsense to a head. That was his biggest leadership failure. He wasn't nearly strong enough in calling Harden into accountability.

Like I say, I hope all this Nash talk is just drivel. Because Harden can't do Nash. Harden needs a Nash to feed him the basketball where he can catch and shoot at a 60% EFg. Hopefully MDA convinces him. Because we aren't going to win jack with Harden at point guard.

 

Seems about right..one thing that you pointed to that still scares me is Harden's accountability. It's clear McHale nor J.B. never checked him and while D'Antoni can be a screamer, I'm not sure things will change for 'king' James. I seriously get that the whole team became worse when they realized BOTH their stars were not leading and behaved like children while not trying to play defense.

However, if I were Ariza for example, I would've talked to those guys and the coaches relentlessly about the lack of accountability and screamed at them, not pass to them or try whatever to force change. I even would've went to Morey to say do something or trade me, I'm not playing with quitters. It was very obvious Ariza was fed up, his body language showed it clearly. Beverley still tried his best though, he was just never a good defender. The rest was not that great to begin with so it all went to **** quickly. I have hope, but it's not much.

 

That doesn't affect anything with our cap regarding Dmo, his contract will just replace a roster minimum cap hold which was needed anyways because Rockets only had 11 players before signing Onuaku.

Rockets still have 5.83 million in cap space left, Dmo's cap hold is 5.72 million.

Now if Nene officially signs, that means either Dmo is gone or we would have to make a trade to clear enough room to keep his cap hold.

 

Nene Officially signed yesterday. Morey tweeted a highlight video and there were picks of him signing his deal.

 

I'm not sure exactly how the signings work. Perhaps they had him signed but haven't presented it to the NBA yet. If he is officially signed and his salary is on the books then we no longer can re-sign or sign and trade Dmo unless we make trades, or unless he wants to re-sign with our remaining cap space for (2.9 million) but I doubt that.