Well that's incredibly stupid. Touches should be given based on what players are good at, not how much money they make. Howard got a ton of touches in the pick and roll and variants tonight which is a great idea, but down the stretch when the offense stagnates, the offense should go to DMo in the post for easy points. If Harden is on, try giving him some ISO, but if it is failing like it was tonight, you go to the post. Hell going to DMo in the post the one time they tried it tonight led to a Dwight Howard touch and FT's on what should have been a dunk and a foul but it rimmed out.
You will have to summon JBB on that BS. I mean Brewer should be the last man off the bench in blow out games.
Maybe JBB thinks he owes Brewer a debt of gratitude? Didn't the Rockets win JBB's first game b/c Brewer hit a hail mary 3 pointer to send the game into overtime?
Unfortunately that's not in the Rockets playbook in crunch time situations Bobby. That's why I say you have to know your teams philosophy. Better ball movement always trumps Harden's Iso. Look how well Atl executed down the stretch, ball movement and player movement was the key for them.
The offense didn't go stagnant. You're probably thinking of the 3 minutes of Hack a Shaq. We didn't run an ISO for Harden once, either in the 4th, as you say, except that 2nd to last possession in a tie game at 1:13. And Lawson had the ball the whole time, passes to Harden with 8 seconds left. We did not stagnate. We were moving the ball or attacking early the whole 4th peppered with some bad team execution for some possession, leading to scrabbling. In fact, after the Hack a Shaq ended, Harden attacked on transition (missed), and Harden found Howard for a glorious slam on the next play. And that brings us to 1:13 as the next play. And our last possession had like 8 passes in it. You can say we should have cleared out for DMo on one of those last two possession (questionable), but there is no need to reinvent what happened to say we went stagnant. That's just wrong.
They scored 44 points in the 2nd half (while the Hawks had enough possessions to score 65 points) and shot 30 something percent from the field in the second half....how is that not the offense stagnating? Turnovers went up, FG% went WAY down, that's an offense stagnating and that has nothing to do with hack a Howard.
Are we not in a new year wekko. Wasn't Howard and Jones hurt giving Dmo his chance to shine? That's another reason why I used that analogy, Superstar's takes presidency over that of a role player. Once Dmo become, well if he becomes a Superstar, things will then be ran through him. As of right now, unfortunately, he will have to wait his turn.
No, just Jones. Also, it's about doing the smart thing. It was a part of the offense at one point, it still works, and there was a need for it. There's no valid excuse for why they didn't go to it. Saying that "Dwight is a superstar" is irrelevant. He got his touches but down the stretch is not when you want to go to Dwight, honestly you don't even want him on the court if they are hacking him and he's missing.
I have a question for those questioning the play of the big men down below... This includes Howard, DMo and Clint... If we are using an inside - out strategy in the first half and we score 71 points.. Why would you not want to use the same strategy in the 2nd half? It seems as if the Rockets got away from that in the 3rd period and only scored 21 points... T_Man
It's not stagnating. We lost the 3rd Q lead on probably going too fast. We had a lot of transition TOs. We had a lot of transition misses at the rim. That's not how I describe stagnation. We still built it back to 10 pts to end the 3rd Q (almost, until that last AND 1). Had another 9pt lead with 8 minutes left, as Lawson was running the show. From 5 minutes to 2 was Hack a Shaq. That's what you remember. And we ran a play for DMo right before the 5 minute mark. I'm not going to get into a definition of the word stagnation debate with you. But everything we did throughout this game is what we all wanted. Team work/ball movement, and transition and quick hits...but not all those damn turnovers from sloppy fastbreaks and over-trying the lob passes and interior passes. I'm fine you saying you want play calls for DMo in that last minute, but please don't discard this game by saying we stagnated with horrible play calling or no ball movement, too many ISOs. That's not necessary for you to invent and still want to call DMo's number.
If I had 2598 hands, I still couldn't count on all those fingers how many times of the past couple of seasons the Rockets have gone away from what's gotten them huge leads. Why do you think we give up double digit lead after double digit lead? Stupid team. Incompetent coaching staff. The Houston Rockets are probably more synonymous with that than Hakeem Olajuwon unfortunately.
We didn't build the lead exclusively on inside-out. We built the lead on normal Rockets stuff, like ball movement for 3s, PnRs and a transition...We had good execution in half court. Some inside out. The third quarter had a run of 5 TOs and two really bad failed transition bucket. 4 of the 5 TOs were alley-oops or interior passes. That was like 7 consecutive possessions. We went to quick hits after that (Harden scored 11 pts) to build the lead back to 10. 4th Q we start with Lawson running the show for 3 quick scores in a row. We had another 9 pt lead with 8 minutes left. I get really frustrated with this BBS, when people just forget the game and write it off as they see fit. TOs played a main role in all of this, and out of going too fast and trying too many alley-oops.
Go ask Morey and Les who are the Superstars on this team? You might not agree but you can best believe they will say Harden and Howard.
It never fail to amaze me on how people grasp the truth around here. When it hurts, childish insults follow.
While many on this board complain about hero-ball, I get frustrated on "grand-slam" type of plays. Those plays that characterized the 3rd quarter where we go to fast and go for quick 3s and unintelligent rocket passes 40 feet. 99 FGA vs our 72 FGA. Turnovers, rebounding, and inconsistent defense have been our calling card for 3 seasons.
