good post... My opinion...The Suns and Spurs are the two teams that could possibly sweep the Rockets. Too Big. The Lakers are beatable...Kobe is a basketball God and Gasol is a beast, but a beast on one end. He hasn't played defense since....
We haven't played the Jazz in like 3 months, yet people think we match up good against them this year?? The upcoming came against the Jazz will prove you guys right or wrong, but frankly, I don't like our chances against the Jazz. Our easiest path to the finals is to get a high seed.
if you are one to believe that point differential is the best indicator of the strength of a team (like many of the experts), take another look at Utah. last i checked Utah had the 3rd best differential in the NBA behind only Boston and Detroit. best in the western conference.
the thing that worries me about the rockets is they haven't been winning the rebounding battle like they did during the 22 game win streak. games like sacramento and seattle were harder than they should have been since we couldn't crash the boards. even josh powell last night had 22 points! our frontline is undersized and very inexperienced. loren woods may help with this but i don't think anyone is comfortable inserting him into the rotation. utah will absolutely destroy us on the glass if we don't correct this problem. i think one of the problems has to do with landry still being hurt. he doesn't crash the glass with the same intensity as he used to.
call me a hater, but why does everyone think that if we face utah, we will win. pretty arogant... beating utah is NOT a forgone conclusion.
I'm not sure people are saying it's a foregone conclusion, at least the OP isn't. I mean, look at last year, right? But I think we'd match-up well with them. It's better than playing the Suns in the 1st round after all. I agree with the OP, the best chance for post-season sucess is Utah and provided we beat them, then face the Hornets.
utah is the easiest road to the WC Finals, theyre saying if we beat them then we get the Hornets Its better than the Lakers then San Antonio Scola will shut down Okur
you are way to in love with hayes. he would foul out in the first quarter if he played hayes. i would take jvg's defensive brain over yours any day of the week.
I would say Utah would be a very difficult matchup for us because they do not fall victim to our team's greatest strength - Shane's defense. His defense is wasted on Kirilenko and Korver. Sure he will play great defense on either, but he wouldn't be able to help off Korver vs the other team's true offensiv threats - Boozer and DWill. I want our best defender maximizing his defensive capabilities on the other team's best player - not a defensive or 3 pt specialist. Also, Harpring defended Tmac very well last year. While we will match up better with Boozer's O without Yao, we also give up a focal point for their defense and our best freethrow shooter to punish Sloan's hack-a-everybody defense. I would much rather play the Lakers in the first round out of our likely opponents. Battier dogs Kobe very well, and Gasol would probably lose in a flop-off with Scola. No Bynum helps us a lot as we can compete very well in rebounds with them. A series with the Lakers would also be just the thing in my opinion to truly motivate Tmac to be the beast he can be because it would definitely be the most watched series unlike another 4-5 with Utah. I say bring on LA in the first round.
it's about match ups. it will be sweeter to beat them and our players will be very motivated to play their best if we face them.
the teams to avoid are suns, spurs, utah . we can beat NO, GS, DEN, possibly lakers, and MAVS utah is very underrated they might win it all. i dont know why everyone thinks we will beat utah. we couldnt beat them with yao
Sooooo, with no Yao, what does JVG's defensive brain do? I'm sure we'll get to see Boozer abuse Deke at some point if we play them. Deke is slower laterally than Yao. Boozer will either shoot it right over him or when Deke moves up to contest, Booz will go right around for the Dunk.
Nobody wants to meet the Mavericks. They are more dangerous now. I say it again, they're more deadly now. Why? Because they don't have pressure to win at this time. They got nothing to lose. They're like a bomb that is ready to explode anytime. The only thing that can beat them now is their own self, chemistry. Having Kidd as a leader is a big help to the team. So I don't think even the Spurs are thrilled to face them in the first round.
I would want the fakers in the 1st round because they play shaky defense......otherwise I'd want the hornets due to their lack of depth.....
only way we playin hornets in first round, is if we... tank to the last seed. and i kind of doubt we'll go to 1st and 2nd seed, to play denver/warriors/mavericks. playing phoneix is iffy, so i like our chances against utah or lakers. perferbly utah, cause they only got boozer and okur. lakers got some scary startin front court in odom, gasol, and possible bynum? (whats his update) either way, the key is to get HCA. especialy against the utah jazz. i don't want us to go to game 7, and decide our fate in utah. then if we beat utah, we'd play winner of 1st seed and 8th seed right? easier path would be playing the warriors or nuggets, but realisticly, we'd be playing hornets. we just have to seal off chandler and guard west pretty darn good, which i believe hayes can take at least one of those two. chris paul will have a field trip, but as will mcgrady. once we beat them, i'm hoping we don't play spurs. they may be old, but somehow, someway, they are still a great team. i'd rather play the lakers. lakers are very inconsistant, and their team also relies on shootin, especially from farmar and sasha. then, if we... the houston rockets... make the finals, we better be praying it's clevland or at least detroit. since neither of those two, have a post threat, we make actually match up pretty well.
I agree that that can work fairly effectively but the question is- Will it work in a 7-game series? It seems tough to run a defense like that where the opponent has time to adjust for the next game(s)..
nice analyst really makes sense also its pretty funny that we haven't played the lakers with gasol and every1 is saying we will get bulldozed by them i really want rox to beat them and so barkley can shut up
