House and Chandler both OUT for “personal reasons”

House needs to run into Lakers hotel and touch everyone and everything in there. They will have to forfeit or postpone games

 

“If it was a star player, there’s no way [the NBA] would handle it this way,” said a person close to House with direct knowledge of the investigation. “They want to make an example out of somebody.”

Well duh...

 

* "If it was a star player, or a featured money team, there's..."

 

Safe to say they should have sacrificed and thrown Caboclo under the bus.

 

but chandler was already apparently named and implicated by the woman, and he was sitting in uniform on the bench last night. more and more this seems like a targeted wound by the league w/ their thumb on the scale to guarantee LA WCF

 

Seems like we're looking at a stalemate. Here's the situation so far:

• The COVID-19 tester in question named two players, Chandler and ____?____. She insists she didn't meet with House.
• House is steadfastly proclaiming he did nothing wrong. Maybe he's guilty and wants to preserve his marriage*, or maybe he's truly innocent. We don't know.
• The league knows the woman entered the hotel Monday after the game and left Tuesday morning. They have no real clue what she did in between, apart from what she told them (and they haven't really said what that is, apart from meeting with Chandler and NOT meeting with House). Their best "evidence" to implicate House is hotel data saying the door to his room opened at suspicious times that may match up with the woman's entering and leaving the hotel.
• The NBAPA has their thumb up their ass. They don't want to appear unconcerned about the safety issues at play, and Danuel House, Jr. and the Houston Rockets as a team just aren't important enough to make a big fuss over.

The stalemate is that unless House or the woman (or maybe another involved teammate?) change their stories, there's nothing more the league office can learn about this situation. No video, no other witnesses. They're stuck.

My guess is they'll let House play in Game 5, saying enough time has passed so the safety angle isn't an issue.

And once again, the Rockets get f$%ked by the NBA.

* As Richard Pryor says, even if your wife walks in and finds you in bed on top of a woman, deny it anyway.

 

Golliver says the rockets were blindsided by the house situation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/09/11/rockets-lakers-danuel-house/

edit: looks like someone beat me to it

 

Full article available on another thread now... I paid the COVID-19 WaPo discount rate...

https://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php?threads/wapo-rockets-blindsided-by-nba-on-house.307182/

 

I hope we can all agree House absolutely would have made no difference last night.
We probably won’t. There’ll be posters who’ll say it would have changed something.

 

Maybe we should all acknowledge the fact that if missing House was going to be this big of a deal then we weren’t in a good position to begin with. No disrespect to Danuel, but s**t happens, contenders overcome injuries. Celtics lost Hayward. Lakers lost Bradley. Yes our team is built differently, but the issue is that....we’re built differently.

 

I agree. The situation is infuriating, but if that's what takes us down, then we weren't going to sniff a trophy this year anyway.

 

gotta disagree

look house plays 30 mpg for us . That’s a huge piece . How good would the lakers look if you took away rondo ?

we relied on Ben and Austin to step up . And have to play even more shothanded vs a bigger team .

I’m not sure if he tips the balance from lose to win last night .. but he sure as hell coulda helped game 3 too

 

he wouldn't have been a difference the way they played last night. he's a rotational piece of course but he isn't the difference between you getting demolished like they did last night. from start to finish just dominated. the rockets essentially quit yesterday and went into the game ready to lose. Lakers played like they were down in the series, while houston looked liked they were looking forward to fishing

 

Can Houston let house to play game 5? Just appeal it. It is final match for thos season

 

Just treat it as an injury.

If not for House, Covington could have been out due to concussion.

An injustice for sure but yeah.

 

We were a team that would need to catch fire and play our very, very best to get to the finals anyway. So much for that.

 

As much crap as this way by the NBA at this point, I don't think House would have been this decisive player that would have swung the series. The Rockets aren't losing this series because of Danuel House being sidelined.

 

I wouldn't say they quit as much as they were unable to shut out a MAJOR distraction. This House/Chandler situation has probably been the thing the team talked about the last couple of days. It's not so much that they gave up or played flat, but they weren't able to focus properly leading up to the game, and it showed.

 

That’s more telling about our team than anything, if you’re going to let that distract you and affect your focus.