Jason Terry may need a nagging injury to find out just how good Canaan is for this team. He is exactly what we need... Great teams have a good mix of youth and experience, Canaan could be our Sam Cassel if McHale was smart enough to figure that out. DD
That's the crux of the problem. McFail seems to go through this a lot. With TJones last year we likely would have seen very little of him had it not been for the failures of the Asik / Dwight front line. DMo was again on pace to be overlooked and marginalized as a misplaced stretch 4 was it not for injuries decimating our front court. Canaan is just the latest example. He only plays when Bev is hurt. WTF are you thinking McFail! There's enough mins for both him and Terry you fool! Also try not running Ariza into the ground before the first half of the season is complete. Mix in some Kpap in the SF rotation. SMGDH
Assuming he meant Shved's trade value. I think I could take that dude off the dribble right now with one iffy knee.
I was talking about Shved's trade value, but the point is right on. What is more damaging is that he isn't getting ANY time. If he got 5 minutes a night, at least he is staying loose, if not sharp. But sitting on the end of the bench makes no sense. Maybe Morey is thinking two steps ahead of me and is playing the Shved Gambit.
Canaan is less predictable on defense. It makes it harder for his teammates on defense if they don't know what he's going to do. Coaches like players that fit into their framework of defense. Not done extensive watching, but I expect Terry at least lets his man into the paint in similar ways in similar situations allowing the rest of the team know how to make up for it. That said, Canaan is the better PG and Terry should not be getting any PG minutes over him if Canaan is healthy. Canaan is the better PG...his coach just doesn't trust him after he sucked the first ten games of the season. I've not seen much of Shved. Offensively, he looks like he knows what he's doing running a team, but he looks worse on defense. Long story short...Coaches like to coach their way. High variance players like Canaan drive them crazy.
Morey needs to force mchales again like he did with trading Patterson and Morris giving tjones a way to play. This is one of the many things I don't like about mchale. He has that kubiak syndrome where he's just going to keep trotting out the same guys over and over until he's forced to do something different. No way shved should see any time over canaan if he's healthy. Give me a break. Give canaan some of bevs and Terry's minutes. Especially bev. I love the guy, but he's super limited.
Yeah....and Shved has been parked after a couple stints. Remember....cyberx told us that Morey was high on Shved. I have absolutely no reason not to believe that since he's been pretty much dead on about everything else. But Mchale has parked the dude after a couple initial bad outings. So Morey and McHale aren't on the same page with Shved. And probably not Canaan either. I understand what McHale is doing and I agree with what he's doing about 90%. We gotta have that scrambling overplaying perimeter defense that generates turnovers. I said that very plainly last year as soon as we got Dwight that we had to get defenders who overplayed the passing lanes and were high turnover defenders that would gamble a little bit so we could use Dwight to his fullest extent on the defensive end, letting him clean up as many blow bys as possible while we got as many run outs off turnovers as possible. (This is one of the primary reasons why I know that Ricky Rubio would be a great fit here. Rubio is a big time ball-hawk.) So, I understand the defensive philosophy and agree with it. In fact, I'm wondering out loud right now why it took Mchale a whole season and off season to figure out what kind of team D we needed to play when I knew it as soon as we signed Dwight and we had both Dwight and Asik in the fold. And I'm not anti-McHale. I like the guy. I think he's great at holding guys accountable (apparently what he's doing with Canaan). I think he's a good guy. But you gotta make adjustments in this league. Players do. And coaches do. You gotta see what is happening on the court and make adjustments as a coach. You can't put 4 Tony Allens around Harden and expect to win anything. And you can't replace Harden with Terry when Harden needs a blow and play with 4 Tony Allens around Terry and expect to win anything. And you can't expect Josh Smith, Corey Brewer, Pat Beverley, and Jason Terry to make plays for you when that is not their forte. Has anybody noticed that the league has adjusted to Beverley this season? Do you see what they are doing to him every chance they get? Two things....they're beating the holy crap out of him defensively, banging him hard on screens. It's a constant thing. And to compound his misery they're isolating him in space against creative ball handlers who most of the time are smaller quicker guys. They'll set screens and rub him off on mismatches where he's not quick enough to stay with the ball handler, then knock his socks off with a pick. The league has adjusted to Bev. He's still effective. But his defensive effectiveness has been watered down a whole lot. They're not going to fight him 94 feet. If he decides to dog somebody 94 feet, they simply give the ball up and throw it to the other guard or a forward who brings the ball over the timeline. Because the league is smart. No sense in going mano-a-mono against Bev bringing the ball up. Why waste the energy and take the risk? Let somebody else he's not defending bring the ball up, then rub him off on the matchup you want, then make him chase guys off the ball around a bunch of screens and wear his a... out, and then iso him up on smaller quicker guards that he can't stick with in the half-court. Just one example of how the league adjusts and then you have to adjust as a team again. Right now the league has adjusted to our offense. And the prevailing defense is ABH. That is....Anybody but Harden. Force the ball out of Harden's hands as much as possible. When Harden's out of there, then dog the snot out of whoever is handling the basketball because we're playing defenders except for Terry and none of Terry, Bev, Brewer, Smith are playmakers. As a coach of the team you have to adjust. You have to see what the other COACH and the other TEAM is doing to OUR TEAM. It's a team game! It's not an individual game. So while there has to be accountability. There also has to be reasonable, rational coaching decisions. You can hold a guy accountable and still give him minutes!!!! The two things (accountability and playing time) are not mutually exclusive. You play the players that give you the greatest chance of winning. And then you challenge them to be better. We didn't bench Harden last season because his defense sucked. And it absolutely sucked bad at times. We played Harden because playing him despite his crap defense gave us a BETTER CHANCE OF WINNING THE GAME than not playing him. You gotta play the guys that give you the best chance of winning the game while holding them accountable to improve their weaknesses. Benching Canaan means the best shooter on the team and second best playmaker on the team is never on the floor for us. And our offense is reliant on shooting and getting to the rim and finishing or getting the foul. Nobody except Harden has that skill set combination greater than Canaan. It's a no-brainer. Once again........when Harden is not out there, this current roster NEEDS Canaan to be out there...poor defense and all. McHale should be willing to do the same things for Canaan this year that he did for Harden last year because we absolutely need his offense when Harden sits. Surround the boy with the rest of the defenders we've accumulated, hand him the basketball and let him lead the assault from 3 and at the rim.
Spot on, except for the Shved part since the guy is injured The biggest problem is indeed his hands need to be forced, otherwise he will not adjust! He's stubborn and will play veterans over young guys whenever he can. A lot of people give credit for him developing Parsons, TJ and whoever, but I don't think he has much to do with that. He had no other choice but to play either D-Mo or TJ and there was nobody besides Parsons at SF to start. Maybe if he had Garcia from the start, that guy would've been given the position lol I hate this about McHale and while I respect that guys respect him, the fact he seems pretty clear to players about when they're playing and when they're not, he plays guys despite going through slumps and such. I think the lack of an offensive structure, the inability to get Dwight Howard to buy in and run pick and rolls, the fact that he simply does not run plays for D-Mo, does not play Canaan when Beverley / Terry are not performing, goes from playing a guy to not playing him at all (Papa, Canaan) and lastly: to give a new guy immediately the back-up spot when he hasn't proven **** (Shved over Canaan).
Agree on TJones/Dmo being his only options but with Parsons we had Bud as the projected returning starter. Chase had played better after the battier trade the prior season and was penciled in as the starter coming into the next season. That is the one time that i've seen McHale truly develop a young player on his own accord. Got to give him credit for that one.
It's a little bit more difficult to force McHale's hand to play Canaan. Because that would require trading Bev or Terry if you're talking about a similar situation to Patterson/Jones. I don't think we should do that. We do need Bev as a true 3&D guy in the rotation/lineup. Only other way to possibly force McHale's hand is to trade Terry. And I really don't want to do that either. We already traded away Daniels. We need Terry (or somebody) as a shot-up shooter. Now we're so loaded up on defenders that the spot-up shooters are the rarity on this unit instead of the defenders. So, I really couldn't advocate trading Terry unless we get another great spot-up shooter from somewhere. I don't know how Morey can force McHale's hand here. He's just been given an extension by Les also.
Our defense is a simple concept. Force the ball handler to the sideline. Keep them out of the middle of the floor, and overplay all shooters at the 3-point line to contest the 3's and force them to the rim to deal with Dwight. Canaan was doing that just fine in Bev's and Terry's absence. Go watch the videos of those games.
Disagree. You go re-watch the games. How many times does Canaan's man blow by him to get good looks inside heart of the defense. Dwight is there to help...not solely guard the PG and center at the rim. Rockets play 3-point line tight, but Canaan overdoes it and gets beat both to middle and to sideline. Canaan is playing tightly too far from the basket that it doesn't even matter if he gets beat to sideline. His man has plenty of room to get to the middle since Canaan is too far behind him to keep his man to the sideline. Granted, Terry is a worse defender overall and should not play over Canaan. Terry does not try to be Beverley. Canaan has moments when he goes "Beverley" on defense away from the basket. He just isn't as good at staying with his man as Beverley if the guy gets by him.
Bev should start. If Canaan is working hard in practice, then reward him by bringing him off the bench. If he struggles then, bring Terry in. It shouldn't be too tough.
Bev couldn't throw it in the ocean yesterday night and it would have been a good time to have given Cannan some clock. His defense wouldn't have been much worse than what Beverly was showing and he's a more natural 3pt shooter than Bev.
I'm not saying Canaan is a stellar defender. He is not. But whether you let the dude loose at the rim (Canaan) or you stand there 6 feet away and let him shoot a wide open 3 ball (Terry) it's the same. You're agreeing with me. Overall Terry is the worse defender of the two players. And Canaan is the better offensive player of the 2 players. Conclusion: Obvious
Terry's man is shooting 30% from three point line so you exaggerate him giving up open three pointers. I agree with your general points. Terry's man has been more effective on a per shot basis than Canaan's man, but Terry has let his man get to rim less than Canaan on a per minute basis even though a lot of the credit goes to Terry's teammates. McHale values rim protection most on defense. His assistants are the ones who want to be more aggressive at the three point line. While I think Canaan is a better defender (not by much), I don't think McHale sees it that way. I firmly believe that Canaan isn't playing because he takes more chances away from the basket defensively than McHale wants (in other words, not following the game plan). PGs getting into the lane causes unpredictability. My point of disagreement come from your response to my post about Canaan being less predictable defensively. The Rockets are better than most teams when healthy. While I disagree with this notion, it seems coaches hate variance especially when they have the better team. Canaan brings variance in that he shoots a lot of three pointers (high value shots, but are made less) and that he gambles defensively away from the basket a lot with too much pressure.
I did not mention Canaan's man shooting 3-balls. I mentioned Terry's man shooting 3-balls. Our defense is designed to limit 3's in the corners and push opponents into long 2's or into the longer 3-ball up top contested. And as a last resort if they get to the rim, Dwight is waiting. The perimeter guys are supposed to take chances and guard tight towards the sidelines and force the shooter to have to turn to take the 3-point shot. We want to shoot as many good look 3's as possible. That's good variance. And we want to turn the opponent over defensively. That requires gambling somewhat. All our defenders do that. All of them let their man loose time to time. It's not like Canaan is out there gambling and nobody else is.
