You are facing the no. 1 FT team in the league, you are shooting 3 poorly the whole game, you have 1 time out and 28 seconds left. If you are going to foul right away, that means you are prepared to have below happen : 1. Portland will make most if not all the FT. 2. You will need to make at least 2 or even maybe 3 three pointers. 3. You can only advance the ball once with 1 TO left. 4. And even somehow you foul them twice and made 2 incredible three pointers to cut it to 1 pt and you foul them the 3rd time, say you are down by 3 with less than 8 seconds to go. Hey, Portland can also play the FT game with you, which we are one of the bottom 3 FT teams in the league. Playing foul game against Portland is a bad idea, especially in that situation.
No Foul - if portland makes the shot or get the rebound, its over Foul - make a two get an inbound steal I see the difference being getting a two & steal vs making portland miss and grabbing the rebound.
Well, if you will have more faith to get an inbound steal in that situation rather than defending 24 seconds and grab a rebound, I don't really need to waste time to explain more. And like you said, if you are really high on the steal, why the hell you will go for the foul right away and not even trying trap him or force a steal at the 30 second mark?
Since we're dealing in hypotheticals, that foul at 28s also gives them an informal time out since we only had one left, IE a chance to get some "coaching" instructions from McHale. Not saying that's a real reason, but given we only had 28s and only 1 TO giving us an extra possession and time to figure out a plan isn't the worst possible option. I'd still prefer they simply defend and go for the trap/steal, but if the team was a mess on the floor I could see that as not being totally unreasonable. Once again, none of us know what was going through Lin's head. It could have been a simple brain fart. He might have actually had a reason for it.
If Lin had been in the game to get him some more easy dunks and put backs, Howard might not have cooled off. Playoff basketball always comes down to half court execution.
They werent in position to trap.. bad coaching? If you gonna foul u got to do it right away. Either way we would of lost, like you said we can't hit a three.
Does anyone else's heart skip a beat when Jermey Lin has the ball. I feel like a turnover, steal, or bad pass is inevitable. He needs to go, and needs to go now.
Well, as much as I hate to bump this thread even more - It was nice to hear announcers giving Lin some props last night - on both games and both sides of the floor.
No - in the last two games I've only felt that with Harden touching the ball. He's been a no shooting turnover machine in this series. More TO's than asst last night. Lin has taken care of the ball pretty well this series, especially in the 2nd half - while Harden melts down.
Agreed - anyone on the team can go 14/47 and average as many TO's as asst - and most would probably do better. A lot of wasted possessions there.
I feel the opposite. When he touches the ball I feel layup/lob coming. The problem is that he doesn't touch the ball much.
Right. Because all the attention James gets wouldn't be focused on anyone else. I'd love to file these types of posts in the troll file but honestly I think some of you guys believe this stuff.
LOL at the all the people who have never seen a Rockets crisis they didn't like to further their agenda of getting rid of Lin.
If you will look back at the tape, once Lin committed that foul at 28 seconds, both Harden and Bev were pretty upset and ask Lin why for the foul. Obviously, some people said that the foul by Lin was directly instructed by McHale is just not true, at least there were other teammates at that moment well aware of the situation on the floor. I would say its more of a brain fart by Lin rather than "he actually had a reason for it" - because after the foul and Bev and Harden were yelling at Lin, he had the look like McHale - I don't know what I had just done. His foul was not the main reason that the Rockets lost G2, actually, his play after the foul that wasted 7 second to penetrate and then stop and looking for a pass is much harmful to the Rockets. This was the play that killed any slim chance of the Rockets coming back. McHale should be blamed for most of the struggles Lin had in G2, it should never come down to that foul.
You can't be serious. James was terrible the first two games but he still draws a ton of attention on offense. When he's out we don't have anyone not named Dwight that gets doubled or focused on. Yes, he did contribute to wasted possessions but you have to factor in how Portland plays us when he's not on the court.
While I am being somewhat facetious, I do think Harden has been a net negative in this series - what good is drawing defenders if you just keep chucking up brick after brick against dbl teams looking for calls. Harden's only hope (totally serious) is a coaching change - someone who would never stand for his play last night. Someone who can get him to at least try on D and not be a whiner. The same could be said for the team in general - no discipline - much needed.
I'm 100% with you on the coaching change. Across the board. Clean house. But I just can't agree that we're a better team without James on the court, even as bad as he is. Our other guys are just too easy to stop most nights, especially when the other team can make adjustments (coaching again ).
Our franchise player was terrible on offense and defense. Thats all there is to it. You can't blame role players for being bad on what little minutes they played. He shall not get a pass unless he comes back and wins the next two.
