Well supposedly he and Dwight are boys. None of our power forwards can shoot. we'll worry about the growing pains, the bottom line is that we added depth at the 4 and we needed that big time.
So how many of you have jumped ship already? How long will it take for the rest of you? Let me guess, he needs time to gel. Well this is the Josh Smith that has existed for at least 2 years now, get used to it.
You guys remember Smiths first game? He came off the bench and D-Mo started. D-Mo looked horrible that game and Josh Smith looked great. The next two games? Smith starts and D-Mo comes off the bench. Now Smith looks horrible and D-Mo looks great. When the starters get in there, ball gets stuck. Bench gets in there and the ball moves around. Now I'm not going to sit here and say Josh Smith is perfect, he's not... But when the ball moves around, everyone plays better... And for the last week or so, the ball hasn't moved around much with the starting 5.
Its not all Smith. It's Smith + Bev and the fact that Dwight gets too many post ups as well as Ariza tries to do too much on offense. That's what it is. That being said Smith was just not necessary with a starting unit that already sucks at moving without the ball and ball movement both. He would be better off the bench to spell D-Mo and aggressively rebound. Meanwhile Bev would be better on another team so we could have a point guard who actually knows how to run an NBA team.
Smith is going to become the scape goat. People need to really pay attention. Our issues go WAY beyond him.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>3 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rockets?src=hash">#Rockets</a> games for Josh Smith: 29 pts, 12-34 FG (35%), 5-9 FT, 0-4 on 3's. 20 rebs, 4 asts, 4 stls, 10 turnovers.</p>— Adam Wexler (@awexler) <a href="https://twitter.com/awexler/status/549784768477274113">December 30, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
$2 million - no brainer they said! Doesn't work out, just cut him! Just cut him right!? :grin: Come to our team! He's gonna change! We can change/help/fix him! :grin: It was just Detroit! Bad situation, he'll play better here! :grin: ESPN was right about one thing:
Yea.. the same problems live on with McHale's system. It's such a YOLO offense... Can't win in the playoffs with that ****.
I agree with this. In the 2nd quarter Smith was out there with the 2nd unit and even though he wasn't scoring, he was playing well. When the starters got back in with DMo replacing Smith, they went on a huge run.
Since signing Josh Smith, the Rockets are about to be 2-3 with some of their worst performances of the season. Since cutting Josh Smith, the Pistons are about to be 4-0 with their 4 best games of the season. I'm sure this is just coincidence though.
I hate that I continue to find myself defending somebody I didn't even want here in the first place, but let's not pretend we hadn't sucked it up for two games before he got here. As Harden himself pointed out, the slow starts and porous defense have been issues over the last 9-10 games now. I guess it's easier to scapegoat Josh, but let's be real.
We had a bad game on game 2 of a back to back after an overtime game in Denver where we didn't get to town till 4 AM on game day then we lost to a hot Atlanta team before beating the Blazers.....then the Smith deal happened and we've been looking terrible ever since.
We played like ass in that New Orleans game -- and the first half of that ATL game looked like a layup drill for them. Zero defense played, easy uncontested trip after trip after trip after trip to the basket for the Hawks. But I already see that the narrative is going to be that we were playing great basketball until the second Josh arrived, so y'all carry on.
I don't think anyone thinks he is the entire problem. Clearly Ariza/Beverly/McHale etc. are big problems too. Doesn't mean he isn't a problem. Team is better with Terrence Jones.
