When you have a player like Harden on the floor, the ball should at least touch his hands once every time down the court. He will at least draw in the defense, and open up easier shots for the entire team. The Harden P&R is one of the most effective plays in the NBA in the 4th quarter, and a big reason why OKC had so much success last season closing games. Go re-watch the San Antonio series if you dont believe me. He might have choked in the finals(mostly due to Miami's incredible defense on him), but that play was a big reason why OKC got there in the first place. That being said, the Rockets cannot run every single play through Harden for 48 minutes a night. They have got to get the entire team in an offensive flow that gets everyone involved, and as you saw in the Portland game... one man only has so much energy to give. The Rockets need to conserve as much energy as they can from Harden so he can really turn on the jets in the 4th. The Harden P&R should be the #1 option down the stretch of games. However, yes they do need at least 3 or 4 other reliable sets they can consistenly run during the game when they need a bucket in case the defense has Harden's number that game or he is gassed/injured. Right now the Rockets have about 5 plays they are running. Come December they will probably have closer to 10 or so plays they can run consistently throughout the rest of the season. Hopefully in that timeframe another player can step up dramatically on offense as to take the pressure off of Harden/Lin, and make life easier on everyone. At least that's the plan.
Don't know where you got you stats but Harden is one of the best at isolation efficiency. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...ka-more-important-to-okc-thunders-title-hopes According to hickory-high.com, Harden's isolation was the fouth highest efficiency way of scoring for Thunder. http://www.hickory-high.com/?attachment_id=4405 What Harden lacks of is reading the defense. He had a lot of trouble of reading the trap and breaking out of double-team late in the Blazers' game. He is most affective getting the ball coming off a screen or slashing. At least for now, Lin is probably better at initiating the attack and creating plays for Harden and others. It was really a strategy decision on McHale on who to initial the last possession attack before OT. On one hand he had Harden who was our new franchise cornerstone. One the other, Lin has been around since the training camp. Lin knows the playbooks, his teammates, and offensive flow better than Harden. Either way, a tough call to make!
I mentioned this point in the OP... my point is that he's the main man now and McHale has suggested that he wants to keep it simple and give the ball to the best player on the court, which to me says iso play.
as long as we aren't title contenders... i say just give it to him, so he can practice and become accustomed to putting the team on his shoulders when needed. we need to show the nba that we have a legit superstar to attract another to pair with him.
In the preseason we had some games where the ball movement was great. We were also pushing the ball up the court better than in the regular season. I think the Rockets will work to get that ball movement and fast break tempo back over the next few weeks.
I didn't cite any stats, because I didn't base it off any stats. I don't think Harden is as good an ISO player as he is using screens of any kind. That's just my opinion from watching Harden play. Now, the stats surely indicate that I'm in the wrong here, however I would question what Synergy defines as ISOs and the PPP concept in general. You see, there's a difference between a good ISO player who you just clear out the side for an let him go to work and a guy who will be effective scoring-wise in a certain ISO setting. Kevin Martin for example was generally quite high in Syergy's ISO ranks IIRC. The problem with Martin is, he really is only effective in that one sets where you clear out the left side and let him blow past the defender. It didn't take long for well prepared teams to take that option away and when the Rockets went to Martin and Martin didn't create a shot/take a shot, the play broke down and the offense stalled. PPP does not account for that, so while Martin may rank high in PPP per ISO, I never thought that was a great play to go to once teams figured Martin out.
If his contract was half what it is, he would probably pass more! If he's effective individually, great, but I hope it doesn't happen to the detriment of the team where he becomes a Kobe/Carmelo shot monster/ballhog. It'd be great if he got most of his shots in the flow of the offense, and not just coming off iso-s. That's the danger of having a guy paid way more than the rest of the team - he thinks it's all on him.
welcome dude, just dont stalk me :grin: great stuff, I say more, Mchales offense is quite vanilla though, sucks he lacks much creativity, hopefully he proves me wrong
Since the context of your question is on "game on the line", most if not all coaches hand the ball to their superstar. The only play they run is to get the ball into this superstar's hand and let him go one on one. There are a lot of Jordan highlights where he either took the last shot or he passed to the open man. Kobe usually had the ball in his hands, not Shaq (cause he can't hit free throws). Does this make PJ a bad coach? Superstars usually gets special treatment calls so as a coach, you try to use that to your advantage. In addition, you have more control of clock management with an iso play. Imagine if you had 20 secs left and run a play that has numerous options. The first option creates an opportunity for an open player to hit the shot with 10 secs left. Do you take that option with the notion that if you miss, u are giving the opponent a lot of time to win the game?
I also want to add this. From the last game, the Blazers also ran an iso play for Lamarcus. He got double teamed and passed it out to tie the game. Was that bad coaching?
Was I the only one that predicted what Harden was going to do on that last play of regulation? Oh I guess at least one more person on the Blazers did. I'm a proponent for having the ball in the point guard's hands for plays like that and let him set up the play. Anyone who has watched film on Harden would have guessed he was going to try a step back three.
Hard to say, but I doubt McHale called for the double team. He usually just wants guys to dig. Harden just over-digged and lost Matthews. Can't blame McHale on that one. You could argue that going with the same double-team scheme throughout an entire game might not be ideal in the long run. I'm a fan of SVG's zone scheme, where he doubles/traps with his center from the middle and zones up the rest of the court. I like coaches throwing in wrinkles like that just to give the offense a different look, similar to changing up double team coverage from baseline to middle, etc... We'll see what McHale comes up with scheme-wise both on offense and defense these next few months. I'm not all too optimistic, but I'm willing to give him some more time to figure it out.
LESS Harden playing iso ball will only work for so long. We need to incorporate plays for him that include picks, screens, cuts, etc. Also need to incorporate other players into the offense as well (Lin, Morris, Parsons, Patterson, Delfino) to better prepare us for crunch time situations. IF we run iso ball all game, and then we need to run iso ball at the end of the game, they will just shut us down with a double team. If we establish the rest of the offense through out the game, the defense will less likely double, or if they do, our guys will have a better feel for their rhythm to knock down shots late.
The biggest problem is teams are not respecting ppat, asik, and chandler's offense at the moment. So they always risk help defense on both Lin and Harden. So occasionally they both get double/triple teamed with help D. When all 3 of them starts scoring occasionally, we'll be seeing a whole different picture than iso Harden/Lin
Mchale's not creative enough for anything else. I don't want to see what happened last game in portland where there were so many plays watching the end of the shot clock, where other players were standing around watching him. (Last shot in regulation)
Synergy Sports defines Isolation play as when a player STARTS in a one on one situation. For example, blowing by your defender and getting to the rim for a goal or getting free throws are the result of an isolation play. Another would be executing a step back jumper, a ball fake and shoot, or a crossover, stop and shoot. Yet another would be flattening out the defense and letting them go to work. PPP is the points that are attributed based upon having the ball in your hands. So, if you always pass, your PPP is low. If you score fairly often relative to the number of times the ball touches your hands, your PPP goes up. If you are always passing it out to others, then your PPP goes down. Isolation play is only one facet of a player's game, however it is a good indicator of an individual's ability to convert a possession into points, as well as their good decision making. Players with high PPP are players that you want to have the ball in their hands at some point during a possession. Often you'll see fans point to a player like Melo and say that they're an amazing ISO player. However, the ability to fake out/out maneouver an opponent is severely undermined if a low percentage of those attempts translate into low points per possession. In other words, what good does it do if you don't make the correct decision and shoot a lower percentage shot, then miss and the ball ends up in the opponents hands? For example, looking at Melo's 2009/2010 season... Melo is primarily an Iso player, going to it 35.4% of the time, scoring a relatively meager 0.84 PPP on a mere 37.4% field goals, good for only 59th-best in the NBA.... Synergy has only been around for three seasons, but Melo went to the Iso about 37% of the time when with the Nuggets. Now, you can take those statistics in context and say that Melo gets double-teamed alot (true) which reduces his efficiency, or say that he lacked supporting cast (which may also be true). You can also argue that he takes on excessively hard shots when he doesn't need to (poor decision making) and didn't pass enough to the open man (the ballstopper label). This doesn't mean Melo isn't an exceptional scorer, just that his preferences in 2009/10 to "take the shot" made his team less effective than if he had been more selective. This is why Harden high ISO efficiency is so impressive. He not only takes shots and converts them at a very high rate (focussing on high percentages), but he often makes the correct decision to pass out of very difficult shooting situations. PPP doesn't state anything about the proper use of the player. K-Mart was not very effective outside of specific set ups, but then that's true of most players. A high PPP indicates a combination of not only efficiency, but the CORRECT usage of the player. And in the end, that's what counts when it comes to putting the ball into the hole... being a highly skilled player is great, but you still have to win. And winning requires efficient use of ball possessions.
