Unless Jones goes off early I am much less enthusiastic about him than D-Mo. The defense just seems so calm and collected when he is on the floor, keeping all of the offensive players contained and on the perimeter. I do admit to a D-Mo bias, so could you all watch the game tonight closely and give me your opinion?
I too am a D-momaniac but I was being obnoxiously positive for good measure. Morey really scored with these two guys with mid first round picks in a couple so-so drafts. This is kinda like SAS felt when they found our Leonard was gonna be a stud when they already had a loaded team to begin with. It's reason to celebrate.
After so many years striking out on the bigs. Normally I do not bring up on this forum my eye tests, but it seems to be backed up strongly by the stats. Great teams can shut down a player's offense. But it is impossible to shut down great defense. That Mirotic for D-Mo swap looks like Morey had a crystal ball.
I have to say I've liked D-Mo from the first Summer League footage of him appeared on this site - but it was for his offense. I have to thank jtr for pointing out his prowess on the defensive end, as my eye test for defense is very weak. It's nice to be able to throw out tidbits of info like his defensive success in conversations with friends on Rockets. I'm very excited about both players though!
This is the first year I have watched every Rockets game looking intently at their defense. That experience has done wonders for my understanding. I do have a few threads analyzing defense, especially D-Mo's, posted on the GARM if you are interested.
Well we got to see that Casspi at the PF game that folks here have to campaigning for. The offense sure did take off. -Seriously though. I think tonight is a good indication that folks are blowing this whole PF situation out of order. It all starts with Harden, Howard, and Parsons with the "others" filling in where they are needed for their roles. If Howard is out, they need to find other guys to step up on the offensive end, and that really should be on Parsons, and Lin more than anyone else. If Beverley is out, someone needs to step up on the defensive end to makeup for what they are losing on the perimeter.
Indeed dobro and we got another look at dmo starting. He got in early foul trouble and his elite post moves were weak. He is best suited coming off the bench jtr so put your argument to rest old school.
We got a whole 3 minutes of D-Mo starting. I think we saw more of what it would look like to start and play Casspi heavy minutes(I'd say he played mid 20's at least with the starters). Those ticky tack fouls at the beginning took the air out of the sails of the starting unit. Were they D-Mo's fault.... sure, but he was trying to make plays on the defensive end on all of his fouls, but just got caught in bad spots, and made bad split second decisions. Also, I don't think I remember D-Mo posting up but one or two times early in the game. They don't go to him because their offense when he's in the game needs him to set picks, and roll to the basket to create movement in their offense. Having two bigs on the low block hurts their spacing. Horns is the set I see McHale instructing them to use quite frequently when Asik & D-Mo play together which isn't going to create post up opps. Long story short- There is no point in talking about D-Mo's post up game other than referring to it as something for the future.... like in two years future. D-Mo is going to get his minutes doing the dirty work here in the coming weeks and next year, and that's what we really should be paying attention to more than anything. Tonight he didn't do what the team needed him to because he was on the bench, and the Rockets were never able to get in a stable half court groove that didn't consist of jacking up 3's left and right.
I'm not taking much out of this game. This was last year's team out there with Lin and Asik starting. No post presence at all with DMO in foul trouble throughout allowed the Nets to play small and come out tight on all our perimeter guys. Yes, Casspi ' s shot was off and DMO was in foul trouble and ineffective because of it. The Nets challenged practically every 3-ball and Joe Johnson and Paul Pierce chewed us up. But you have to keep this in mind. ... Neither DMO nor Casspi were in there with the other 4 starters. So you can't really draw much out of this game in regards to how they each would look with Dwight and Bev out there. I know some of you would like to do that but you can't. You got nothing here to prove DMO and Casspi are bad with the starters.
Tonight's game was a good indicator of what will happen when teams go small in the playoffs. Having to rely on Casspi will hurt us severely. So, I stick by the notion that our best "small" line-up is Lin, Bev, Harden, Parson, Dwight/Asik. If Lin is playing like **** (as he does quite often due to inconsistency) then i'd rather see Bev, Harden, Parsons, Garcia, Dwight/Asik As far as Motiejunas goes tonight. The Nets were running Paul Pierce as their power forward. D-Mo was always going to be in not so good spots all night after he picked up those two initial fouls. They knew he was in foul trouble and just took it straight to him. He's a rather young player. He'll learn. For the time being, while he continues to mature, him coming off the bench is for the best. That's the only place he might get post up opportunities as well. Regardless though, I still stand by the fact that the rotation/substitution patterns/minutes allocation will be much different in the playoffs. It'll probably be comprised of: Bev Harden Parson Jones Dwight Asik Lin D-Mo Garcia The rest will depend on match-ups. For some reason I think Garcia, who apparently has the tendency to really step up his game during important times (he's actually been playing very well lately) will beat out Hamilton for any leftover wing minutes. He'll be especially important when we go small ball if the two pg line-up is not working. Plus, McHale seems to trust him to step up in big games judging by his minutes in the last OKC game and tonight.
I know dmo has a good future ahead of him but im not the one claiming his post moves are elite. Dude has a long way to go before he thrown in that class. Yes he was trying to make defensive plays but you have to play smart. We are down two starting big men, so make better defensive decision out there. I knew we it would be difficult to beat the sizzling hot Nets tonight. Who by the way are 21-2 at home since January. Plus we missing three key components of our starting lineup. Even if Dmo didn't get in foul trouble I believe we still would have lost.
We should have matched up with Harden on Pierce, Parsons on JJ, Hamilton on Livingston, and Lin on DWill.
They beat us because we shot the 3 ball horrible tonight. We didn't defend the perimeter well either. And turnovers after turnovers killed us yet again.
Agreed , I was thinking that same thing holic. I guess coach Mchale really didn't trust Lin on DWill and thought Parsons length would prevent Will from going off.
We shot the three ball horrible because the Nets were playing us tight on the perimeter with their smaller, quicker lineup and they weren't concerned about shutting down the paint with Asik out there.
Yes I agree. As I mentioned Paul Pierce at the 4 is a match-up nightmare if you're not prepared to combat that. Similar to how Lebron at the 4 would be. Or Melo. In the West, when GS goes into a 3 guard line-up with Barnes/Iggy playing the 4 it'll be a bad match-up because our perimeter D sucks. Every other west team team in the top 6 has either an elite PF (Griffin, Aldridge, Randolph) an elite defensive big man (Duncan, Ibaka) or a combination of them both. It'll all be moves and counter moves. We'll see what happens. But Casspi is not the answer as far as i'm concerned. I still think we'll see a lot more Garcia soon with either him or Parsons sliding to the 4 when we have to go small.
