GS simply has better talent and their more talented core has spent the last 4-6 years playing together. Steve Kerr is a good coach, but what GS is doing goes beyond coaching.
It started with coaching. The right mindset and discipline instilled by the right person can do wonders. I.... forgot they added whats his....oh wait...they had the same players when Steve Kerr took over. Every single player on that team got astronomically better and more cohesive or maybe it actually had to do with the one thing they changed. This is one of those instances you can't really argue. Yes, now maybe they are above that coaching difference, but it started there.
Mark Jackson had the same player that Kerr have except for 2 bench players in Livingston and Barbosa. Kerr force Curry and Thompson to play without the ball. The offense goes through Draymond and Bogut, they set 500 screens to get wide open shots for Thompson and Curry. Jackson used Curry and Thompson to play ISOBALL. He had Barnes playing ISOBALL and that dude ended up shooting 39%.
Thompson was average if not slightly below avg moving with the ball. Kerr saw that limitation in his game and played to his strengths. Good coaches do that(Kerr, Pop, Carlisle,etc). McHale is not that kind of coach and Houston could see a similar jump if they had a coach who knew how to tweak a system to maximize the players on the roster AND could get the players to buy into the philosophy. I will say this though - Morey's constant roster churn would make that job difficult for any coach. The warriors are on, what? year 3 or 4 with nearly the same roster. Houston can't go 6 months without shaking it up...
Kerr also got lucky that Lee got injured. No injury = no draymond = no ring. Even Haralabos said they were the best team if they could lose Lee.
Just 2 years ago ,all they could do against the Rockets is to foul a shooter so they won't be embarrassed by breaking the most 3s record Now it's mainly coaching ..Curry/Clay play great but a bit got more credit than what they deserved Here you have.. Livingston : posting on smaller guards near the basket, making a shot or passing to a corner 3 mostly by Barnes . Barbosa : main duty to attack the basket Barnes: you know if there is more than 3 passes , he is ready positioned for a 3 Clay: lives near the 3 points line ,and ready for D, he is limited compared to Barnes IMO Curry/D.Green: only two players allowed to initiate offence . Green: his 3s almost from the same spots . Their Big : Bogut can play above the rim and set screen Ezeli : play like Capela with his limitation Speights :short range shots and spacing . The only guy has freedom with undefined role is Iguadala. As you see ,every player play his role exactly. It's micro coached-controlled game. You can hardly notice a hesitation moves ,or lack of plan B. After timeout.
This is actually not true. Curry statistically was the same player last year that he was the year before when Jackson had him.
They have more talent but the coaches organized it and took advantage. That's why some teams who have great talent don't gel, lack of organization. There is a big gap in play between us and the warriors but the talent gap isn't that big. Yes they have more talent but not as much as the standings would suggest. That means we are poorly trained, poorly used, and not very well organized. We need better coaching.
I feel like this has more to do with the coaching staff and the players on the team. The model we were trying to go for was to develop a high octane offense (plus sub par defense ) then transition that sub par defense into great defense while maintaining a highly efficient offense. We nearly achieved that last year when we went from a run and gun team to a team that could score with the willingness to play defense consistently. Somewhere along the line after the playoffs the players seem to have lost their motivation and desire to be accountable for wanting to play team defense. We lose the willingness to want to also share the ball on the offensive end too. This current Rockets team has shown the ability to play well when they want to.. but it seems like they enjoy taking nights off. At least some players do, unfortunately we don't really have a consistent 2nd option and while Dwight is doing well since returning back from injury we've sorely missed having Dmo as our second consistent go to guy after Harden. Smith for some reason hasn't been able to play more than a modest 20-25 minutes a game, or else he would have a starting PF position already. Then you throw in not having Jones or Dmo as available backups or starters so who else picks up the slack for offense? You aren't going to go anywhere far with Ariza (who is known for his 3 pt shot and defense) as your secondary option. It's pretty difficult to judge this team as a whole though, I think a healthy contributing Dmo will make a world of a difference as well as adding a more motivated Lawson and we may start to make a good push after the all star break. Then again I definitely could be wrong.
When players are performing in a system where they feel confident about every shot they take, they're going to play better. Rockets basketball is disgusting and solely relies on lucky 3s to drop. We take no good shots. You can win a lot of games this way if you have an MVP caliber player that always comes through to close out games... but when he goes down the team goes down & thats who we are this season.
I have a philosophy... Don't replace a bad coach with a ****tier couch and expect to win A high school coach could have a better record than JB with this roster
