I'm at the point where I don't think we can play Chase anymore. We're losing games because of his inability to provide any spark off the bench. Most of these games the Rockets are practically begging for someone to come in and provide a desperately needed scoring punch, and every game the bench comes in and loses ground. I believe the primary reason this happens is the number of offensive possessions the Rockets come up empty on a Buddinger missed shot. If Bud was playing just somewhere in between what he played last year and this year I think the Rockets would have won at least three more games at this point. In these close games all it would take is one Buddinger made shot. I don't know how much longer we can wait for him to "come around." On a side note, it's great to see Lee starting to get comfortable on offense and also show some of his defensive abilities. Up until recently I don't think his defense has stood out at all.
Even when Budinger misses his shots, he's still an outside shooting threat that the opposing team has to guard. With our lack of perimeter shooting in the second unit, a cold-shooting Bud is better than no Bud at all. Budinger's minutes might go down when Brooks returns to the backcourt rotation. But the problem I see is that this will force Adelman to go small with either Lee or Martin spending time at the SF position. (And IMO neither Taylor nor Jeffries is a viable option at the backup SF spot except in limited matchup situations.) The way I see it, there aren't a lot of options except hoping for Budinger to get his mojo back.
Coach should have put Chuck in for Scola. He couldn't sub for Miller since he was at the line... but hindsight is 20/20.
Rick Adelman is terrible at situational late game substitutions, preferring to stick with the guys that are in the game. I hate it...hate it, HATE IT ! It makes it look like he is clueless out there. DD
Honestly, I figured he's testing them. If it had been anyone else at the line he would have subbed Chuck in for Brad, cause he knows he doesn't have to test Brad.. he knows exactly what he will do... but he has to know if Scola will know what to do in that situation if sometime he doesn't have anyone else to defend out there. Unfortunately the team didn't defend the 3 point line like it should... and now Coach knows. Watching that last 45 secs of regulation was painful.
From what I heard Rick didn't want to call out Lee and Miller specifically but they were the ones that missed the chance to foul late in the game...... DD
i dont understand wanting to foul noah at all.... if they miss the second they might get another shot. Of all people, Noah would be the worst to put on the line because his misses bounce like 15 feet out. He's that bad sometimes. That's the best case scenario miss for chicago. The way boozer and gibson had been pushing our bigs around and gettign around them, that could easily turn out the same way, or worse, no OT. They would try to miss the second shot...not guaranteed that we'd get it back, but i agree with everything else you said..
Yes he could of. Miller made the second free throw so we could have used a twenty, which I'm pretty sure we still had because they showed the timeout situation with about a minute to go, and put in the defenders we wanted.
Because Noah had the ball with his back to the basket so no chance of committing a shooting foul. Even with a potential long rebound you take that chance with the clock winding down.
i'm pretty sure they were in the bonus and he would have got 2 free throws anyway...if they had a foul to give then there would have been zero hesitation to take it earlier. Youre taking a chance either way. Fouling, you could potentially lose the game. Without fouling, you can't really lose unless you foul on the three and they make it. It's alot less likely and you have more control over it. If they foul noah and he misses with that crazy side spin, ball bounces out and finds it's way to just about anyone and they score, then there would be a million threads about why would you foul, especially someone who's bricks give off funky rebounds. Missed free throws is really the place to point a finger at.
^^ sorry, i see you meant shooting foul....still i think if you foul anyone it's rose, keeps him off the three point line after a potential rebound, at worse he's rushing back there to launch a bad one.
I think fouling in that situation makes more sense when the clock is winding down and in this case it had to be around 3 seconds when Noah had it so in this case I would have fouled. There wouldn't be enough time to kick out for a three after a missed free throw so at worst if they got a tip in you are still tied.
Good point... but can we call a timeout without possession? Sometimes I have trouble differentiating the rules of the different levels.
Gotta knock down our free-throws late in games. This reminded me of the Spurs game when Lee missed two huge free-throws down the stretch.
Kinda funny how we win 2 games in a row and people suddenly think we're gonna reach 6 seed. 7-13 sigh.......
That's a good question since I get it mixed up with college ball too. So I looked it up. First the dead ball definition: Section IV-Dead Ball a. The ball becomes dead and/or remains dead when the following occurs: (3) Following a successful field goal or free throw that will remain in play, until player possession out-of-bounds. 20-second timeout: Section VI-20-Second Timeout A player's request for a 20-second timeout shall be granted only when the ball is dead or in control of the team making the request. So he could have called a 20 immediately after the ball went in before the Bulls took possession out of bounds.
makes sense, but we can say that after looking back on it. It's gotta be tough to sort out all the information in real time for them, especially without a timeout and the options changing when Miller missed his free throw. I think Lee expected Rose to be cut off and that could be a good time to foul, but Miller wasnt there. Looks like he would have been the one told to foul, but i'm not sure he or RA let everyone else now. I didn't see any words to the rest of the team, other than RA and Lee talking during Brad's first free throw. That might be why Miller went for the steal rather than fouling Noah or cutting off Rose so that Lee could foul Noah. Gotta have better team communication in that situation.
