Lol. Dead on. Frustrated? I was so frustrated by this offseason that I refused to order league pass (I don't live in Houston anymore) for the first time ever. And the fast start still didn't change things for me. And I don't think we are a better team than last year. And I don't think we are a contender. But...just take a look at the roster. Half the players are new. We are 30 games into the season. Brewer, Smith and Shevd have only a few games with this team. Dwight's missed time. We've been without Jones all season; and Papa most of the season. There are a lot of moving parts here. It's gonna take some time to gel. Patience is in short supply in the GARM and that's my biggest frustration. I'm not delusional about our team, but let's be fair. We really don't know what we have yet. I think it's in poor taste to say the sky is falling. Lets see what January brings.
Rockets main problems include: 1 No offensive system: Rockets scores mainly from Harden 1v1 (maybe with a post up); Howard 1v1;when other teams double-team them, they pass and other rockets shoot 3. The other main source of score is transition. We can't have easy basket as Spurs and Grizzlies do. The number of assists is almost fewest because we got no idea about how to pass. 2 Pet is a good defender but also a low Basketball IQ player. His mindless dribbling is waste of time. He cant see what happens on the court and cant see a miss-match even though there is one. He cant share the burden on Harden to organize our offense. 3 Mchale's slow reaction to what is happening on the court. We should have won Grizzlies without OT. We led by 9 3:55 before the end of the game and we then lost many defensive rebounds. Mchale did not react and our players on the court were: Ariza, Pet, Harden, Brewer and D-MO(not a good basket protector). Honestly, Mchale is a good communicator but not a good coach. The improvement on the defense this season should be attributed to our newly hired defense coach rather than Mchale. Conclusion: We might keep Pet, but we need to fire Mcfail.
Regardless of how people feel after a win or a loss, you have to recognise this team has serious issues and they are not starting to show more than ever. The 2 main problems in my opinion are: 1) Management: It starts with Leslie who said he wanted to run for the next 10 years (play fast paced, score as fast as you can). Morey then added the statistical philosophy of 'threes, lay-ups and FTs'. Finally there is the coach who follows these orders, has some small plays and just let's the guys do what they want. They have been saying they want to run more like last year, which they have and the defense has suffered. The approach of threes, lay-ups and FTs can work if you have the personel and a structured offense. Morey and McHale need to sit down and look at the FT, 3pt% and % of close shots around the rim and we are terrible in all 3 this year. Good management adjusts, bad management sticks with it, hoping it will pay off within the next '10 years'. When you know your personel, you figure out a way to get Harden some touches off the ball, you figure how to get the ball into the post, you figure out how Beverley can be succesfull, you run plays or D-Mo, you get Dwight Howard to commit to the pick and roll. We have all the talent in the world, there's no reason for us not to be a scary team except for the following: Trades, chemistry, rotations and minutes which management is also responsible for. Right now, the handling of new players and the players that got us a good record is downright awful. Papa was one of the bright flashes early on, worked well with D-Mo, is a good passer and moves around a lot. Now I'm not saying he's the best, because his shooting has been dreadful and he needs to be eased back in with the injury he has had. Now it's not a problem to not play Papa if we would have a structured offense, but since we do not have one, you need guys like him. The handling of D-Mo and Smith is an issue, too many minutes for Ariza and Harden when you have Brewer, Canaan and Papa on the bench. Using 8-9 guys on a back-to-back, you only make it harder on yourself than it has to be. The last thing is chemistry, which is something that Morey but maybe McHale even more so, seem to be unaware of. How do you explain to guys who have contributed, that now all of a sudden a new guy with no time with the team is the first guy off the bench (Shved was in his 1st game). This is just one of many signs. 2. Effort, egos and mentality - This is all on the players and coaches. Players need to bring their game, regardless of what's going on. If you are injured, be man enough to tell coach you are hurting the team and want to sit. As a coach, you need to have the stones to sit a player when he's hurting the team, regardless of injury. Accountability has been a problem under McHale since he's been a coach here. You can't teach effort, it just needs to be there like when Dwight was down. This also brings up the mentality and ego issues. We cannot have any of the bull**** regarding touches, minutes and stuff like that. Get your ego out of the way, stop worrying about stats and just get it done. We need to have that killer, no nonsense, all out hustle mentality which I haven't seen very often.
Incorrect. D-Mo routinely plays in the beginning of the second quarter with either Bev/Shved, Terry, brewer/Ariza, and Dorsey/Dwight/Smith. You are right though that it's not playing without Harden that's the issue. The issue is that the other guys do not give him the ball when he has sealed his man off down low. That's the issue.
Why Smith can't be just like Dorsey and only defend and just free space for easy dunks. That would be a win win for everyone.
It frustrates me that the team went away from what was working during their winning stretch, ie. good ball movement and solid defense. It's like a different team now.
Howard's energy level and seemingly unwillingness to play to his strengths. Harden's minutes (last night was better) Still hoping for a Dragic type deal, someone like this to stay in the game when Harden is out. Ariza's minutes and shooting (still like his fit for the team) Smith playing with the first unit. I don't like him shooting as much as he did in his first game, hopefully that does not become a trend. I love P Bev on this team, but I feel we need more out of the pg position.
Not that frustrated, we added few players who play major minutes, our rotation got different. It'll take some time to gel. Stop panicking
Whenever we lose it's apparently because we lacked desperation. Interesting. Do the Spurs play desperate? I would say they play more smart than they do desperate. Maybe it's not desperation we lack, maybe we just need a smarter offensive structure. I mean sure, I love the defense, and I love the plays we run out of timeouts, but in the general flow of the game there are far too many isolations and basic pick-and-rolls defenses can see coming from a mile away. Where are the misdirections? Can we get a little hawk action? Anything the resembles something a little more Spurs-like and a little less Lakers-like? We average about 15 assists per game a as team, and there is something seriously wrong about that..
I wish the team would run some plays that get guys the ball going towards the hole, or get guys the ball with the defense off balance. It's unfair to say we have no plays, but every single action we have starts with either a one-on-one attack or a P&R starting from a stationary dribbler, and almost every action ends with either a drawn foul or a spot-up. Papanikolaou getting benched. Brewer has been good but Pap brought some creativity and made others better, the only one on the team to do so besides Harden. I'm not panicking, but since November I've seen no indication that this team can have a shot at coming out of the brutal West.
I'm not incredibly concerned. We're trying to fit in two new players and we've had maybe two practices since Josh Smith got here. It'll take time, but we'll gel.
Hope this does turn out to be a 1 year rental of Smith, him coing has seemed to disease the entire team, I mean wtf? They still have time to figure it out but Smith last couple of games is showing me why he was randomly waived when players of his contract/potential are never cut.
I absolutely HATE the 3 and D, it's not even entertaining to watch. It will bounce them of from the 1st round again.
