Sorry. Its hard to draw out a clean bracket in the GARM. Yes, it is almost certainly going to be the Rockets vs Portland in the 1st round, and the winner of SAS & (POR/DAL/PHO/MEM/GSW) or whoever the Spurs play in the 8th seed. My money is on the Spurs beating all of those teams. Memphis of course has knocked them out early before but I think they were a little better that year. I'd pretty much bank on the Spurs in the 2nd round though, and OKC/LAC in the WCF.
I think this is setting up nicely for us- We get first trial against portland that will get us in playoff mode and that I feel we are clearly better than. I just hope we don't 'overlook' them on any level. SA as a 2nd test that no doubt would be a battle but I feel like we match up well and can really challenge them. At that point WCF we are battle tested that much more and in a dogfight the hindsight of first 2 rounds. I wouldnt want to play SA, OKC, or clips in first round. and I wouldnt really want to play OKC or clips in 2nd.
I believe this whole topic was decided in the first 15% of the season. Do we beat dead horses to much?
so you base it all on 8 games? That is a big enough sample for you huh? and forget new team, dwight coming into his own on offense at mid season, rust of new season, ridiculous rebounding numbers (yup rebounds just aren't sexy enough), absolutely crushing Portland and Utah in 3rd quarter with TT. It's all about confirmation bias, small samples and no benefit of the doubt. Also Asik has proven again he is a monster on D and even lately it took him quite a few games to get it going. Forget getting it going this instant gratification, no building, nothing. Good thing we didnt listen to you when we got drexler and struggled with him and hakeem in first 20 games. BENCH DREXLER would have been the battle cry around here.
Also it was 10% but hey who's counting when the goal is instant gratification and no benefit of doubt. Forget chemistry and coming together. If we don't win by 200 every game from first second they are dead to me.
I actually am basing my opinion on the fact that TT has not been featured for 20 minutes since the start of the season experiment. As usual I am aligning my opinion with Morey and McHale. They are the subject matter experts. We are fans. Perhaps you should too?
^Lack of Sample size is more than enough of a reason to say that the Rockets shouldn't go extremely experimental as much as it says that the non-success was a fluke because of sample size and the reasons you listed. I think the Rockets end up not over-doing it in tinkering with the Twin Towers mostly because of lack of time, health of Dwight/Asik during season at same time, and practice to get it working smoothly. If they had the ability to experiment and tinker with it a little bit more during the season I think it would have been more likely to be a weapon during the post season, but you are asking the Rockets to throw a pretty big monkey wrench in their overall basketball philosophy at this point, and there are bigger priorities to their post season success (most that revolve around Harden/Howard plays & defensive scheming) than over-worrying about a match-up in the Western Conference Finals that might never happen. Nobody should base the success of the TT long term over the first 8 games, but we do have 90+ minutes of game film to go back and at least ACKNOWLEDGE what was wrong, and see if its something that could or could not be fixed, and we do have pretty concrete evidence from that game film that in order to run the TT out again, they are going to need a hell of a lot of more work on it rather than just tossing it out there in the playoffs where every possession counts.
yeah forget the whole mixing it up with different lineups, then Asik getting butthurt about it, requesting trade, getting injured for most of season. That has nothing to do with it right? Just recently asik is finally coming back. In the end it was a good thing that it happened to the extent that dmo and jones got some run DD was right on this (feint) even though now its becoming clear that we simply cannot play asik for only 10 minutes. Asik is just too good and we will all realize this more next year when he is gone. We will see TT again and when we do will be curious to hear what you think about mchale and moreys alignment. Sounds like you got it all figured out.
I'll just piggy back on this a little more and be done with it. At this point, it would be dumb to roll out the TT in the post-season. However, there is time between now and the start of the post-season to POTENTIALLY get it some more PT if Dwight comes back soon enough, and the Rockets have some time in a game vs the Pelles or Minnesota to give it a few minutes. Still... I think McHale is going to have to feel really good about those few minutes we might see it, and the practices they have between now and the playoffs to feel confident enough to roll that lineup out in an important playoff game. However if they can get Dwight back soon, and they have a chance, I have no doubt that they might try to see it for a few spotty minutes in the last few games, but I feel pretty confident that as of now, the TT lineup is NOT ready to be rolled out in a playoff type of game & has a pretty low likelihood of success without extensive practice, potentially brand new sets, and chemistry in game-time between Howard and Asik.
In every statistical analysis the TT experiment was a disaster. I have a lot of faith in McHale, because I believe he is sitting down with Morey often. And IMHO Morey is the sharpest tool in the shed. If there was any reason to continue TT, except perhaps in the most extreme match ups versus MEM and IND, I think it would have been tried. Rockets fans do not give near enough credit to Morey and McHale. Plus there is absolutely no reason to renew the TT experiment other than fan emotions. No one thought it would work before the season began, and their prediction came true. I cannot see why fans have this debate. It seems to be an open and shut case to me.
If you truly think SA is an easier match ups against the other 3, you are mistaken. They are a different team comes to playoff and we beat them mostly when they were half injured.
I think Dwight is going to hurt us come playoff time. He may be ready to go from a health standpoint but, with so much missed time, it's going to take a bit to get him back to form. And, he wasn't exactly playing great before he went out. Unfortunately, I think McHale will try to keep Dwight in the game as much as possible and Asik will sit on the bench. And, it might end up costing us some first round games and maybe even see us losing in the first round. I think I like Asik better than Howard at this point. He's been bringing it whereas I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the last few games Howard played in where he stunk.
But we do need Howard's offensive games. Team has a difficult time scoring in the paint with a half court game without Howard. Asik lacks post up and finishing ability hurts us in the offensive end. I think it comes down to match ups and performance. Hope McHale can balance those two guys' playing time.
I think all evidence (statistical & historical basketball IQ) pointed towards it not working, and still points towards it not working. However I dont think the Rockets are un-willing to at least explore with different lineups and match-ups that they think can give them an edge. But my point is there is no reason to debate it for the playoffs cause even if they wanted to give it another go-around in an exploratory fashion (situational in meaningless game or practice) they just simply dont have the time, and health from Dwight to really even bother with it. Those guys need hours, and hours on the court together in game time situations to have that type of chemistry needed. I dont understand why fans want to have this debate either. There is very little evidence in NBA history that two centers like Dwight & Asik can coexist, and even if they could, would anyone want to watch that type of basketball anyways for a full season? 85 to 79 final score games in February.... that sounds like a blast.
Yes we are fans but it doesn't take a genius to know that having 2 big men on the floor who can't play away from the basket and neither has a legitimate low post game can end up being a cluster F****
