For the 2nd year in a row, the NBA instituted rules that completed screwed over the Rockets. First it was the James Harden continuation rule, and now the "freedom of movement" rule which makes a switching defense unusable. Thankfully, it apparently didn't take long for the team to abandon ship and adjust. If the Butler trade does go down, the team will have some bull dogs for man-to-man defenses.
Does the freedom of movement rule really affect our switching this much? I mean, I mean it probably could, but I think its more along the lines of us sucking.
I would like to hear from some of the wiser heads here on the question of to what extent the FOM rule is truly to blame for our defensive troubles. I'm skeptical but open to persuasion.
other teams still use switching defences and they win games. Stop blaming everyone else for our own defensive incompetence.
When you switch there's always going to be a narrow window of time where you can just cut to the basket before the next defender gets to you. Now, the defender can't get in your way at all via pushing, grabbing, holding, etc. It's an automatic foul call now.
What GS is doing isn’t switching per se. they try their hardest to avoid switching but switch before the switch on the down man. Basically they’re switching smart. We were switching smart last season. Now we’re just switching to switch for no reason.
I mean they can still use a switching scheme, but couldn't they mix it up a bit. They don't have to switch all the ****ing time. Either way, defense is something that should of been figured out since training camp, it's going to be a disaster trying to institute something new right now.
No one holds Harden responsible when he turns the ball over and refuses to run back on defense. Instead he's busy arguing with the ref or pouting. Melo tries but he's like Ryno on defense, too slow to do ****. CP3 is getting to that old slowness as well, it's visible. The rest of the team outside of PJ probably look at Harden and think, why do I gotta even try when our "leader" is so lazy.
They're also completely healthy outside of Cousins, didn't lose a single meaningful player from last year's roster, and don't have to integrate any new players that are playing significant minutes. Also, they're the freaking Warriors and so far have played an easier schedule than the Rockets.
Yea but that has more do with us than Freedom of Movement, and we were till terrible defensively with Ennis.
The rockets played 3 LA teams in 5 games. The schedule was plenty easy. If this was last year's team, we would be 5-0 now.
I thought the FOM rules was going to help our offense far more than it would hurt our defense. I don't think the rule change is the primary reason for what we are seeing.
