they play defense and keep teams under a 100!! We could be a great team if only these dumbasses focused, had the right mindset, mentality, then it wouldn't even matter that we have an inept coaching staff, roster flaws etc. When will we start to play defense? Funny we even have to ask this question..
i don't even think we have to play some great lock-down defense to win most of our games......all we have to do is quit making mistakes in the half court and get back in transition. that is not asking much.
What's amazing to me is 3 out of our 5 starters are supposed to be elite defenders at their position. Capela is also a pretty good defender and has the potential to be elite one day. I don't think Har_en is the problem. It's coaching & switching EVERYTHING.
Interesting. 1. Who are those wins and loss against? 2. What was our pace in those games? (I have a theory that we are actually playing just a little too fast for our personnel. I think if we slowed the pace just slightly, in other words, we should run as a team, just not quite as fast, that we'd be a lot more effective.)
I'm sure every bad team has some stat like this. This isn't something we can just say okay! Were 7-1 when we hold teams under 100. Lets do that for the rest of the season and go on to win it all. This is a cultural and system change. We need to change players who can consistently give effort on defense and coaching staff that is strict about it and holds players accountable. At MINIMUM a 1 year process. It will always start with your star. Our "star" plays no defense. Not even an ounce of effort unless its poking the ball from behind or blocking from behind the player that regularly beats him to the basket. Our stars have created a culture of loose, laid back IDGAF life is great anyway so lets party attitude witch can be seen as laziness also. Lets laugh and have fun is great and all...WHEN YOU WIN. Not after you continually miss lay ups and dunks and run back on defense laughing like you just heard the funniest joke. These guys can't get serious when they need to. Think of every championship team ever. How many can you count that didn't have leaders on the court or coaching that were tough hard nosed leaders that held players accountable? If you find one, then you will find either a leader and or star who work extremely hard with something to prove like last years Warriors with Curry and Green. Legendary work ethic. We have NONE of this. Instead we have 1 star who just talks. Another star who says it doesn't matter if he loses, because he's still a champion in life. GTFO with this ****. Curry and Green proved that they belonged by playing even better this year and they are now on pace to beat the all time wins record. Us? We have a bunch of fans and players who think we are WCF contenders. Were not! We never were. We got a favorable seeding due to a rule that doesn't exist anymore probably b/c of us. We played against the weakest team in the first round last season and still had trouble with them. We went down 0-2 to a team without their best player. We needed a miracle comeback and a complete choke job by the Clippers to play in the WCF that no one outside of Houston wanted to watch bc the whole world knew we didn't belong there. We got our asses kicked even though their best players didn't even play all that great. It was all a fluke. And we went out and proved it this year. Were about to hit 20 losses at the beginning of the New Year. How pathetic. Take me back to Yao and T-Mac losing in the first round. At least those teams gave their all for JVG. Full out effort on defense even though the offense was super boring. Take me back to the days when we regularly ended up with the 14th pick in the lottery with no future and no stars. At least those teams were super fun to watch with ball movement and had competitive, prove to you i belong attitude. I'm done with Harden. His tenure as Rocket will end just as badly as T-Mac and Parson's did. Only he won't regret it like T-Mac and he won't make Houston his home like T-Mac. Harden's loyalty is all to LA. He doesn't give a damn about the city of Houston. Dwight has a pass because i still highly value defensive anchors and he does get serious and comes to play during the playoffs. He also embraced and loves this city. I can see him making this his home long after he retires. I'm almost done with the coaching staff because they are still everything McHale learned from and used in his coaching. If Morey truly believes coaching doesn't matter in the playoffs, then i think i may finally be done with him too.
Rockets are 17-0 when they score more points than their opponents in a game. Why don't those dumbasses score more points? Seems simple enough!
You have it backwards. It's the inept coaching staff that's causing our horrendous defense. You think it's a coincidence the team was great defensively under JVG/Thibs? And this was a team with T-Mac who just like Harden was often accused of being lazy.
Tired of people saying this bs. If the roles where reversed and the clippers came back 3-1 in the same exact manner everyone would be praising the clippers for showing championship poise. However since HOU has Howard and Harden, no way can they have shown grit, clippers just choked and rockets got lucky. Fck that last time I checked clippers had 3 different chances to advance and they didnt so get outta here with that luck bs cause no one would be calling the clippers lucky if they did the same thing.
I love how we talk about "keeping teams under 100" when the causality, with a few exceptions, runs from (a) "weak opponent" to (b) "scored under 100" and (c) "lost to us." Let's not pretend we caused C by causing B. Actually, what am I saying? Of COURSE let's pretend that. Anything to motivate these slackers. JB, please keep up the BS.
Yup. Finished 2nd in the West in the regular season, 2nd in the West in the playoffs. Not sure why people think our playoff performance was some sort of fluke.
Getting to the WCF was not a fluke, but having a negative point differential in the Clippers series along with multiple embarrassing blowout losses is still a major eye opener in terms of this team being able to sustain any high level of success.
Exact thoughts I was having. Although I'd prefer a more drastic slowdown. Would require competent offensive sets though that doesn't fall back to Harden iso, Howard iso; or a simplistic drive and kick offense that goes nowhere.
as we all know, this team is inconsistent as fk! more games they half ass. those trade restrictions couldnt come any sooner.
T-Mac was never as bad a defender as James Harden was. Harden is the worst defensive player in the league.
