Pretty sure Harden and Lou Williams take mid range shots, especially Lou. The bigger issue is not moving the ball around... Ball is still sticky in these types of loses and Kevin McHale is no where to be found. Don't drive into a forest of big men, kick the ball out. Have a contested 3 point shot? Keep the ball moving... Just like under McHale, players ball watch Harden dancing too often.
It's good to have a gameplan. Great if you have a system. If you're good enough to ram it down the other teams throat - all the better... but when you're playing better teams - you gotta take what the defense gives you - and abuse them for it... There's 4 ways to score: the paint, mid range, 3ball and foul shots... if you all but eliminate 25% of your options... you become much easier to defend... So yeh, hopefully they get that stop n pop option more readily available as needed...
Wow.... this has been D'antoni's and Morey's problem the entire time. We have completely forgotten about just plain good fundamental basketball. This is not nba 2k. Rick Adleman=better than D'antoni. When you play like the Rockets you play predictable ball. We also don't have anyone like Hakeem that just dominates the whole paint... unless Pringles and Morey have something up their sleeve the series is just over. Sticking with the same stubborn mentality will kill Morey and waste Harden's time. Fatigue really looked like it hit Harden this game... I don't expect him to bounce back as well on Sunday.
Even though this makes a lot of sense....some advanced stats show the current system is better. Therefore you are wrong. Sincerely, Rockets Genius Front Office
if they've led the league in least mid range shots taken last 2 seasons and top 5 in last 3-4 seasons, why would they start taking them now? for w/e dumb **** reason they dont believe in the mid range game even though kobe and jordan won a combined 11 rings with it. i hate this about this team. and ryno might be done for the playoffs as a scoring threat, which makes him useless as a starter if spurs win in 5 i hope they expose this team's mid range crap. they really need to get their head out of their ass and put that in next season's offense. they can still keep this moreyball thing going, just need to take more fromf mid rangee
Not moving the ball is the bigger issue. And it's been going on all season. And specifically why I said we are to Harden-centric and one-dimensional. These guys are all trained monkeys to give the ball back to Harden if they can't launch. In fact, several of them you don't want to see dribble the basketball (Ariza-shudder) and none of them have the capacity to dribble around in chaos when the defense has taken away the first action and create a look for one of their teammates. Harden himself can't even do that. He either resets at the top or creates his own shot for himself with the drive and a bunch of jukes, which works sometimes, but not efficiently enough in the playoffs against top-notch defenses. I've said repeatedly you have to have two ball distributors in the primary rotation. And you're seeing exactly why right now. Sure, we can get by and look great against lottery teams with only one playmaker. We went 19-1 against them this season. But when a legit defense knows where the offense is going to come from every time and they know every shot is going to be at the rim or from 3, and they know that nobody can drive and dish except Harden, they know that everybody else that drives is going to the rim to finish, then they can set the defense to meet the drivers at the rim. Have you noticed all those touchdown pass assists (and turnovers) from Harden have dried up? That's because in the playoffs the games slow down and good teams make mire buckets in half court and get back defensively regardless. Harden can't throw those long bins because they would be turnovers. The Spurs are waiting for it. That reduces Harden to working in the half-court as a playmaker, which exposes his limitations as a playmaker. He doesn't have anything wise to go to if it isn't pick and roll, iso, or an occasional pick and pop. He can't take the dribble and circle into the paint, maintain the dribble, step out of the paint then quickly turn and attack afresh like you see legit point guards like Paul, Nash, Thomas, Curry, etc. do. When Harden goes into the paint there's a shot going up. Either he's forcing his own shot, our he's throwing the lib, our he's finding a three shooter. But a shot is going up. And that where it gets muddled and our efficiency at the rim goes DOWN big time. Limited fast breaks and more forced shots at the rim against better quality defenders who aren't going to get the massive foul calls against them that porous defenses get. God forbid we have another dimension where we have another true playmaker on the court and we have the ultimate space creator (Anderson) on one wing and perhaps the greatest scorer of the basketball in the history of the game (Harden) on the other wing and another terrific shooter in the corner and we make the defense hand to account for that action. Nope, we gotta make sure Harden gets his numbers. That's where we're at here with this offense. Take away the shooters. Take away the cheap fast breaks. Make Harden beat you. Give him the pullup three b as ll. Don't worry about defending anything except the three point line and the rim. We have nothing else to go to here because we do not have a second creator and our first creator is limited in his creative ability. You can talk about how great he zings those passes out for threes. And he does. You can talk about how he dissects opponents with the lob. And he does. But we can't stop the old school post offense because we've ignored it the whole season. And the Spurs are actually very efficient playing old school post offense with multiple post players because they actually have skilled bigs who know how to post and pass and finish at a much greater efficiency that 0.87 points per possession. And we have nothing else to go to when good defenses take away the three and meet Harden at the rim with length and multiple quality defenders.
Lol - Yeh. pretty much.... This is what I hate about the whole advanced analytics things...stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum... different situations warrant different responses... It's also what I hate about 'playing for the foul.' The willingness to forfeit a possession to go to the line... Yeh, it's the high % move... thing is, you have to depend on the refs to call the foul.... I never like leaving anything in the hands of the officials... put it down with 2 hands so there's no confusion or dependence on the refs to make the call... I like our overall philosophy... but you have to be able to adjust accordingly - and that includes looking at all options...
I don't really agree that mid-range shooting is the answer. I think the answer is getting a player who can control the pace and get his teammates in better scoring positions than James does. But then you have another problem which is you take the ball out of James's hand. The only real way that James's iso basketball style works is playing like okc did: the rockets need to trade everybody but James and try to get Paul George. I believe Paul George + Harden could work. But I don't see George is coming to the rockets, so, that's a problem.
How do the Spurs move the ball so well without good primary ball handlers or distributors? You don't have to be a primary ball handler to make a pass. If something doesn't work then reset and try it a different way.
They do have good handlers and distributors. Firstly, they actually have skilled bigs who can make plays and pass. And secondly guys like Mills, Parker, Kawhi, etc. can all handle, make a play, and pass. They're not one-dimensional players. They are multi-dimensional players playing in a multi-dimensional system.......who only care about getting the W. They're not worried about double-doubles, triple-doubles, getting 30 points, getting 10 assists. Their sole focus is W.
And Nene, Lou, and Gordon are subpar distributors? Our issue is more for settling for contested shots. The ball gets sticky when we lose.
Nene is fine. Needs more minutes. No, Lou and Gordon are not good shot creators for others and passers. They are good scorers. They are not table setters.
We need to incorporate more players , especially when some of the ones we are playing are playing like trash and have obvious flaws . Our offensive philosophy is fine , it's execution is not . That's on the players playing and the coaching staff for pointing out what the defense is giving us . The lob was thee last night and Lou and James both missed it several times and instead took contested floaters When our players get run off the 3 point line they need to know how to take advantage of it by moving the ball or taking a wide open 2 . If our players lack the skill set or IQ to do this .... Then it's just an indication that the system is making them look much better than they really are. Getting run off the line , unless it's late in the clock, is an awful move for the D because if the player knows what he's doing it's going to turn into an easy 2 on 1 Anderson and Ariza are super suspect at this and need to be upgraded ... Hopefully over the summer Dekker and Harrell can develop a 3 point shot and then take advantage of their fundamentals and athleticism if they get run off the line . Lou and Eric and bev need to be more decisive and act with aggression . Lou has been our biggest letdown so far with Anderson being a close 2nd .
I could not agree more!!!!! We can't abandon the mid range game. I get we want to shoot a bunch of threes but you can't win that way. Even Golden State takes good mid range shots.
Yeah, we need a mid range game. I think it's obvious. It doesn't have to be the main weapon; it can be your backup when your main is jammed or out of bullets. You need something, though. If these guys can make a free throw, they can make a mid range shot, especially if the other team is openly giving it to them. Threes, layups, and free throws may be the most statistically-perfect strategy when you average over 82 games. Or thousands of games. Maybe it is. But when you're in a single playoff game, and it's not working, you have to play tactically and deviate as necessary from the bigger strategy. Furthermore, you can't just say "Oh, so-and-so should play better, or the Law of Averages says that so-and-so WILL play better." Small sample sizes love to tell the Law of Averages to go to hell. The team has to adjust. A shorter shot should be easier to make, and two points is better than no points when you can't make threes. I suspect, though, that threes, layups, and free throws isn't just about efficiency. I'd wager that a sizable chunk of the strategy is intended to remove choices from the players. It certainly focuses your team. As soon as you start allowing more variety in shots, you open a lot more choices for players to make. A savvy player may see a chance to pass to the unguarded center for an easy dunk; a less-savvy player may take a shot that's got a lower chance of going in; a confused player may get stuck and allow the defense to smother them. The point is that you cede a lot of discretion to the individual player this way, and I think one of the goals of Moreyball is to create automatons that can be easily switched in and out for each other. Still, what are you going to do when they clog all your typical scoring avenues? I'd say just have an alternative offense set up, so players still have an idea what to do when they get the ball. Run that until it starts getting defended, and then try the main attack again. The TEAM has to keep scoring, somehow. They can't just throw it all on Harden and expect him to work his magic and defeat the other team himself. He can do that, sometimes, but there's a much smaller chance of it working in the playoffs.
I think people are watching the Spurs make those shots and they think we can make them too. Spurs are elite in mid range (best in the NBA), we are probably the worst at making them. Would be a disaster. We are atrocious from mid range and we barely take any. These guys are chasing us everywhere. Every mid range shot Lou has taken has been well contested. They're not going to give us any shot easily. It's easy to recover from the paint/3pt line to the mid range. It's not easy to recover from paint to 3 or vice versa. Our offense requires better, faster execution. We are not beating the Spurs in a game where we are seeking some midrange shots. That's not our game. We should do what we're amazing at doing. Just because the team is not executing the offense well doesn't mean we change the offense. They are giving us that shot for the same reason we gave Roberson the 3: we are really bad at it. Also, Pau Gasol is easy to beat, just need to go up strong instead of seeking a foul.
