Hi all, I don't like the negativity that's going round everytime we lose a game. I'd much rather we focus on what are the things we can improve upon. So let's start discussing about the things that the team can work upon to get better results for the future games. What's done is done, it's water under the bridge - moping about and compaining about players X,Y,Z sucking or making mistakes won't resolve that. Here's my wish list for how rockets should go for: (1) McHale - I think he needs to work on the minutes rotation of his players. I am not sure what was wrong with DMo for the Mav game - but for McHale to not have used him even for a little while was strange. It was a b2b - you don't over use your players - when you do, things can happen - a freak injury, tiredness and loss of focus. (2) Timeouts - we are still not making good use of timeouts. Timeouts are called for specific purposes - stopping a run by the opp., trying to give the players a breather (especially when you see them getting too uptight i.e. trying too hard), players need a break, reset to refocus on the job at times, to plan a play. Noticed that for some plays when we had the last possession, coach elected to let the play continue. (3) Iso-Harden has been overused - I don't think it's something we should continuously rely upon - it seems the other NBA teams have already plans to handle that. Also from my observation of harden the last few games, his foot is affecting him (there were mulitple times that he slipped or had mis-steps - i.e. clumsy footwork). We have a long season ahead, I'd rather have him getting more rest - even a strategy of having him play 1 game and rest 1 game might be worth trying (our other 2 guards Bev and Lin should be okay to cover for alternative games). (4) Our shooting blows hot and cold - some believe you should let the players keep shooting it until they get out of their cold spell. Personally, I prefer that the cold player is taken out for a short break, let them calm down and re-think what they could do differently (which brings back my first point - rotating the players - the role players may not do much when our star is taken out for his breather - but we need to give a minute or so for our star to re-focus - I think that may reap benefits instead of leaving them on court to work it out) (5) Obviously we need to work on our defense - frankly, I'd love to target that we keep opposing teams to below 25 points a quarter. That should be something the team should work towards. Feel free to add more, thanks! Go Rockets!!! Next up, let's whack the wolves.....
Lols. Your entire post is negative Btw: we didn't play DMo because we had absolutely no problem scoring at a 62% clip for three quarters. We were having problems on defense. What exactly were we missing in the game that DMo would have fixed
I doubt that you can say we had no problem scoring when we could only manage 19 points in Q4. If we had scored 25 points - we would have won by 3 points instead of losing by 3 then. We had both offensive and defensive problems. It's not as if we played any better defense with the players Mchale put in Q4 either. I am not sure what you mean by being negative - I have suggestions for the team to move towards, I don't go around calling people names or saying they were lousy. If something isn't working (i.e. iso-Harden) - that's just stating a fact, why is that negative? I am not saying we shouldn't have Iso-Harden, I am just saying we shouldn't overuse it since it seems other teams have already ways to negate it. What are your ideas of improving the team though? That's what I like to know.
Another one would be to stop jacking up so many 3's..... Why can't we go for more higher percentage shots? Lin and Harden are god at drawing fouls while we got a capable centre in Howard. Jones and D-Mo also know how to get their points in the paint too.
You didn't answer my question: what would Dmo have provided against Dallas that would have fixed whatever you say needed fixing? let me repeat, we had no problem scoring against Dallas for 3 quarters at our highest clip of the season (62%), so there was no reason to play DMo, when our problem was stopping Dallas. Then, in the 4th, we rarely play DMo anyhow, and our problems were still mainly the defense. as for the negativity, I guess people like you can always claim "constructive criticism," in all negative threads, while attempting to say your negative opinion is schpecial. dude, the title of your threads is Rockets Reset -- basically reboot everything.
Our offensive rythm in late game situation is very bad, i blame this on harden ISO. But, key factor to all of the blown-out leads is PERIMETER Defense. Our guards and wing players cannot contain opponents driving into the paint and help defense are getting caught ball-watching way too many times. This is leading to either open 3s and offensive rebounds. When opponents are missing in the paint, Dwight and Tjones have tendency to go up for block but help defense don't box out causing us to loose the defensive rebounds.
Lol you're one disagreeable fellow hp, but our d in q4 last game wasn't good anyway so putting in Dmo wouldn't have made it worse for all, we know a fresh pair of legs and his post game migh earn us that extra 3 points to tie the game and bring it to OT. But that's not my main point about wanting McHale to use Dmo, McHale is overplaying some of our players in e early quarters and that probably led to a loss of form at the last q Its your turn hp, I still haven't seen a suggestion fom you, any ideas to improve the team could help, or are you content to take potshot at other peoples ideas without contributing something in return?
For the three quarters the Rockets showed me a contender level offense, very impressive. For one quarter the Mavs went all world and seemingly didn't miss a shoot, eleven straight. The Rockets went cold, end of story. I think they ran out of gas because of the back to back. There is much to be optimistic about.
Yes, very optimistic especially Howard performance. That was an eye opener. Didn't think he still have that in him. And then.. I think of all the late game screw ups and my optimism die. We got elite talents.. maybe not championship yet - I think we are missing a solid PF (Jones might grow into this but still TBD), better defensive wings (Harden can improve and we still need a backup 2/3 that can shot the 3 and play plus defense), a solid bench contributor (so far the combination of casspi, lin, garcia is holding up quite well though). And finally, we need a new Coach. McHale is just lost and will continue to hold this team back from playing to its full potential.
Those 3s are high percentage open shots which statistically are better shots than 2 point jumpers. We can't rely one layups when the other teams swtich to zone defense and pack the paint. We just have to knock those wide open 3s down. Unfortunately Lin got cold while others haven't got hot yet.
Agree with all of this. Offense is not the problem. We scored 120 last night and allowed Dallas to score 36 pts in the 4th quarter.
While true, the absense of the offense in the 4th quarter was conspicuos, given how good it looked in the previous 3 quarters. There is seldom a quarter that stands out for its absense of defense, because they almost all lack it to one extent or another.
Okay once again we lost a game, time to review and readjust some things: (1) harden doesn't seem fully fit yet, whilst there's no probs with his offense, but his defense swings wildly, there are moments like he lost focus. (2) I am not sure about the rest of you, but I somehow thought the intensity of effort put in by the rockets against the jazz wasnt high at all. The classical trap game syndrome. We didn't take our opponent seriously enough. McHale may need to drill it into the young heads that the difference between teams in nba isn't really that great. (3) jones was off form today I just hope that's an anomaly rather than the norm let's see him get back with his normal intensity against the Suns. (4) I hope parsons back problem is resolved soon, but I think he ought to rest one more game at least. I think McHale will probably give the team another shot. (5) I still think Dmo deserve some burn just not sure what McHale is seeing during heir training that's making him rank him so lowly - he didnt looked too bad the few opportunity he had to play.
