Howard is critical to our success, but we will need Harden to have an outstanding series on both ends of the floor in order to win.
Clippers in 6, sorry Houston but those guys have way too many shot makers and if a hobbled Chris Paul can do what he did in Game 7, oh my..
Paul was running strictly off of adrenaline and was barely able to play because he absolutely had to. I think this hamstring changes the whole outlook of the series. He's won't be 100% for at least 2-3 weeks and that's if he's a quick healer. If this were the regular season he'd easily be sitting out a few weeks maybe even a month just to be cautious. I can totally see Paul struggling all series. He was lucky to have hit that shot. We're even luckier he hit that.
Rockets in 5. The Rockets are just as athletic as the Clips (unlike the Spurs), have a much deeper bench, will be able to hide their weak defensive point guards on Barnes and Reddick (while Ariza and Brewer hound Paul), the Clips don't have anyone to guard Harden, Josh Smith is perfect for guarding Griffin, Howard will outclass Jordan. Rockets in 5.
clips is a very athletic team but they always seem to lose their steam at some point. its like they don't know how to phase themselves. rockets has a really good chance of taking this series.
The Clippers have been playing great basketball the last two months. The Rockets need to play significantly better than they did against the Mavs to win this series. I'm cautiously optimistic, but some of y'all are just too crazy confident imo.
For this matchup, it's time to rollout the James Harden-as-PG line-up with Brewer, Ariza, Smith, and Howard closing out games. On defense Ariza takes Paul, Brewer follows Redick like a hound around those screens, and Harden can draw offensive fouls off of Barnes at least twice a game haha. This is the kind of game where we can switch effectively on picks because they're just not that fast as a team at running them, and if it's Ariza and Smith/Jones switching on the pick with Paul/Blake, then I'm just fine with that switch keeping Paul dribbling from the outside. People don't realize this around the country yet, but with Dwight Howard our team defense easily becomes 2nd best in the NBA if not better.
Wowzer, lots of so called experts think clips will win 5 games. Is the rockets that overrated outside of houston.
Clips have one day of rest from a very physical series. Injured Chris Paul and a shallow bench. We need to go deeper in our bench and run them to death. Rox in 6!
More than a few "experts" picked the Mavs to beat us. But I prefer it this way. The Rockets don't play as well when they think too highly of themselves. Let them be the underdogs.
Rockets in 6. The refs will give them a win, or two especially the big time flopper in Chris Paulie. The Clippers just played their Finals. If you beat a defending champion in the first round and in game 7. I don't know how you can get that desire to keep pushing. A hobbled Paul (it could be acting like P.Pierce infamously carried off the court than walked back in the playoffs) and a very weak bench of the Clips should favor the Rocks. We will be playing Hack-a Jordan, so our lack of FT accuracy from our bigs won't much of a factor. We found our system, Clips will look past Terrence Jones and our real PG (Harden). Josh Smith will create havoc with in and out. The longer the series, the more it will favor Rockets. This reminiscent of the early 90s when we win playoff series by avoiding Seattle Sonics. We avoided the Spurs, so this series should be ours.
I agree with that statement: the clippers just played their finals. Think about Portland against us last year. They were so happy to be thru to the next round that they laid a massive egg against the Spurs. Part of the reason for success in the playoffs is the ability to get thru a series unscathed. It's not enough just to advance: if you can advance with few battle scars then you are all the more prepared for the next round. Kinda like beating a sub-boss and getting to the final boss without losing too much HP. That's why, just before the playoffs started, Cleveland was a slight favorite over golden state. I like our chances in round 2.
