[SO PISSED!] Rockets have only won 11 of their last 12.

Me too. But that's not happening either.

 

This oughta be good.

 

This.

It never was about eclipsing the Warriors or even really necessarily beating the Warriors to get a championship.

It has always been about winning a championship.

The Warriors have their legacy regardless of what happens this season, that was settled years ago.

The Rockets are like the Kings against the Lakers 15 years ago.... you load up as many times as you can and you go at them and see what happens. Eventually someone that is a slight underdog will break through, maybe it will be the Rockets.... maybe it won't be, but you still go for it.... and will go for this season, next season and likely the season after that with reasonable health.

 

Are you whining about the whiners whining about the whiners? (sorry, i had to lol )

 

Yup the Rockets will give their best effort this season. But also set themselves up for the next few seasons. I firmly expect KD to leave GSW...likely to NY. That happens and the West is WIDE open. GSW's margin for error gets a TON less with KD leaving. And that is with the Rockets not even improving their OWN position. As long as the Rockets have Harden in his prime they will be right there. Just have to pull the right levers.

 

We know where the improvements need to be made, the question is whether we will be able to fill those gaps with the limited financial and asset allocations we have.

 

sorry to hear this 'holic. condolences to you and your family.

 

We run plenty of 5-out action -- it's like our main set when we go small. Your point is our small lineups can't match GSW's death lineup, which is fine, (arguable, but fine). But let's not say MDA isn't still a leader of 5-out action or Pick n Pops.

Even with Capela/Faried in the game, we still have pick-and-pop as a major play using both 3-man PnRs (Spain PnR, double drags out of Pistol, Flair picks in high 3-man game, PJ, House, even Paul or Harden as flair), and Fist-Up Houston with Capela/Faried in short corner pinning bigs under the rim.

Your argument against short corner placement of Capela is that Draymond can guard both the oop and Harden. That's very, very arguable now with the weaponized floater...and wasn't even true in last year's playoffs. And it ignores Paul running pick-n-pop (Fist-up Houston) with Capela in short corner, or running a PnR vs a dropping Green, when Paul will just snake-dribble that and kill them midrange.

bottomline: We are still the bell-weather of spacing in this league (along with GSW) and not being left behind by any stretch. The only reason Bucks can do 5-out is because their one bad shooter is a Superstar attacker, via his own drives or PnR. And Bucks are about ready to get a very heavy diet of playoff defense taking Giannis' drives out of the equation, making him pass into becoming a pedestrian, Live By the 3, Die by the 3 offense. Or, he and Bledsoe actually use a vinyl record pick-and-roll offense.​

 

Sorry to hear that, man. Precious people leave voids that are turbulent.

 

You can't take Giannis drive out of the equation. He's too good and too long. Can't stop him. Can only hope to wear him down. They can't double him off the ball either because the Bucks shoot too well. He's a legit mvp candidate and they are a legit team. They are better than us. Because they can spread 4 out with giannis driving.

Capela in the short corner or Nrne in the short corner is not 5 out pick-and-pop, sorry.

You can't argue that our small ball lineup usage has decreased dramatically from last season. We DO NOT have a guy that can shoot the 3 and defend opponent 5's without either getting burned our bring switched and burned.

I appreciate MDA's coaching offense and have never said otherwise. He is classic every bit of efficiency out of us that's possible. But it's not enough. Because we don't have that guy anymore. We are NOT as good as last year's team. And we won't go as far as they did.

Any lineup with Capela or Nene is not playing 5 out . And Faried isn't true 5 out action either. Because he's not a proven 3-ball shooter and his defense makes him virtually unplayable in the playoffs. Right now....One of capela and nene are on the court like 90% of the time.....Because our small ball lineup doesn't work.

Convince yourself we're better. But you're not convincing me. I know what is happening to us. We're missing Ariza and Luc. That's not one, but two guys that could rotate at the 5 spot with PJ. Now we've regressed to running our old skool bigs for 80-90% of the minutes. Our small ball lineup is virtually non existent.