Harden was especially lackadaisacal today, like he didn't even want to be there. I attribute his very poor effort on an injury or just one of those nights where he just didn't feel like carrying the team, as he has done so often for us. To be honest, whatever the reason, I hope to dear God is not an injury for as Harden goes, so does the Rockets. This night is one Bev was really needed with his energy. It is not as if Bev could play d for both him and Harden, but this team needed that hard nosed guy who is ALWAYS giving 110% effort no matter what. Mchale needs to rip the team a good for the way they "tried" to play defense, without singling any one particular player. There is no need for that. All in all, it was just one game. We could well be 5-1 by end of Thursday.
the only good thing about this game is that its over. its not all on lin or harden or dwight, the whole team dropped a huge sht. and of corse the refs can go **** themselves
this game shows if harden can get back to normal only ref can beat us, it seemed we have a terrible game but in the end of 3rd Q we only trailed by 10, still have good opportunity to reverse it. only the ref wanted to keep the game on script, smh. if Dwright and Lin were not in foul trouble and allowed to work on D, it's a very close game. sure cp3 is good but those ref BS favor calls only undermine his fineness, although the league want the other way around make him a superstar but the stink of a rigged match only tainted his honor and basketball itself.
The refs concerned me early. Had the feeling that our guys would be foul trouble early. BTW - I LOVE how the announcers were trying to rationalize Griffin's loose ball foul on Brooks. HE GRABBED HIM FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD. Nice non-call on the "block" of Lin's drive also. Curious, to have a block, doesn't the basketball have to be touched at some point by the defender???? Rockets will get there revenge...
I think it was still a good game. Clippers is a better team obviously but the positive thing was that the rockets kept on fighting. Despite bad calls and clippers high % shooting, it didn't bother them and they kept pushing it. When Patrick comes back, Chris Paul will be in check.
Some things I took away from the game: 1. Harden looked tired/lazy. I think seeing jj in front of him he took it easy thinking he would dominate. Hopefully lesson learned. 2. The clippers literally made everything in the first half. Mullins had a 3 for crying out loud and Paul racked up 9 assists in less than 10 minutes. 3. The clippers are really deep, and are a better team than us right now, no denying it. 4. Casspi needs to learn how to rotate on d, asik and Howard need to get their fouls challenging shots/penetration, and the perimeter guys need to play more sound defense. 5. The refs were pretty terrible. The one play that stands out is when parsons gets run over from Blake from behind and no foul is called. Also how about calling griffin and Jordan for illegal picks since they hip check on every play. Again, not the reason we lost by a mile but it kept us from getting any kind of rhythm. 6. When Howard is at or around the rim and they try passing to him, we need to stop throwing low bounce passes and actuall try to lob some of those.
My takeaways: 1. CP3 wasn't scoring much until Lin got his 4th foul in the 2nd quarter. If not for some terrible officiating that got Lin in foul trouble and more tentative on defense, I thought he handled CP3 relatively well. 2. The poor officiating totally took us out of the game. I've seen 100s of NBA games in my life and this one was one of the worst in terms of refs. 3. Howard has no post touch whatsoever. People like Duncan or Olajuwon squared their shoulders and you felt confident that they knew where their shots were going, even if they didn't make them. I feel like Howard is just chucking it up. If he insists on posting up, there's gonna be problems. He should accept his role as a PNRoller, lob finisher, and put back guy. Also, Howard is terrible with his spin moves, I've seen two times (not this game but previous games) where he's spun right out of bounds! He needs to just focus on being a defensive beast. 4. Parsons plays PG a little too much. Sometimes, he'll take the in-bounds when he should be running the fast break. He needs to play SF, not PG. 5. I'm not gonna bash Harden for the bad day that all players have. One question though. All champions demonstrate heart and will (like Kobe or Jordan) == does Harden have it? By his defensive performances, it's not clear. 6. I've been impressed with Greg Smith both last year and this year. Great hands and great finisher. 7. Casspi has definitely adopted Delfino's chucking bravado!
I looked at the halftime stats & except for shooting %(52% to 59%), they were all in our favor. I wondered how we could be so far behind. Also if the refs had called all the moving screens that Griffin & Jordan made, they'd have fouled out by half time.
On top of the foul officiating, I found it's interesting comparing Lin vs CP3 stats - If Lin double his shot attempts and control/pass the ball more, he'd have the almost identical stats as CP3. By that I mean their field goal percentage, Assist/TO ratio... are similar. The only difference is Lin didn't dominate the ball so less opportunity. I'm not saying Lin's on par with CP3, but that's something promising going forward.
Positive news- -Good wake up call to this team to let them know that they aren't the top dogs just yet. They still have a ton of improvement to do. -Same goes for the front office. I dont think this team is as deep and well rounded as one might think. I think there are some moves yet to be made that need to be made sooner rather than later. Main point of emphasis here is getting someone to play alongside Dwight that makes the game easier on him. Asik helps him out on the boards, and can guard the bigger big, but makes the game harder on him on the offensive end. Either Asik needs to come off the bench, & Smith/Jones need to start, or they need to start looking at getting more aggressive with trades.... even if they have to sell off future picks to get a deal done. -I have tickets for the Clippers game on Saturday, and hopefully an A#$ kicking last night makes that a payback game.
Reddick, Paul and 3 pnt shooting from Crawford and Dudley destroyed us...ffs. our defense stood still a lot
Rox: 41-82 fg 7-25 for three Clips: 49-94 15-38 for three They beat us with the three. Refs took us out of our game early in the first. Good news. I still hate Paul.
I actually see a lot of positive actually throughout the game. But my biggest concern continue to be Howard, in particular on the offense.
