Haven't been able to watch any games yet, but very happy to hear our defense looks great. Better to sacrifice some offense for defense because d is more consistent.
@ Studogg; Terry is not going to average 24 - 26 min a game. Maybe 15-18. After watching Troy last night play D, he's Ok. Small but should be fine against other team's second units and needs time with Harden & Howard as a spacer. I don't see how he's a net negative. Guy should get as many minutes if not more than Terry. His stroke is just too good.
Losing Asik and Lin will be big. They aren't perfect, but off the bench they were valuable. They're certainly much better than Dmo/ Dorsey and Canaan/Ish. Who will create when harden is off the floor?
Losing Asik is not big deal IMO. Dude quit on the team and didn't play for months, and we didn't miss a beat. We will miss Lin as some offense off the bench. We need to find a decent bench guy ASAP.
Oh? Where have you been? There's plenty of people here who say Ish is a better player than Canaan. No, he's not. Even though plenty of you think that too. If you put the same 4 guys around each player and played against the same defenses, Canaan's team would outscore Ish's team 9 times out of ten. Because the only offensive advantage Ish has over Canaan offensively is end-to-end speed. But every other offensive skill, Canaan is better at or at least as good as Ish. Wanna run pick-and-roll? Canaan is far superior to Ish. Iso? Canaan over Ish? Pick and pop? Canaan over Ish? Other half-court sets? (Like we have other ones.) Canaan over Ish. Drawing fouls and getting to the foul line? Canaan Actually shooting free throws once you get there? Canaan. Only thing Ish has over Canaan offensively is end-to-end speed. I'm not worried about our offense with Harden and Canaan (although I do believe Canaan will be a part of a trade for an even better playmaker) during the regular season nearly as much as I'm worried about our defense without Asik. Our second unit is going to get cremated defensively this season unless Dorsey shows up big time. And once we get to the playoffs.....well, we'll be totally exposed on both ends there....barring another transaction or two.
Didn't have enough vodka to continue watching Ish play. When he needs to shoot he forces a pass that results in a turnover or shot clock violation. He is some fast on the break however his decision making process makes it an adventure. DMO and Jones left much to be desired tonight. I'll chalk it up to just a bad night coming off a back to back. Jones played better after getting his face crushed by the ball...
Statistically there are some good signs and bad signs, though some will not be as bad nor as good as they seem to be since it's pre-season: - Dead last in assists per game, confirming we score a lot by 1-on-1 play and do not rely enough on ball and body movement. This one is definitely alarming, though we should a bit better when guys are not trying hard to make the team and play the guys who are worthy. Still, with McHale and Harden & Howard being asked to carry the load even more I fear we will see even more 1-on-1 than last year. Ariza hopefully can have a positive impact since he's selfless and makes the right passes a lot of the times. - 25th in blocks and 13th in rebounding, confirming we are a small team and we need our bigs to play bigger and everybody to box out better. I've seen a lot of instances where Black, Dorsey, D-Mo and Jones go for the rebound rather than box out. Last night, Dorsey & D-Mo fought for a rebound together after a missed FT and it went out of bounds. Those things will probably not happen too often, but it needs work. - 26th in FT shooting %, which is definitely concerning. Last year we were bad, but it's come to the point where I rather get the ball out on the sides, even when a guy is getting hit trying to score..FTs are huge come play-off time - 3rd in 3pts attempted, re-affirming our Moreyball strategy. This is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you know we are making only 33%. With Daniels and Terry probably not getting much playing time, Ish not being able to shoot and being the 1st PG off the bench and our 'stretch 4s' + Papa still adjusting, it's going to be pretty bad if we stick to it so much. That being said, Ariza is a great shooter, Beverley seems to have improved, Harden will do better and Papa will hopefully adjust and not be Casspi 2.0 (saw him being called that). - Still a lot of TOs, 7th in the league but that's what happens with playing a lot of new and young guys. I'm sure we will do better, but it's one of points we definitely need to improve over last year and I don't see that just yet. Good: - 1st in offensive rebounding, which confirms the eye test that Adrien, Black and of course Howard and our sneaky Beverley are hard workers and know how to crash the boards. - 3rd in steals per game as a team, Ariza is a big reason but Harden, Beverley and even our bigs have all worked hard on defense. - 3rd in FT attempted, which confirms the eye test that we are making a lot of things happen around the basket. Lay-ups and 3 pointers right
Dwight Howard's FT% is more efficient than the Rockets getting the ball on the sides. Hack-a-Dwight works because it increases the variance of the score over a short period of time plus there may (or may not, have not looked at numbers) also a mental factor that Dwight may shot FTs worse in high leverage. Provided it is not Joey Dorsey at the line or late in the game with a small lead, FTAs are more valuable than having the ball on the sidelines.
We had basically the 2nd worst bench in the nba last year, Portland was worse, but they'd been running all time bad benches for a cpl years. Lin and Asik were essentially top heavy for a bench, and if Lin was having a bad game, our bench could and did give up scores like 25-5 in bench time, even to philly. Bench performance is like starters for a quarter, the time frame is so short, you just need 1 or 2 guys out of 5 or 6 to have a good few minutes and you can outscore your opponents, and that's what would basically happen to us, teams would just have 1 random guy go off and if lin didn't (because he was the only one who could), we'd take a beating.
Who said anything about Dwight Howard, you just assume I was talking about him? I posted team stats and the whole team is stinking it up, Dwight has actually been quite good this pre-season.
Terry, Harden, and PB should get the majority of the time at the 1 and 2 but I'd really like to see Trey D get more minutes with James and Dwight. Dwight DMo or KPap Ariza Daniels / Terry Harden That's a lot of shooting around the big 2.
We talkin' about PRESEASON? ****, the Texans looked good in the preseason... Wait until at least 10 games into the NBA season before evaluating.
Rockets free throw percentage is 68% or in other words the Rockets have score about 1.36 points per every trip to free throw line. The best offense in the NBA scored about 1.09 points per every possession. In other words, Rockets would have scored 131 ppg if they had been allowed to shot 2 free throws for every possession in a game last season assuming the same amount of possessions.
I don't think we've seen the real rotation we are going to use during the season. My best guess is: Point Guard Beverley (30) Terry (10) Ish/Canaan (8) Shooting guard Harden (30) Daniels (14) Terry (4) Small Forward Ariza (32) Papanikolaou (10) Harden (6) Power Forward TJones (27) DMo (11) Papanikolaou (5) Adrien (5) Center Howard (33) Dorsey (10) DMo (5) Starters Beverley (30) Harden (36) Ariza (32) TJones (27) Howard (33) Rotation Bench Terry (14) Daniels (14) Ish/Canaan (8) Papanikolaou (15) DMo (16) Dorsey (10) Adrien (5) End of the bench/RGV Black Capela Johnson Cuts/Trades: Garcia, one of Ish/Canaan, Powell, Covington, Johnson (new guy) The more you look at this, the more you think there's got to be some kind of consolidation trade coming. I really think Adrien needs more minutes, and maybe even Papanikolaou, but we can't give them to them without taking from DMo or TJones, which is a no-no if you want to preserve their trade values.
canaan is showing to be that point guard; we need! he can shoot and defend. Trey D is the sixth man that can unite the bench along with canaan. cut ISH smith he limited on the offensive and defensive side and also increase our already high turnover rate.
