Only if the chemistry issues were somehow solely a players vs. coaches problem, which I don't think is the case. To be honest, the best thing for chemistry issues may be Dwight opting out - I just think this current group of players does not like one another at all and we need new faces on the players' side of the bench for chemistry to improve.
According to ESPN, we had the 4th best offense in the league scoring 106.5 per game (read lot's of times it was seventh, so it may not be the best source or maybe it's not adjusted to pace) and the 25th worst defense (only 5 teams were worst) with 106.4 points allowed per game. In sum, it's smarter to maintain the offensive output, which is really good and improve the defence to raise our point differential than perfect a offense and continue sucking on defense.
Sure. Of course. I don't think anyone here is saying that we don't value offense. Or that we don't understand the concept of scoring more points than your opponent goes. The frustration (for me, at least) is that we already had a pretty good offense to begin with. Was it elite? Was it historically great? Was I tired of watching bad 3 point shooters jack up tons of threes all game long? No. No. And yes. I would love for us to get better shooters and another playmaker. That alone would make a huge difference in our offense. But again, even though our offense wasn't breaking any records last year, it wasn't the main problem. Our defense was laughably bad. And if the objective is to outscore the opponent then you have to be able to get stops as well. I am of the opinion that, unfortunately, D'Antoni's best days are behind him. I think that he helped in a lot of ways to transform the offensive mindset of teams in today's NBA. But then today's NBA ran off with a lot of his ideas and made them better and left him in the dust. I'm hoping for the sake of the Rockets that I am wrong. But even in D'Antoni's heydays in Phoenix, he had a top 10 offense every year (I think normally number 1 or number 2?) but never had a top 10 defense. He also had 0 rings. I'm pretty excited for Bzdelik. But I'm frustrated that the Rockets had such a bad defense last year and their solution was to run off and hire a head coach that has always had bad defenses.
If the rockets had kept there defense of last year which was 6th in the league I believe and had this years offense which was 6th compared to 12th the year before this team prob fights for the 3rd seed with OKC and at worst is a 2nd round team. That's the difference in being 12th to 6th on offense and 6th to 25th on D.... It equaled 15 wins which is a lot. I do think the offense will help the other guys not names harden contribute and get easier buckets which is only going to help the team I don't care what the critics say. The big improvement has to come on the Defensive end. We're not going to get back to 50+ wins unless we get back in the top 12 atleast on that end. Personally I think we will be a lot better on Defense just because these guys have a new staff and will come in with a chip on their shoulder trying to prove ppl that they can lock up. We saw it in spurts a few games even last season were they would play great defense in the 4th quarter to make a crazy comback. That stuff hopefully won't happen this year and we can just be in the game leading instead of coming back from 15+ points entering the 4th. I think this team is catching flack is warranted because they should have won 52-55 games this year. Everyone stayed healthy besides Dmo but it is what it is. With that said this team be written off as some lottery team is silly. This team with the same roster can win 55 games. We've seen it the last 2 years before this one. James harden our best player has somthing to prove and history shows when he gets outed by fans/media he usually comes back with a killer season. Will we be good enough to beat SAS or GS? Prob not unless we add another Allstar but I think we can beat anyone else after that including OKC and the cavs.
all things equal, yes. However, when the owner of Team, who is essentially dictating roster personnel at this point,has final say, it becomes more than a mere externality.
So are we just going to ignore that the Warriors held the Cavs to 42 points in the 2nd half (less if you ignore all of the statpadding). They won that game by playing lockdown defense.
i'm not saying the conclusion that offense and defense are equally important is wrong because i think they are, but what are they basing this on? points per game instead of efficiency? looking at basketball-reference, the russell celtics alone won ten titles while being #1 in defensive efficiency (and spurs won at least 2 before i stopped checking). granted, before turnovers and offensive rebounds they had to estimate efficiency and it's possible the celtics esimates are off because they routinely not only led the league in defense, but were last in offensive efficiency. that seems crazy and like some systemic mis-estimating specific to the celtics. and as far as offense, the bulls were #1 4 times. either way, i can't imagine that based on efficiency only one quarter of the title teams were either #1 in offense or #1 in defense.
haven't all recent championship teams been top 10 in both O and D, and top 5 in at least one of them? that's balance.
