You were for the most part pretty accurate. But DMo's defense? Really? DMo isn't good enough to completely destroy a team's season. I think the collapse of T.Jones and JB doing too much dickin around with the lineup hurt us. Marcus Thornton was BALLING the first part of the season. Every time he had a good game JB wouldn't play him the next one. Not to say MT was a deciding factor, but if a guy is on fire common sense tells you to ride that hot hand. JB's rotations were about as horrible as I've ever seen. It took him FOREVER to sit Jones after watching him literally screw up play after play. Montrez would play good and JB would sit him the next 5 games like MT. Man last season was frustrating just thinking about it
Well ****tt at least give 80%. You can't expect the team to flourish when a player refuses to play defense but wants to take every damn shot. I've seen plenty plays when you have your big man running the court hard after a great defensive play only to see Harden jack up a ill-advised three pointer. Or your big man have his man sealed under the basket and a damn three pointer is hoisted. Man even Ariza and Beverley started playing lackluster defense. Reaching instead of moving their feet, or cheating over because they know Harden will not give max effort. Think about it, if we were just playing a simple game of 5 on 5 at the Y. And one dude was jacking the ball up every chance he got and not playing defense. You know darn well you will say forget it," I'm jacking it up too and I'm not playing defense either".
I think you really did get 80%. But the 20% was so gaffetastic at moments, that then it became a thing to blow his defensive gaffes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of proportion. Or you'd have vine clips where Harden can't jeopardize picking up a foul and getting in foul trouble, oh unless you want an 8 minute scoring drought. Beard was a better defender than Dame last year but you don't see people lighting into Dame's ass. Hell he made all team. And he couldn't hold Beard's jock strap when it comes to scoring, playmaking for others, and creating tons of offense on limited shots / efficiency. Harden was giving 110% every game, his effing all. The most minutes played by far in the NBA. And lets not forget. He rested in the off season because we rode him just as hard the previous season as well. Most minutes that previous season as well. It's amazing how sturdy he has been for us despite this. He gives 110%. Unfortunately a lot of that had to be used on the offense side. He would have had 10+ assists a game if team members could hit a damn wide open shot. And Howard was getting 25% of his touches at post up and HE WANTED MORE! And he refused to pick and roll more, only 9% of his touches as PnR when your best player on the team is arguably the best PnR guru in the league right now. Hell Clint and D-Mo had a bigger percentage of PnR touches than Howard, that whiny quitter.
I never said DMo was good enough to completely destroy a team's season. But when you remove Dwight's one-on-one defense in the paint AND DMo's excellent team defense in the paint, that's a recipe for major disaster. All those easy layups teams got on us all season long attest to that. <BR>
The team was leader less, nobody is looking at James as the leader because his defense isn't at leader staff. Nobody could look at D12 as leader, he was viewed as the little kid who wanted 2 be liked by all. Brewer didn't realize he couldn't shot 3s. Bev was up and down the whole season, plus operating on 1 knee. JB way over his head and his in game strategy was str8 horrible. So many issues to overcome.
Now we're coming up with excuses because I've seen other top level player give it their all on both ends. To name one, Mr. Michael Jordan played heavy minutes and still played top level defense. LeBron James is another. Do. Wade is another big time baller who played heavy minutes and you didn't see him playing lackluster defense.
1 - most of it was the injury and he couldnt come into the season in shape cuz of it. some was the team being over-confident getting a gentlemen's sweep in the wcf 2 - ty didnt realy hurt this team. he didnt help either 3 - yup, preseason isnt hgue but you cant completely ignore it. this is nba not ymca 4 - embarassing nba history 5 - way too early to re-hire and way too early to fire. re-tar-ded 6-8 - the whole team was bad on defense. before the season they told dwight his role on offense would be reduced and he didnt like that so with that and the team half assing, so did dwight. im not excusing dwight, he was a big problem for the team and getting max money but playing like a role player 9 - underrated on defense and rebounding. not great at either, but not terrible too as long as he's playing pf's, not c's. even some of the weaker c's he's not bad 10 - JB AND BREWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111111111@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111LFADAS;LFADLSFAFLVNS;LVF if there was no jb/brewer on this team the rockets could've easily won 5 more games, maybe more. they're literally demons sent from hell
How do you have a top 10 list for this topic and not include horrible Team Chemistry in there somewhere?
You've been working on this list all summer? No wonder you haven't accomplished anything on that Top Ten Honey-Do List I have posted on the fridge.
Excellent list. It's very naive to say that it was all on Dwight, or all on James, or all on the coaching. It was all of the above, and Lawson, and Bev and Ariza losing half a step on D, and Brewer's inconsistency, and injuries, and the loss of Josh Smith Good Version, and the worst thing is that it all fed into each other to basically form a self-sustaining toxic stew that we could all see was just wrong.
That's what I'm thinkin... a certain 'aloofness,' some immaturity..., seemed like everybody was walkin around all butthurt... and then JBB certainly didn't have the ability to pull them together... a perfect storm of toxic chemistry...
DMo's defense is almost as bad as his rebounding fam. Yes he's occasionally good at taking charges, but overall is defense is poor.
The first 9 should be Dwight, he doesn't want to do what made him a household name got us to the Wcf and that is P&R!!!
